The impossibility theorem developed by Kenneth Arrow has implications for both rationality and morality in political thought. Transitivity in a collective ordering can be assured only with a decisive set, but this outcome is acknowledged as morally undesirable. The alternatives exhibited by the theorem thus seem to require a choice between rationality and morality. But exit routes can be cut out of this dilemma with the idea of a conditional ordering, one where warranting factors attach to a ranking of alternatives. Conditional orderings form two senses of collective rationality. One is represented by compound directives, which avoid the rational problems of the theorem by warranting local orderings. The second is moral fusion, which requires a reasoned dominance in collective outcomes. These two forms of conditional rationality put into relief the restricted scope of the composition rules and individualism of Arrow's theorem, and suggest alternative relationships of individual and social whole.

The “level of conceptualization” index, introduced by Campbell et al. (1960), is commonly used to measure ideological awareness and sophistication among the electorate. Unfortunately, the validity and reliability of the original measure were never sufficiently examined. This article examines the level of conceptualization measures of Field and Anderson (1969) and Nie, Verba and Petrocik (1976). It reaches two major conclusions: (1) the measures under examination are neither reliable nor valid measures of the level of conceptualization construct; and (2) the measures reflect the rhetoric of contemporary political discourse rather than the actual process of political evaluation. These conclusions call into doubt the validity and reliability of the original measure of The American Voter.

In their continued considerations of political inequality, urban scholars are especially concerned with less visible influences surrounding community decision making, and have employed such concepts as potential power, nondecision making, and anticipated reactions. However, these concepts leave some patterns of influence unexplained. There is also a dimension of power in which durable features of the socioeconomic system confer advantages and disadvantages on groups in ways that predispose public officials to favor some interests at the expense of others. Public officials make their decisions in a context in which strategically important resources are hierarchically arranged. Because this system of stratification leaves public officials situationally dependent on upper-strata interests, it is a factor in all that they do. Consequently, system features lower the opportunity costs of exerting influence for some groups and raise them for others. Thus socioeconomic inequalities put various strata on different political footings.

Both implicit democratic norms and the reconstructions provided by theorists of rational choice suggest that issue voters are more sophisticated–educated, informed, and active in politics–than other voters. But some issues are clearly more difficult than others, and the voters who respond to “hard” and “easy” issues, respectively, are assumed to differ in kind. We propose the hypothesis that “easy-issue” voters are no more sophisticated than non-issue voters, and this is found to be the case. The findings suggest a reevaluation of the import of rising and falling levels of issue voting and suggest a prominent role for “easy” issues in electoral realignments.

This study assesses the electoral impact of charges of corruption on candidates in contests for the U.S. House of Representatives in five elections from 1968 to 1978. This assessment includes a consideration of the victory or defeat of alleged or convicted corrupt candidates, and an examination of the impact of corruption charges on electoral turnout and percentage of votes polled by the accused candidates. While most candidates accused of corruption are reelected, overall they appear to suffer a loss of 6–11 percent from their expected vote. The type of corruption charge is an important determinant of vote loss. Allegations of corruption appear to have little effect on the net turnout.

It has long been assumed that urban political machines trade services for votes. However, this study of Chicago found no evidence to suggest that the political machine uses vital public services to reward loyal supporters and to punish enemies. With few exceptions, distribution patterns are a function of past decisions, population shifts, technological changes, and reliance upon technical-rational criteria and professional values. The urban bureaucracy is the major actor in the distributional process. Equity in the distribution of resources is accomplished according to formula and is increasingly a by-product of allegiance to professional standards.

This article, by employing voting simulations in a survey of party activists, examines responses to a woman's claim to party office on the basis of her sex. The degree of acceptance of this claim or the willingness to grant what is called social representation, is contrasted with the respondents' inclinations to select candidates favorable to women's rights, or the willingness to grant what is called opinion representation. Variations in responses to the two simulations are analyzed in terms of attitudes toward gender roles, government intervention and the legitimacy of groups in the political process. Voting in the simulation involving opinion representation can best be understood in terms of the respondent's attitude toward government intervention, while the simulation involving social representation activates the attitude toward groups. Discussion of the findings focuses on the dilemma of group claims for minority representation in a liberal democratic context and the need for better understanding of attitudes toward groups among political elites.

