This article presents an analysis of the strategic behavior of countries when there is imperfect verification of an arms control agreement. It provides a framework for determining whether an arms control agreement is desirable, shows which factors are needed for the agreement to be maintained in the absence of third-party enforcers, and develops propositions relating changes in verification capabilities to changes in the likelihood of cheating and the use of verification technology. These propositions yield several paradoxes of information (for example, the better the verification technology, the less often it will be employed). Since the analysis incorporates both simultaneous and sequential moves by the players, it provides new insights into other applied areas as well as game theory.

In the March 1988 issue of this Review, Virginia Gray and David Lowery presented a respecification of Mancur Olson's model of economic growth and tested the revised model with U.S. state data. A special feature of the Gray-Lowery analysis is its more thorough measurement of interest group effects. These investigators found interest group influences quite different from those anticipated by Olson's model. Paul Brace and Youssef Cohen argue that the Gray-Lowery model misspecifies the determinants of state economic growth, overstating the role of interest group size and failing to incorporate crucial exogenous variables. Gray and Lowery join the issue and defend their specification.

This analysis demonstrates that the relative growth of per capita income change is an important determinant of post-World War II presidential election outcomes. Per capita income change is even a better predictor of presidential election outcomes than the electorate's relative attraction to the Democratic and Republican candidates as calibrated in National Election Study surveys. The significance of this finding is discussed.

Students of elections have repeatedly found that the closeness of an election is modestly correlated with turnout. This may be due to a direct response of instrumentally motivated voters, but recent theoretical work casts doubt on the adequacy of this explanation. Another possibility is that elite actors respond to closeness with greater effort at mobilization. We explore the latter possibility by using FEC and state data on campaign expenditures in House, Senate, and gubernatorial races. Our results indicate that closeness has an effect at both the mass and elite levels. We also provide quantitative estimates of the effect of Senate and gubernatorial expenditure on House turnout.

In the September 1988 issue of this Review, Stanley C. Brubaker argued that liberals strive for neutrality concerning how people should live and that this moral ambivalence prevented them from punishing. In this Controversy, Ronald Terchek denies that liberalism is crippled by moral relativism or incapacitated for punishment. In return, Brubaker defends his firm no to the question, Can liberals punish?

While dimensional studies of congressional voting find a single, ideological dimension, regression estimates find several constituency and party dimensions in addition to ideology. I rescale several unidimensional studies to show their increased classification success over the null hypothesis that votes are not unidimensional. Several null hypotheses are explored. With these null hypotheses, 66%–75% of nonunidimensional roll call votes are nevertheless correctly classified by one dimension. After the rescaling, one dimension succeeds in correctly classifying 25%–50% of the votes, and second and third dimensions are important.

Considerable research effort has been invested in establishing the appropriate relationship between patterns of land distribution and political violence. In an article in the June 1988 issue of the Review, Manus I. Midlarsky proposed and tested a new measure of the distribution of land, which he called “patterned inequality.” He presented supporting evidence with data from Latin American and Middle Eastern countries. In this controversy, Midlarsky's analysis is challenged by Edward N. Mutter, Mitchell A. Seligson, and Hung-der Fu. They advocate an alternative measure of land inequality, test its effect on levels of political violence in Latin America, and find it wanting. In his rejoinder, Midlarsky offers new analytical support for his claims.

Political philosophy or science first emerged in response to certain contradictions in political life that thoughtful citizens could not but face. Nowhere is this process better portrayed than in Thucydides, who of all great students of politics remains closest to the perspective of practice, at the same time showing how practice points us toward a place of critical distance from politics. The Greek political world, like all prescientific worlds, acknowledged certain gods who, as rulers, made demands on humankind. But because these were neither the only, nor in practice the most insistent, demands made on humankind, the question necessarily arose as to the gods' status in the event of conflict—as to the relative necessity of these divine demands. From this followed the further question—crucial for the emergence of political science or philosophy—as to whether the political world was ruled indeed by the gods or by necessity.

Bernard Grofman and Scott Feld argued in the June 1988 issue of this Review that Jean-Jacques Rousseau's contributions to democratic political theory could be illuminated by invoking the theorizing of one of his eighteenth-century contemporaries, the Marquis de Condorcet, about individual and collective preferences or judgments. Grofman and Feld's claims about collective consciousness and the efficacy of the public interest provoke debate. One focus of discourse lies in the application of Condorcet's jury theorem to Rousseau's theory of the general will. In this controversy David M. Estlund and Jeremy Waldron in turn raise a variety of issues of theory and interpretation; Grofman and Feld then extend their argument, and propose clarifications.

In the March 1988 issue of this Review, B. Dan Wood invoked a principal-agent perspective to establish the importance of democratic hierarchies in shaping the outputs of public bureaucracies. He tested the model with air pollution enforcements of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) between 1977 and 1985. His results suggested some limitations on bureaucracies' responsiveness to elected political institutions, consistent with a principal-agent perspective with emphasis on the agent. Brian J. Cook challenges features of the design and empirical testing of Wood's hierarchical model. He questions the accuracy of Wood's characterization of the extent of EPA autonomy and power. Cook argues that a proper model requires recognition of the multiple principal nature of the U.S. system, and he advocates consideration of the normative foundations of principal-agent theory. Wood responds to both the substantive and methodological issues raised and suggests an eclectic approach in future research.