In the aftermath of the 1996 election campaigns, scholars, journalists, policymakers, and campaign finance professionals alike declared the House election financing system “broken” and “out of control.” That cycle saw party officials raising unprecedented amounts of “soft money” and directing it into specific federal campaigns. Coalitions of interest groups spent tens of millions of dollars attacking or defending candidates in “issue advocacy” campaigns, and disclosed neither their spending nor the sources of their funds to the Federal Election Commission. Groups like the Christian Coalition distributed tens of millions of “non-partisan” voter guides with thinly-disguised endorsements of candidates, again without disclosing their activity.

Public Deliberation Methodology (PDM) developed from activities sponsored by the Charles F. Kettering Foundation, which engages in research to enhance the practice of politics. Politics, generally understood, encompasses public activities that help create the kind of communities, the kind of country, and the kind of world order where people are interested and involved in governing and strengthening civil society.

PDM establishes an environment for interaction and exchange of ideas about improving the quality of political participation. Deliberative issues forums, which are the center-piece of PDM, are designed to help citizens act on common problems after making joint decisions. The forums employ a particular kind of discourse called “deliberation” or “deliberative dialogue.” Deliberation prompts collective cognitive reasoning by discouraging self-centered thinking and encouraging the reaching of shared and reflective judgments.

By engaging in deliberative dialogue, participants move beyond the limits of partisan politics and the simple airing of grievances. In a deliberative issues forum, people come together to talk through specific issues with the help of a moderator and an issue-specific guide. The guide presents options for resolving selected issues and outlines the pros and cons of each course of action in terms of its personal value. The tension created by being made to choose one of many viable options leads to deliberation and civic learning.

In this article we describe a PDM experiment sponsored by the political science department of Moscow State Pedagogical University and the Foundation for the Development of Civic Culture.

The home of America's first university, its first public school, and its first public library, the Boston area now hosts more than two hundred thousand students. From 1630, when John Winthrop said Boston should be “a city on a hill,” through the McGuffey readers of the nineteenth century, the city has been a beacon of learning. Its politics have been long and colorful: Massachusetts boasts the oldest continuously used, written Constitution in the world, John Adams's 1780 state constitution; the gerrymander was named after Governor Elbridge Gerry's plan for redrawing North Shore districts; the early years of this century saw fierce Yankee-Irish battles for the State House. Massachusetts produced and remains transfixed by the Kennedys, was the only state to vote for George McGovern, and has another interesting gubernatorial race this year. (Keep an eye peeled for people standing with election signs at busy intersections, a local political tradition.) In short, Boston holds much allure for the political scientist.

For the tourist, too, Boston is an appealing destination. It is a compact city and, in the words of the old travel cliché, a city best appreciated on foot (or by public transportation). Most sites of interest in the historic downtown and nearby nineteenth-century neighborhoods are within walking distance of each other. There are restaurants, shops, book-stores, and a certain European vitality of city life—perhaps the result of narrow streets and ample green space. For walkers, the Freedom Trail organizes most of the major Revolution-era sites, and plenty of other spots are marked in the historic core. The same history, though, means Boston's streets were laid out on seventeenth-century cowpaths.

Proponents of direct legislation maintain that the initiative and popular referendum empower ordinary citizens to set the agenda of politics. Some argue it shifts “ultimate authority from representatives in state legislatures, city councils, and even Congress to the people themselves” (Schmidt 1989, vii). Such elections, so the argument goes, produce greater voter interest in elections and higher voter turnout. Those in favor of the process also contend that it is an important check on special interests which exert too much control over elected politicians (Magleby 1984, chap. 2; Cronin 1989).

Critics of direct democracy raise concerns about the quality of deliberation voters give to issues. Voters can be confused by ballot question wording or respond negatively to the length of the ballots. Moreover, because voters lack the simplifying devices of partisanship and candidate appeal, they may be more susceptible to the manipulations of campaign consultants.

