The character of the U.S. Senate has changed markedly over the last 30 years. The Senate can no longer be characterized as a well-bounded entity ruled by an “inner club” of insular grandees. Increasingly, rather, the Senate is a great forum, an echo chamber, a theater, where dramas—comedies and tragedies, soap operas and horse operas—are staged to enhance the careers of its members and to influence public policy by means of debate and public investigation.

Its special role today in the contemporary American political system is as an incubator of policy ideas and political innovations (Polsby 1984). This stands in dramatic contrast with the Senate as late as the 1950s, which was far more a body that had positioned itself as a critic and a respondent—frequently an inhospitable one—to the political innovations hatched in the executive branch and by activist presidents and forwarded to it by the House of Representatives. Thus over the last three decades the Senate has evolved from a rather negative repository of states-rights thinking, dominated by a mostly southern-led “inner club,” and hence an explicit agent of the devolved aspect of the federal system, into a predominantly nationally-oriented body.

The principal agent of this transformation has been the very great change in the life chances and therefore in the political ambitions of a large number of U.S. senators. Earlier, not so many of them entertained presidential ambitions. Today, the Senate is the main institutional source of presidential hopefuls, and for a large fraction of senators such hopes play a significant part in guiding their behavior in the Senate.

The Reagan-Bush Administration vigorously pursued a “Reagan Doctrine” of aiding anti-communist freedom fighters worldwide, in no place with more controversy than toward the anti-US Sandinista Government of Nicaragua. Why, then, would the new presidency of George Bush quickly have agreed to defer asking Congress for military aid to the Contras, have agreed to send only humanitarian aid instead, and have agreed to permit four separate congressional committees each to determine whether any aid at all should be continued? Unravelling this odd turn of events can help us better to understand the under-rated influence of public opinion on American foreign policy.

Most of us assume the public usually to follow presidential leadership when it comes to foreign affairs. Indeed, though very few truths are undisputed when political scientists discuss Americans' opinions on questions of public importance, one accepted inference—borne out by much scientifically-verified evidence—is the “rally ‘round the flag” syndrome. The syndrome is simple: presidential popularity in public opinion polls rises when a president acts decisively toward an international crisis. These changes in Americans' stated opinions have been measured in international crises for several decades.

“Rallies” occur only when special “crisis” conditions are met. These crisis situations usually involve threats to America which are (1) remote from the everyday experience of Americans, and (2) involve threats about which the president personally informs the public, usually over the dramatically effective medium of television, and (3) involve decisive—and usually military—response at the president's direction.

“National wars against the imperial powers are not only possible and probable; they are inevitable, progressive, and revolutionary”

V. I. Lenin.

“It is obvious that the use or threat of force no longer can or must be an instrument of foreign policy”

M. S. Gorbachev.

The rhetoric of the leadership of the world's most powerful Marxist state has changed over the last seventy years. The more recent oratory is warmly welcomed in Western circles, especially when accompanied by specific pledges of unilateral military force reductions. But what if Marxist nations, irrespective of particular leaders or styles of leadership, possess a political culture and bureaucratic organization which mandates a persistent militarism? Perhaps there are limits to the demilitarization of socialist nations—limits which are not reciprocal to any behavior of Western capitalist nations, but which arise from the structure of socialist institutions. Put more broadly, do political, economic, and social systems change because leaders want them to?

Marxists typically argue exactly this point, using capitalism as their example. The maintenance of a large military establishment undergirds the modern capitalist economy. According to this argument, if it were not for the prop provided by military spending, advanced capitalism would fall victim to its most pervasive internal “contradiction”—underconsumption. In order to absorb “surplus capital” capitalist governments must increase spending; they cannot spend on welfare functions without undermining work incentive, so they spend on the military instead (Baran and Sweezy, 1968;Melman, 1972). This spending not only uses up surplus capital, but also provides capitalist states with the wherewithal to support imperialism.

Reform has been an important theme within the United Nations during the decade of the 1980s. That decade has witnessed both the continuation of efforts towards structural reform initiated over thirty years ago as well as the beginning of a rather different species of reform, movement towards reshaping the relationships between men and women within societies whose governments make up official members of the world organization. The latter is reflected most recently in the Forward Looking Strategies for the Advancement for Women to the Year 2000 (FLS), the set of guidelines approved by consensus by 159 government delegates at the 1985 UN World Conference on the UN Decade for Women in Nairobi, Kenya in 1985. Though not designated a “reform program,” the FLS contains a set of recommendations which if implemented could contribute to the reform or reshaping of the sex-gender system that characterizes the relations of men and women in public and private institutions within societies throughout the world. In this respect, it is interesting that three prominent American women politicians played key roles in traditional UN reform and with respect to the adoption of the FLS at Nairobi: Maureen Reagan, who headed the U.S. delegation to Nairobi and subsequently served as U.S. Representative to the UN Commission on the Status of Women; Jeanne Kirkpatrick, the first American woman to hold the position of U.S./UN Ambassador; and Sen. Nancy Kassebaum, Republican Senator from Kansas, the only woman member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

University courses that include statistics and computers intimidate many students. Fear diminished somewhat with the advent of the microcomputer, a physically unimposing box over which users feel they have a fighting chance compared to large and distant mainframes. Now that increasing numbers of students own microcomputers, their sense of control and familiarity is even greater.

The proliferation of computers has been accompanied by the development of low cost student oriented versions of word processing packages, spreadsheets, data base management programs, and statistics packages. There are probably a greater number of student statistics packages than any other category of software. For approximately the cost of a text book (or less) students can purchase functional tools complete with manuals. The sense of student mastery of computing encouraged by the micro is further enhanced by student ownership of the software being used.

Often student computer programs are partially disabled versions of commercially available software. In the case of statistics packages this may mean that the numbers of variables and/or observations that can be handled have been lessened, the variety of statistical techniques reduced, or the manual made less complete. For many uses, especially education, such restrictions are not severe. Some of the packages discussed below would have been considered powerful and full featured programs only a few years ago, and several are better than packages currently sold as full featured software for $200. Nearly all offer standard descriptive statistics, ANOVA, correlation and multiple regression, scatter plots, crosstabs, and rich varieties of transform tools.

FASTAT, SYSTAT, Inc., 1800 Sherman Ave., Evanston, IL 60201. (312) 864-5670. $195 suggested retail. Runs on any Macintosh with I megabyte of RAM and a hard disk drive.

FASTAT is a powerful and inexpensive statistics package for Macintosh computers. It makes full use of Macintosh graphics capabilities to allow adaptation for presentation of its many graphics outputs as well as data sets. Its data handling capacity is 50 variables and as many observations as a hard disk will hold, and it offers a solid array of data transformation, statistical, and graphics techniques.

FASTAT is not as powerful as its MS-DOS parent SYSTAT, but most researchers will find that it fits their needs. It is far easier to use than SYSTAT. Prospective purchasers can get a sense of what FASTAT is like to work with by ordering a free copy of MYSTAT for the Macintosh.

PC Datagraphics and Mapping, Version 1.0. Written by Kenneth E. Hinze, Louisiana State University in Shreveport. Distributed by National Collegiate Software Clearinghouse, Duke University Press, 6697 College Station, Durham, NC 27708. (919) 684-2173. $35. IBM or IBM compatible with at least 256K and color graphics card. Can take advantage of as much as 640K.

PC Datagraphics and Mapping (PCDM) is one of many bargain priced programs distributed by the National Collegiate Software Clearinghouse. This program's emphasis is on the creation of maps with subdivisions and the shading of the subdivisions in accordance with data, a choropleth map.