An unfortunate typo has been called to the editors' attention in Joshua D. Clinton, Simon Jackman, and Doug Rivers' article, “‘The Most Liberal Senator?’ Analyzing and Interpreting Congressional Roll Calls” (PS, October 2004, 805–811). The header for Figure 3 and Figure 4 (pages 809 and 810, respectively) mistakenly names the current president of the United States “President Bust.” The header should read, in full, “Rank Ordering and 95% Confidence Intervals including President Bush using 62 National Journal Key Votes.” The editors of PS apologize for this unintentional and unfortunate oversight.

In “Moral Issues and Voter Decision Making in the 2004 Presidential Election” (PS, April 2005, 201–209), D. Sunshine Hillygus and Todd Shields mistakenly describe the 2004 exit poll question as asking about “the most important issue facing the nation” (201) and “the most important problem facing the country today”(202). These texts should instead read “the most important issue in their presidential vote decision.” This correction does not affect the analysis or conclusions of the article.

Since the dawn of time, it seems, social critics have been warning of a “crisis of legitimacy” in the political world. Manuel Castells repeats this ageless battle-cry in his 2004 Ithiel de Sola Pool lecture (PS, January 2005, 9–16), warning darkly of an “increasing alienation of citizens” that “threatens to undo the democratic system” (9). As proof, he offers an array of point-in-time survey results from Western countries in recent years, as well as anecdotal evidence of “the expression of political protest” in places like California and France (9). Yet, none of this shows anything except the fact that states are imperfect creations for the expression of political community and, as Isaiah Berlin might have added, the timeless costs of social life.

I have a comment or two on the article by David Leal et al., “The Latino Vote in 2004” (PS,January 2005, 41–49). First, the William C. Velazquez Institute exit poll was not a national exit poll. Their poll was done in only 14 states and in 56 precincts with high concentrations of Hispanics. The Bush vote is an artifact of their sample. A more comprehensive sample would give different results.

Saltman's comment (PS, July 2004, 383) simply ignores the bulk of my previous letter (PS, January 2004, 1–2) which dealt with Alabama. I gather that there he agrees with Russell and myself. Thus, there is no dispute on the question of whether Nixon or Kennedy had more popular votes in 1960. His criticism concerns my feeling, originally suggested by Russell, that with more political honesty on the part of the Chicago and Texas machines, Nixon might have taken the Electoral College, too. He doesn't specifically dispute my statement that the difference in Illinois was “smaller than the usual number of votes produced by the Chicago machine from graveyards and empty lots.”

“If I can't dance, I don't want to come to your revolution”—Emma Goldman

Citizenship is an increasingly important focus in political and social theory, as well as in philosophy, legal studies, and some of the humanities. It is also a vital concern in the lives of many “real people.” It figures in the assurance or denial of rights, economic benefits and social services, education, due process of law, and opportunities to affect political decisions; but it does not guarantee equality, fairness, justice, economic well-being, dignity, or the respect of public officials or fellow citizens. We need to engage theoretical and normative aspects of citizenship when considering such topics as democracy and democratization, civil liberties, political participation, migration and asylum, nationality, culture, persistent inequalities, discrimination, identity and belonging, gender equity, race and ethnic relations, human rights, and globalization.

The United States Constitution incorporated elements of the unitary and confederate systems of government to form simultaneously a compound republic, the world's first federal governance system, and a unitary government with complete control over the District of Columbia and territories. Specific powers were delegated to Congress and all other powers were reserved to the states and the people unless prohibited.

Modern liberal democracies owe their stability and relative success to the coming together of two ideals which originate in distinct historical periods: the ideals of self-governance and territorially circumscribed nation-state. Self-governance defines freedom as the rule of law among a community of equals who are citizens of the polis and who have the right to rule and to be ruled. This ideal emerges in 5th-century Athens and is revived throughout history in episodes such as the experience of self-governing city-states in the Renaissance, the Paris commune of 1871, the anarchist and socialist communes of the Russian Revolution, and the Spanish Civil War.

Kim Quaile Hill (PS: Political Science and Politics, July 2004) seeks to debunk five “myths about the physical sciences” that “pose notable hurdles for appreciating the social sciences as legitimate scientific enterprise” (467). One of these myths is that “the physical sciences have always been highly successful in explaining their subject matter.” Hill complains that political science students are “ignorant of the history of science” and therefore they fail to “appreciate the differences between young and mature scientific disciplines…. If students can appreciate that all sciences were once youthful—as political science still is today—they will have a useful perspective by which to understand why and how the knowledge base of our discipline is limited” (469).

The morning of November 3, 2004, was an extremely difficult time for gay and lesbian Americans. The reelection of President George W. Bush, and the simultaneous passage of anti-gay marriage amendments in 11 states, was as resounding a defeat as any social group is likely to experience in American politics. Worse, the emergence of the analytically vague phrase “moral values” from the exit polls and some arm-chair analysis by the pundits had already raised to the level of conventional wisdom the assertion that Senator John Kerry had lost because of the issue of same-sex marriage. Even Democrats, trying to extract some meaning and direction from the disappointing outcomes, appeared to conclude that the marriage issue had played an important and costly role. To gay and lesbian Americans, the headlines that morning might as well have read, “We lost. And it's your fault!”

The Roman god Janus had two faces, looking in opposite directions. This split appearance is an apt metaphor for the Rehnquist Court's decisions involving federal-state relations. One face, which has received much attention over the past decade and a half, is characterized by the Court's post-1990 decisions concerning state sovereignty, sovereign immunity, and the reach of Congress's powers under the Interstate Commerce Clause and the 14th Amendment. All have had a devolutionary thrust, bolstering state authority or insulating state institutions against federal law and regulations. The second, less recognized face is distinguished by the Court's emerging doctrines concerning federal preemption of state and local authority. In these cases, the Supreme Court—often led by members of the new federalist majority—has tilted surprisingly in favor of federal authority. This article examines both faces of contemporary judicial policy making on matters of federalism, with a particular focus on the implications for federal preemption.