How well do these longstanding arguments for and against direct legislation reflect our actual experience with the process in the 1990s? Arguments for direct democracy depend largely on how the process is conducted. If the process can be manipulated by special interests or relies on questionable tactics, then many of the advantages claimed for the process disappear. In this article, we argue that political consultants play a significant role in the conduct of direct democracy. These consultants normally work directly for organized interests without the constraints imposed by candidates or parties.

Welcome to Boston, the Athens of America. Many of you are new to town, or haven't been back since long-ago grad school days, so this is a good opportunity to dispell some misconceptions you probably have about dining out in the Hub of the Universe.

First of all, Boston-area cuisine is far more than clam chowda (with cream, and no tomato, thank you), pot roast, and baked beans with brown bread. You certainly can enjoy these fine regional delicacies, especially in places catering to tourists, but Boston's restaurant scene simply has exploded in the past decade to encompass a wide variety of foods and dining experiences. Indeed, Boston's reputation as insular and hidebound, while well-deserved in matters like sex, politics, and the Red Sox, no longer extends to food. You want nouvelle cuisine? Regional American? Japanese? Malaysian? Ethiopian? Mexican?! You got it—though, remember, this is Boston, not Austin.

And don't worry about service. Despite what you've heard, we Bostonians aren't really rude to strangers—except when we drive. Besides, most of the restaurant staff you'll encounter are transplanted New Yorkers enrolled at the Berklee School of Music, so any lousy service isn't our fault. Just sit back and enjoy the attitude. We do.

Above all, dining out in Boston these days is an exciting and pleasurable experience, especially if on someone else's expense account. If not, there still are plenty of reasonably-priced places to suit your fancy, though what strikes us East Coast city folks as “reasonable” may not exactly meet your definition.

Nineteen ninety-seven will be remembered as the year when a large majority of the people in Scotland voted in a two question referendum to establish a Scottish parliament (74.3%) with tax-varying powers (63.5%) (Jones 1997). Elections will take place in 1999, with the first Scottish parliament being fully operational by the year 2000.

Perhaps the most intriguing element of the current milieu of political reform is the fact that the United States Supreme Court seems to be standing in the way of many reform measures. In several recent decisions, the court has either struck down attempts to reform some element of the electoral process or upheld laws that reformers regard as problematic. For example, in response to the court's restricting the extent to which the Voting Rights Act can be used to draw majority-minority districts (Shaw v. Reno 1993; Bush v. Vera 1996; Miller v. Johnson 1995), Representative Cynthia McKinney (D-GA) has introduced the Voters' Choice Act which would permit states to elect their congressional delegations by proportional representation (PR).

Although young Americans are normally less engaged in politics than their elders (Converse with Niemi 1971), today's youth are more withdrawn from public affairs than earlier birth cohorts were when they were young (Bennett 1997). One indicator of youthful disregard for politics is their avoidance of exposure to mass media coverage of public affairs (Pew Center 1996, 1997; Times Mirror Center 1990). Polls conducted during the 1990s indicate that adults under 30 are considerably less likely than those over 30 to read newspapers and to watch TV news-casts, and slightly less inclined to listen to the news on radio. The Pew Research Center's April 1996 poll, for example, found that 31% of persons under 30 claimed to have read a newspaper the day before they were interviewed (compared with 76% of individuals over 30), 45% of young people said they had watched a TV news show yesterday (as did 86% of persons over 30), and 37% of the young had listened to the news on radio yesterday (versus 56% of people over 30).

The young are also less likely than older persons to have dispositions that motivate them to use the news media. The Pew Center's February 1997 poll shows, for example, that individuals under 30 are less likely than those over 30 to say they look forward to reading a daily newspaper (12% vs. 32%) and to report enjoying TV newscasts (14% vs. 30%).

This is a study of young adults' disconnection from mass media coverage of public affairs.

