This letter explores language politics as it concerns gender, and investigates the adoption of amendments that introduce gender-neutral language to subnational constitutions via popular initiative. Embracing theories of female empowerment based on resource acquisition and shrinking gender differentials in economic resources, the authors argue that popular support for these initiatives will be higher in contexts where female and male incomes are closer to parity. The study tests this expectation using city-level historical administrative data in California on Proposition 11 in 1974 – the first American state to hold a popular vote on amending its constitution to include only gender-neutral language. It finds that greater parity in income between women and men is associated with greater voter support for the initiative. This result holds after controlling for conceivable confounders, fails to emerge when analyzing gender-irrelevant ballot measures, and replicates when analyzing similar measures held in three jurisdictions in other states.

The literature on populist attitudes frequently makes one of two assumptions: populist attitudes are either stable or unstable. However, few studies have examined these diverging assumptions empirically. We use panel data collected over six panel waves between 2017 and 2021 in Germany to assess the stability of populist attitudes. Integrating inter-individual stability (variable-centred) and intra-individual stability (individual trajectories), we find that populist attitudes are neither fully stable (trait) nor fully flexible (state). For example, some respondents constantly changed their view on populism while the attitudes in one out of three individuals remained stable. We also explore empirical consequences and find that populist attitudes are more closely linked to vote choice when they are stable. Accordingly, we argue for a more nuanced understanding of the dynamics of populist attitudes, both at the variable and individual levels, where these attitudes are stable and consequential for only a subset of individuals.

For a Soviet General Secretary presumably committed to the collectivist principles of Marxism-Leninism, Mikhail Gorbachev has been peculiarly insistent upon the decisive importance of individual leadership. In speech after speech it was not only the socioeconomic order that Gorbachev held to be the source of the Soviet Union's problems: the quality and style of its political leadership were also crucial factors.

This Note reports some findings from a larger study we are embarked upon. Our broader objective is to develop a general theory of the national state's interest in cities in advanced industrial societies. We argue that state officials generally pursue their own interests in the protection and expansion of state power and resources and specifically have interest in the viability of cities, interests that do not simply reflect the interests of private capital or any other societal groups. A broad twofold distinction is made between those state activities necessary for the perpetuation of the state (maintenance of public order, legitimacy, durable political institutions, revenue base) and those necessary for the perpetuation of cities (provision of collective goods, developmental policies and social services). Space limitations preclude a full account and justification of these arguments here. Rather, we present some hypotheses about how such state interests should inform the allocation of funds across cities and report the findings of some initial empirical tests for the United States.

Peter Morriss (see pp. 595–7) criticizes most applications of mathematically derived power indices, including mine and the response to my original Note. He uses uncomplimentary terms, implying that we are not only wrong but also fools for being wrong.

In comparative politics, the units of analysis are usually countries. For many variables, this does not raise any particular measurement problems, because they can easily be aggregated at the country level. For other variables, however, measurement at the country level is a much more severe problem. The prevailing decision mode in a country is perhaps the most conspicuous case. In the last ten to fifteen years, this variable has gained key importance in several theories, most prominently in the theories of consciationalism and corporatism. Yet, these theories are plagued by perennial measurement problems. As an illustration, we use the case of Switzerland, but our argument should apply to other countries as well.

If the automobile business had developed like the computer business, a Rolls Royce would cost $2.75 and run for 3 million miles on one gallon of gas.

Forrester, Hight-Tech SocietyTom Forrester, High-Tech Society (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1987), p. 18.

The computer power available to political scientists has increased at least one thousandfold since 1970. We can now make millions of calculations in a few seconds, generate beautiful and meaningful graphics, and communicate instantly around the world, all at virtually no cost. But in what ways has this computer power helped us make more accurate statements about political phenomena? Beyond simply doing faster and more cheaply that which we had done previously, this computer revolution has made possible a qualitative leap in our analysis of political behaviour.

Are changes in political conditions objective features of the world or are they ultimately what social movement activists and adherents make of them? The position taken in this article argues that shifts in the Israeli structure of political opportunity, manifested in a series of transformative events, were framed by the Palestinians within the occupied territories as a political opportunity affecting their strategy of contention during the run up to the 1987 ‘first’ Intifada. Findings from content analysis data obtained from several Palestinian newspapers between 1974 and 1986 suggest that (a) the Palestinians collectively perceived Israeli domestic events as favourable political circumstances, and (b) their mutual interpretation of Israeli events as a reflection of divisions over the occupation was associated with rationalizing contention. Theoretical implications of bridging the culturally and structurally laden approaches to the study of collective action are offered.