In the 19th century, the greatest questions concerning American citizenship were whether this new modern experiment in large-scale republican self-governance could work at all, and whether its initial reliance on slavery could be overcome. The answers proved to be that a large-scale republic centered on commercial, not martial aspirations could indeed endure, and that it could achieve the elimination of chattel slavery, though not without enormous costs. In the 20th century, the major issues became whether formally equal citizenship could be extended to all adults, regardless of race and gender. The answer proved to be that women and non-whites could gain genuine possession of the franchise and access to public office, even if only through great civic struggles, and even if those gains still left the nation far short of achieving practical equality in many spheres of public and private life. Though much remains to be explored in regard to those past developments, it is obviously timely now to ask, “What are the major issues facing American citizenship in the 21st century?” It is also tempting to speculate about how laws and public policies will deal with them, though that quest of course carries us out over even thinner ice.

Immediately after the 2004 election, with overwhelming majorities in 13 states voting to amend their constitutions to ban same-sex marriage and exit polls showing large numbers saying “moral values” were the most important determinant of their vote, many analysts emphasized religious and cultural divides in the electorate and the importance of the religious right and same-sex marriage in motivating President George W. Bush's base to get out and vote (e.g., Chinni 2004; Cooperman and Edsall 2004; Dao 2004; Manly 2004; McGough 2004; Testa 2004). With more analysis, the consensus seems to have shifted to an emphasis on incumbency, terrorism, and perceptions of character. Both voter turnout and support for Bush rose across a wide array of groups; evangelical Protestants and voters in states with same-sex marriage amendments on the ballot did not disproportionately increase their numbers or their preference for Bush; white women, married women, and Latinos may have played a bigger role in the shift toward Bush (e.g., Abramowitz 2004; Burden 2004; Freedman 2004; Nordhaus 2004; Sherrill 2004; Signorile 2004).

Well, let us admit, we all suffer from at least a mild case of “social sciences inferiority complex.” So it seems does Kim Quaile Hill in his spirited defense of the “less exact” part of academe. He finds his students' skepticism about (maybe even disdain for) political science troubling and frustrating. He is unhappy with students questioning the validity and certainty of social sciences. He fights back. However, his solution to the problem is not only ill-conceived, but it has the potential of harming his (our?) own cause. Instead of dealing with students' skepticism of the scientific character of social sciences, he blames that skepticism on students' misperceptions and misconceptions about physical sciences. Still, initially his argument sounds convincing when the misconceptions are framed in terms of scientific illiteracy, pseudo-science, and superstition. The first impression is—of course, how one can appreciate social sciences without a good understanding of science in the more traditional hard-sciences sense. Yet, we quickly discover that is not the author's point. It is the opposite. It is not so much about distrusting physical sciences, but rather about trusting it too much. With so much faith in physical sciences, social sciences are perceived as soft, inaccurate, and uncertain.

In the last two decades, many cases of actual or attempted federal preemption of state regulation have followed an intriguing new interactive pattern. While this pattern is not comprehensive enough to define a new theory of federalism (see Zimmerman 2004), it now occurs regularly enough to merit close attention and an attempted understanding of its dynamics (see Walters 2004). It is also an example of the kind of complicated federalism, with vertical checks, balances and thresholds, that has emerged in a 21st century America closely divided upon whether and how to use government policy to address various social and economic problems.

“President Bush's victory, the approval of every anti-gay marriage amendment on statewide ballots and an emphasis on ‘moral values’ among voters showed the power of churchgoing Americans in this election and threw the nation's religious divide into stark relief.” Associated Press, November 4, 2004

Kim Quaile Hill (PS: Political Science and Politics, July 2004) makes a somewhat nuanced contribution to the appraisal of epistemic controversies in the discipline of political science. His primary concern is for the manner in which erroneous presumptions about the nature of the scientific method in fields such as chemistry or physics have encumbered the effort to instill students with the habit of applying similar approaches in the study of politics. At first, the argument seems directed at uninformed students who do not recognize the social sciences as legitimately “scientific.” Upon further reading, it quickly becomes clear in her elaboration of five common “myths” about science that the more implicit intention of this piece is to challenge the assertion of some in the field that the abstract, variant qualities of political phenomena make these applications somehow inappropriate. The point that he proffers—that the physical sciences are hardly as rigid, finite or objective as some may assume—is certainly a valid one.

Voting rights have traditionally been regarded as the core of democratic citizenship. While T. H. Marshall (1965) described citizenship as a bundle of civil, political, and social rights, political philosophers from Aristotle via Rousseau to Michael Walzer have understood citizenship to be essentially a status of full membership in a self-governing polity. This republican conception explains the central place of electoral rights: citizens are those who participate in collective self-government either directly or through voting for representatives and running as candidates for elective public office.Special thanks to Harald Waldrauch from whose ongoing research on the rights and legal statuses of migrants this essay has greatly benefited.

Woodrow Wilson told us that the federal-state relationship is the cardinal question of our system that is destined to be reformulated for each generation. His prophetic words aptly characterize the challenges federal and state governments face in satisfying both the requisites of an increasingly global economy and nationalized political culture while at the same time reflecting the differential values and interests of states. States need to retain their diversity and capacity to innovate and respond to different values and interests that may not get a hearing in Washington; conversely, Washington needs to be alert and reactive when states prove unresponsive to key values and interests or collectively incapable of solving national economic or social problems.