Cognitive psychological theory and research suggest that specific actions are primed or potentiated by prior related cues. Thus violent cues should influence subsequent conflictual action choices. Laboratory subjects were given one of two written vignettes recalling either the slaughter of World War I or Allied weakness before World War II. A control group received no vignette. Subjects were then asked to specify foreign-policy choices from an inventory of possible cooperative-conflictual acts, relevant to a dispute between two fictional countries, in five sequential rounds. Both war vignettes produced more subsequent conflictual choices for subjects with dominant (i.e., aggressive) personality traits, and less conflictual choices for subjects with submissive personality traits. The findings suggest that priming activates underlying personality predispositions that enhance cooperative or conflictual action choices. The results also point to the potential importance of prior cues in shaping foreign-policy decision makers' and mass-public responses to international events.

Although incomplete information is recognized to be an essential feature of crises, game-theoretic formulations have not generally modeled this explicitly. This paper models a mutually assured destruction (MAD) crisis as a game of sequential bargaining with incomplete information, sufficiently simple that its equibria may be found. These provide better game-theoretic foundations for the notions of resolve and critical risk and their role in crises and also make it possible to compare the bargaining dynamics of this model with those of descriptively richer, but incompletely specified models, revealing several inconsistencies: several analyses of MAD conclude that the state with the greatest resolve in this contest of resolve will prevail. Many models based on critical risks suggest that a state is less likely to escalate, the greater its adversary's resolve. In our model, however, the state with the weakest resolve sometimes prevails, and some states prove more likely to escalate if their adversaries' resolve is greater.

The problem of politics and culture emerged in European thought from Kierkegaard to Freud the encounter with modernity. In this paper I examine a major instance of that encounter in Weber's “science of culture” and his analysis of the cultural significance of capitalism. In Weber's work the most important and politically relevant responses to modern, subjectivist culture lie in attempts from within the ethical, aesthetic, erotic, and intellectualist life orders or value spheres to escape from the “iron cage” constructed by Western rationalism. I investigate the relative autonomy and paradoxical nature of these different attempts, and conclude with an explanation of Weber's choices with respect to the sphere of knowledge, or “science.”

Public policies are the product of conflicting demands within society. These demands are both collective in nature and the product of individual interests. Individuals must balance these conflicting interests in developing their policy preferences. We estimate the role of collective and individual interests in preference formation, using tax policy as a substantive example. Survey data are used to estimate the model for evaluations of several tax policies debated during consideration of the 1978 Tax Revenue Act. Our analysis indicates that individual preferences for tax policies are greatly affected by attitudes towards collective issues—particularly redistribution attitudes—and by self-interest considerations. We also find that aggregate variables measuring individuals' local economies have significant effects on symbolic and self-interest preferences.

Governments render decisions on how resources and values are allocated in a society. In the United States, Congress is the institution in which most of the key allocating decisions are made. To the extent the U.S. political system is integrated, the coalitions that form around the issues debated in Congress should be reflected in the coalitions that support presidential candidates and those that support the major political parties. We formulate a spatial theory of political change in which new ideological cleavages appear in congressional behavior and presidential elections and gradually reorganize the mass party base. The theory leads us explicitly to consider the question of dealignment and to specify conditions under which the parties will lose support from voters.

Do the states of the United States matter (or are they of no political consequence)? Using a data set with over 50 thousand respondents, we demonstrate the influence of state political culture on partisanship and ideology. For individuals, we find that the state of residence is an important predictor of partisan and ideological identification, independent of their demographic characteristics. At the aggregate level, state culture dominates state demography as a source of state-to-state differences in opinion. In general, geographic location may be a more important source of opinion than previously thought. One indication of the importance of state culture is that state effects on partisanship and ideology account for about half of the variance in state voting in recent presidential elections.

Causal beliefs are important ingredients of public opinion. Citizens are able to identify the causes of complex national issues and do so spontaneously. Evidence is presented that individuals' explanations of political issues are significantly influenced by the manner in which television news presentations “frame” these issues. These results are politically consequential, for individuals' explanations of national issues independently affect their assessments of presidential performance.

We develop a model of crisis stability based on a deterrence game. Players are assumed to be able to choose any level of initial cooperation or noncooperation; the more cooperative player (if there is one) may then choose to retaliate. In a crisis, players are assumed to have escalated their conflict and desire to stabilize it before it explodes. Players can, by threatening their opponent, stabilize the new status quo. In addition, points of threat escalation are identified at which neither player can prevent the opponent from escalating further without threatening the opponent more severely than before the crisis erupted, thereby heating up an already tense situation. Crisis stabilization is aided by being close to the full-cooperation position, though, paradoxically, both players may benefit from having created a crisis that only escalating threats may resolve. We discuss ways of avoiding threat escalation and the increased risk of war that it entails, especially in conflicts between the superpowers.