How do parties decide when to campaign on valence issues given high degrees of uncertainty? Although past studies have provided evidence of transnational emulation of parties' position-taking strategies, these findings do not directly apply to saliency strategies. Moreover, the exact diffusion mechanism remains largely elusive. Based on the issue saliency literature, this study develops novel theoretical propositions and argues that conscious learning enables parties to infer the relative utility of emphasizing consensual issues during an electoral campaign. The proposed theory gives rise to different expectations at the domestic and transnational levels because of the distinct logic of issue competition. By analyzing environmental issue emphasis in party manifestos, the authors find direct transnational dependencies and indirect spillover effects among the parties' saliency strategies. They identify conscious learning, rather than mere imitation or independent decision making, as the diffusion mechanism at work. Yet, in line with saliency-based theories, electoral competition mutes the diffusion of electoral strategies domestically.

Recent veto player work argues that majoritarian regimes such as the United Kingdom have better fiscal discipline and smaller welfare states than proportional regimes with more veto players. An analytic narrative of the failure of land value taxation in the United Kingdom between 1909 and 1914 shows, however, that it failed not because of previously advanced reasons, but because the number of veto players in British politics was sharply increased. This increase in veto player numbers prevented a tax increase. All seven of the conventional reasons for characterizing the United Kingdom as a low-n veto player regime failed to hold between 1906 and 1914. Observable implications discussed include the need to review the entire history of British politics in this period in the light of the temporary increase in veto players; and the ambiguous implications of number of veto players for fiscal discipline.

This article offers an evaluation of cross-national measures of ethnic socio-economic inequality. It demonstrates that the measures differ in important ways regarding empirical scope, conceptualization, measurement and aggregation. Despite significant advances in the measurement of ethnic inequality, all measures have shortcomings, such as limited and biased coverage, as well as measurement error from the underlying data sources. Moreover, the empirical convergence between conceptually similar measures is strikingly low: some of the measures show no or even negative covariation. Four replication studies also indicate that extant measures of ethnic inequality are generally not interchangeable. Scholars should therefore take the various features highlighted in this evaluation into account before employing any of them. Based on this conclusion, the article offers multiple suggestions for improving existing measures and developing new ones.

Electoral violence is perpetrated by anti-systemic actors opposed to the democratic system, as well as by those vying for power through the electoral process. Even though the motivations for violent tactics are distinct, we do not know whether intra- and anti-systemic violence differ in their effects. Focusing on state-level elections in India – a country that combines nationwide elections with persistent political violence – we demonstrate that the distinction is crucial for understanding spatial patterns of electoral violence and effects on election outcomes. Based on an original dataset of violence in legislative assembly elections between 1985 and 2008, we show that both tactics depress turnout overall but that the effect is larger for anti-systemic violence. Intra-systemic violence not only appears to be more selectively targeted, as it is more likely to occur in constituencies where the incumbent belongs to the state-level opposition, but also generates electoral benefits for the party in control of state government.

Central control over personnel placement in the Soviet Union (the nomenklatura system) is widely regarded as the complement to the centralization of substantive policy making and implementation. Some recent studies, however, argue that the central authorities have used their appointments powers to ratify rather than alter the results of the circulation process specific to localities. In order to advance the terms of this discussion, (he present study employs a systemic model of circulation. Here, circulation is regarded as a Markov process involving the movement of vacancies across a stratified hierarchy of 2,034 positions in the Belorussian Republic, and allunion jobs occupied by Belorussian politicans, over the period 1966–86. The model's predictions are reasonably accurate for the full data set but fit the data especially well when all-union positions are excluded, indicating a marginal centralizing influence on elite circulation that results more from the interaction between national and republic personnel systems than from centrally co-ordinated cadres policies in either Moscow or Minsk. Three auxiliary tests also support the conclusions derived from the Markov analysis.

Colin Hay's combative response is a welcome engagement with our ideas. Let us first set out where the battle lines are drawn. The most important points in Hay's shot across our bows relate to accommodating the notion of complexity; defining Keynesianism; invoking Labour's past; the relationship between fiscal and monetary policy; and the evidential basis for our argument.