The work of campaign consultants in elections outside of their countries of origin is a relatively recent phenomenon. Joe Napolitan is credited as becoming the first international consultant in modern times when, in 1969, he worked on the successful reelection bid of Ferdinand Marcos. As recently as 1972, Napolitan wrote of a certain reticence in some countries toward using non-native campaign consultants A decade later, Larry Sabato (1981) saw evidence that use of non-native consultants was becoming a more accepted practice in campaigns worldwide. By the end of the 1990s, according to David Swanson and Paolo Mancini (1996), consultants from the U.S., Germany, France, and Britain were becoming increasingly active in elections outside their own countries. Since the use of non-native campaign consultants is likely to increase into the forseeable future, I would like to use this article to set forth the beginnings of a research agenda, to present an outline of a project worth pursuing, for determining how and why foreign consultants are being, can be, or should be used. The article has three parts. First, I present an overview, based on available evidence, of the nature of overseas work by campaign consultants. Second, I explore some possible explanations for the rise of this phenomenon. Third, I assess the main institutional factors affecting the internationalization of consultancy.

The House of Representatives is one of the most dynamic of governmental institutions. Formally and informally, the House regularly revises its rules, procedures, practices, and structures to adapt and adjust to, among other things, membership and workload changes. Absent its capacities for reform, the House would soon find itself unable to meet the diverse challenges of the day. Generally, the House's reorganization imperative is driven by the constant influx of new lawmakers who bring fresh perspectives on how the House should work; typically, they want to make changes in the status quo.

Students of political culture and political theory (Pool 1990; Postman 1985; Merelman 1984, 1989, 1991; Habermas 1975) hypothesize that values associated with individualism have become increasingly prevalent in recent years, with distressing consequences for politics and governance. Putnam (1995), in an article that appeared in these pages, observes that there has been a decline of “social capital” in the United States since 1972 as well, as measured by the number of visits Americans make to family and friends, the number of organizations to which they belong, the amount of trust they report having in other people, and the amount of involvement they report in politics. Ehrenhalt, in his discussion of the tenure of the late Mayor Daley of Chicago, notes that the United States has changed from a society that reveres obedience, authority, order, and a closed political system, to one that reveres freedom, choice, and an open political system.

To Americans of the baby-boom generation, authority will always be a word with sinister connotations, calling forth a rush of uncomfortable memories about the schools, churches, and families in which baby-boomers grew up. (1997, 85)

It is not only the case that social capital has declined, but political capital, as measured by partisanship and confidence in the institutions of government, has also declined over the past several decades (Luttbeg and Gant 1995). If individualism is a causal factor in the decline of social and political capital, the relationship can be explained by the fact that individualism is by nature loose-bounded (Thompson, Ellis, and Wildavsky 1990); self-seeking behavior is the norm, as are self-negotiated relationships.

Some political leadership styles are of a piece. Jimmy Carter's is a case in point. Both in the comments he privately jotted on the margins of memos from his aides and in his public discourse, Carter exhibited a common concern for detail and insistence on the correctness of his own positions. Other styles are layered, as in that of Dwight Eisenhower, whose apoliltical public demeanor concealed an analytically detached political sophisticate who obtained results by indirection (Greenstein 1982).

The political style of President Bill Clinton is neither unitary nor layered. It alternates. The tempest over whether Clinton was involved in a dalliance with a White House intern is a reminder of his tendency to oscillate between an uninhibited, anything-goes approach to leadership and a more measured operating mode in which he sets attainable goals and proceeds skillfully in his efforts to realize them.

The pattern is recurrent. After his election as governor of Arkansas in 1978, Clinton instituted a substantial increase in automobile licensing fees, peopled his administration with bearded political activists, and otherwise failed to conform to the political mores of his state. As a result, he was voted out of office two years later. He then spent the next two years stumping the state and promising to remedy his ways. He was returned to office, serving from 1983 to 1993 and establishing a reputation as a pragmatic and effective state executive (Maraniss 1995).