Most theories of bureaucratic politics depict state bureaucracies as a conservative force in the political system. Their resistance to radical politics and innovative programs is attributed to certain typical traits of bureaucratic structures and career patterns. I summarize the arguments for bureaucratic conservatism, and then describe how civilian bureaucracies serving military regimes in Japan (1937–45), Peru (1968–75), and Egypt (1952–70) invalidated those arguments by promoting radical policy programs through the three devices of supraministerial bodies, low-ranking ministries, and new specialized agencies. I conclude that middle theories of bureaucratic politics may prove more fruitful than grand theoretical attempts to encompass all bureaucracies in a single set of propositions, and that structural and occupational explanations of bureaucratic behavior need to be modified by a greater appreciation for the role of individual bureaucratic leaders.

Empirical studies suggest that mission-oriented bureaucrats bias their design of program alternatives to increase the odds that a superior will choose the kind of program the officials want. However, political executives may anticipate this manipulation and try to reassert control. These struggles are examined in three models. In Model 1 a senior bureaucrat is interested only in missions; the bureaucrat's political superior controls him or her by rejecting inferior proposals and entertaining new options from other policy specialists. Model 2 is a principal-agent analysis. Here the official is interested only in budgets; the official's superior reduces search bias by creating an ex ante incentive scheme. In Model 3 the bureaucrat cares about both budgets and programs; the superior uses both his or her final review authority and ex ante incentives to reduce agenda manipulation. The models' contrasting implications for the political control of bureaucracy are examined.

Legislators' beliefs, preferences, and intentions are communicated in committees and legislatures through debates, the proposal of bills and amendments, and the recording of votes. Because such information is typically distributed asymmetrically within any group of decision makers, legislators have incentives to reveal or conceal private information strategically and thus manipulate the collective decision-making process in their favor. In consequence, any committee decision may in the end reflect only the interests of a minority. We address a problem of sharing information through debate in an endogenous, agenda-setting, collective-choice process. The model is game theoretic and we find in the equilibrium to the game that at least some legislators have incentives to conceal private information. Consequently, the final committee decision can be “incoherent” by failing to reflect the preferences of all committee members fully. Additionally, we characterize the subset of legislators with any incentive to conceal data.

Do international standards regarding human rights require the existence of a liberal regime? This was the thrust of Rhoda Howard and Jack Donnelly's essay in the September 1986 issue of this Review. Neil Mitchell takes vigorous issue with this contention, arguing first and foremost that Howard and Donnelly have not defined liberalism satisfactorily. Howard and Donnelly present a spirited rejoinder.

In “The Institutional Foundations of Committee Power” (this Review, March 1987) Kenneth Shepsle and Barry Weingast made the case that congressional committees are powerful not so much because of members' deference to them as because of the committees' ex post veto, a potential negative committees might deliver, say, at the conference committee stage of lawmaking. But Keith Krehbiel argues that congressional committees have, in fact, never possessed an uncircumventable ex post veto and are very much constrained by their parent chambers. In response, Shepsle and Weingast defend their model of the foundations of committee power.

Britain under the government of Prime Minister Thatcher provides a unique opportunity to probe the effects of both war and macroeconomic performance on government popularity. Monthly ratings for Thatcher and Conservative-party support (June 1979 to July 1985) are examined by way of Box-Tiao intervention models. The model that best captures the impact of the Falklands War of 1982 is of the gradual-temporary variety: popularity gains accrued through the three-month war shrink in a geometric fashion. Nevertheless, they prove to be worth over five percentage points for the Conservative party a year later, in the 1983 election. Macroeconomic performance, meanwhile, is found to have an asymmetric effect on government popularity, with unemployment strongly significant but inflation not significant at all. Apparently, the British public is punishing failure (on employment) while letting success (on inflation) go unrewarded. Qualifications of the positive effect of war and the negative effect of macroeconomic performance are suggested.

A current debate within the field of U.S. politics revolves around the extent to which the electorate is nationalized, that is, responds to national-level political forces. We provide additional evidence to help resolve this debate. Using the variance-components model of political effects developed by Stokes, we analyze presidential, senatorial, gubernatorial, and congressional races for the period 1962–1984. The results indicate that presidential races are highly nationalized, and congressional races largely localized. Senate and gubernatorial races are found to have a large state-level component to them. The analysis is also split into two segments to ascertain if a change in political effects is seen during this relatively short time frame; no such differences are found. We conclude that nationalization is not a process that can be understood from evidence provided by congressional races alone. Our results suggest that constituencies respond to political forces in a complex way, reacting to factors that are most relevant to a particular electoral contest.