The first point involves admitting complexity when characterizing a political economy. In essence, we agree with Hay about the need to admit complexity into the explanation and characterization of New Labour's political economy, but he does not recognize in our account that this has been successfully achieved, nor do we see it in how he characterizes the relationship between New Labour and neo-liberalism. This is in part a disagreement about how to operationalize the insight about the need to admit greater complexity into the analysis of the political economy of New Labour's macroeconomic policy making. For example, our account of complexity accepts that, under a particular set of monetary policy conditions, which are not in any straightforward sense Keynesian, it is nevertheless legitimate and useful to consider the ‘Keynesianness’ of the fiscal policy regime. Hay, by contrast, sees this as a dubious manœuvre, no doubt fuelled by the unspecified ‘normative bias’ he detects in our work and refers to enigmatically but repeatedly.

Similarly, we recognize that Hay has identified the need to admit complexity into analysis. However, in our reading of his work there remains a sense that, in the final analysis, New Labour's is a neo-liberal political economy.

Whips have always aroused curiosity. Their peculiar title, which suggests coercion and social control, derives from ‘Whipper-in’, a man who keeps headstrong hounds running with the pack. The packs, that is to say the parliamentary parties, are heterogeneous associations of independent and egocentric individuals, not at all the sort to shy away from dissent and rebellion. Between 1966 and 1970 the Labour Government faced backbench opposition on almost every major policy; the 1970–74 Conservative Government was actually defeated five times by its own supporters. Still, although it may well be true that ‘the golden age of ultra-disciplined parties is past’, when the time comes to march, and regardless of the issues involved, most Members seem ready to follow a lead: remarkably few bolt upon reaching the division lobbies. Even the recent ‘undisciplined’ record must appear to administrators everywhere as very successful social control indeed.

The existence of fairly strong correlations between newspaper readership and socio-political variables is well known. The interesting question about these correlations is not whether they exist but why they exist. In their analysis of British political behaviour in the sixties, Butler and Stokes put forward three possible explanations.

I wish to consider what kind of force attaches to the fact that a certain policy or course of action is in the public interest. How, for example, does it compare with the consideration that a policy is in the interests of a majority, or the consideration that a policy is a fair one? Such questions about the weight to be attached to the fact that a policy or course of action is in the public interest arise naturally if we accept the view, put forward by Barry, that just as to say that a policy is in the interests of farmers, for example, is to say that it is in the interest of each farmer as a farmer or qua farmer, so to say that a policy is in the public interest is to say that it is in the interest of each member of the public as a member of the public or qua member of the public.1

A major new study by Professor Gabriel Almond is a significant event in our discipline. Whether one believes that The Politics of the Developing Areas (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, i960) set comparative politics on the sure path of a science or set it back a decade, there can be no denying the influence of the so-called ‘functional’ framework set out in Almond's introductory essay. Crisis, Choice, and Change may well have the same degree of influence. Whether or not this is a prospect to be welcomed depends entirely upon the aspects of the book that make an impact. This essay is written in the conviction that the main drift of the book is disastrously misdirected but that part of it – the quasi-game-theoretical analysis of coalition formation – is valuable for what it tries to do, though seriously defective in execution. Since there is obviously a risk that these deficiencies could discredit the whole notion of applying game-theoretical concepts to the analysis of real political situations, my object will be, while drawing attention to the defects, to suggest that they are not inherent in game-theoretical treatments.

The purpose of this article is to outline some of the more important ‘images’ of the environment held in the Soviet Union. By ‘images’ of the environment I refer to the manner in which people utilize the natural environment in order to meet their biological, social or aesthetic needs, and their perception of the means for fulfilling these needs. The environment may be perceived as infinitely renewable, and thus as a resource to be exploited with minimal attention to future consequences. Or the natural environment may be perceived as a scarce commodity, a unique gift in danger of being destroyed by humankind's productive activities. Furthermore, attitudes toward the environment may vary across cultures, or within the same culture depending on age, socio-economic status, political ideology, occupation or area of residence. The environmental image maintained by a group, culture or individual has implications far beyond any immediate impact on nature. Fundamental ideas about the structuring of society, the economy and the political system are involved. Positive attitudes towards environmental protection may clash with deeply held values – faith in science and technology, a commitment to quantitative economic growth and confidence in the existing hierarchical structure of social and political power. One's environmental image, therefore, may either support the established order, or may support fundamental change.

This article examines the political ideology of Canadian elites on the basis of a sample survey conducted in 1977. The six hundred respondents include business executives, politicians, government bureaucrats, labour leaders, lawyers, media executives, and academics. Our purposes are, first, to make comparisons among and examine variation within these sectoral groups; second, to relate ideological cleavages to differences in support for the federal political parties; and, third, to examine the correspondence between more general ideological principles and elite opinions on a variety of specific public policy issues.