John Rawls considers his Theory of Justice to be in the Kantian tradition. Generally there seems to be agreement among Rawls' critics that at least with respect to the procedural formulation of the principles of justice, it is difficult to call Rawls' position Kantian. In this article I will argue that Rawls' Kantianism is best understood as providing a motive source for acting upon known just standards of conduct. In this regard Rawls can be read as synthesizing aspects of Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics and Kant's moral reasoning to provide the rationale to explain why an individual who knows what is morally correct conduct in a given situation, makes such knowledge the source of his action. Demonstrating the Aristotelean roots of Rawls' Kantianism with respect to the problem of motivation for just conduct helps one understand how Kant's moral theory can be viewed in Rawls' words not as a “morality of austere command but … [as] … an ethic of mutual respect and self esteem” (1971, p. 251). Secondly, this view of Kant provides the basis for understanding the anti-corporatist aspect of Rawls' political theory that my reading of Rawls makes necessary.

An interrupted time-series quasi-experiment is employed to test the basic hypothesis that reformed cities (with city manager, at-large elections, and nonpartisan ballots) tax and spend less than unreformed communities. Eleven cities with populations of 25,000 and above which significantly changed their political structure between 1948 and 1973 are compared with 11 matched control cities that made no changes. We found that over an 11-year period, variations in fiscal behavior were virtually unaffected by changes in city government structure.

In this essay I argue that Hegel's concept of monarchy, far from being more evidence of his supposed abstract rationalism or deference to Prussia, is the most complete modern account of the necessary political conditions of a rational state. Hegel believed that the peculiar historical development of European monarchy made the rational state politically possible. Who rules is the fundamental political problem. Some person or persons must have the final power of decision, even in constitutional and parliamentary regimes, and thus stamp the regime with their own particular views. Hegel believed that only the constitutional monarch of a modern state, bom to sovereignty regardless of his personal abilities or constituencies, limited by harsh experience and public sentiments to legitimization of public acts, could depoliticize this final power of decision. This alone would allow unimpeded public administration according to rational legal standards. Marxist and technocratic dreams of rational administration will remain mere dreams as long as the dreamers offer no alternative solution to the fundamental political problem.

The idea that international politics can be a theoretical science logically homeomorphic to theoretical physics finds its most perspicuous recent expression in a methodological falsificationist program for its realization. But the program is a syllabus of epistemological errors which, upon detailed examination, collapses into incoherence. This article gives particular attention to three aspects of the program: the principle of interdependent deduction, the falsifiability criterion and the critical testing policy. Despite the systematic and resolute efforts on the part of its adherents to fix a methodological grammar for international studies, the program of methodological falsificationism is revealed to be: essentially a complete failure. The main source of the difficulty is located in the failure to appreciate the role of metaphysics in the sciences which, contrary to the standard positivist-empiricist view, constitutes the driving force behind scientific discoveries. Since a monistic metaphysics, however, may be neither possible nor desirable for the social and political sciences, a deconstructive metaphysical program is recommended. The final conclusion that vastly increased attention needs to be given to ontological and metaphysical issues seems completely warranted.

While socioeconomic equality and maximum economic growth have been the proclaimed aims of Soviet leaders, the simultaneous implementation of these goals is difficult. Analysis of budgets reveals that expenditures in economic categories vary significantly across Soviet republics, and decline little over time. The republics are substantially more equal in socio-cultural expenditures, and are becoming even more so with time. The level of urbanization accounts for a large share of the variance in the social budget but not the economic one. Policy decisions concerning the latter are likely subject to a process involving a variety of political, military and socioeconomic considerations that transcend both the equality and efficiency criteria. In contrast, the increasing parity among Soviet republics in the socio-cultural budget is closely related to the increasing urbanization of the republics at the lower end of the development scale. It appears that increasing regional equality in the Soviet Union may be achieved primarily through improvements in social opportunities, and not by means of direct redistribution of economic resources.

Hannah Arendt's work is of major importance primarily because of the categories of thought she originates, especially her concept of political action. But this concept has frequently been criticized for being irrelevant to, or incapable of comprehending, strategic concerns. This criticism however, is based on a misreading of Arendt on the relationship of specific motives and goals to political action. The critical interpretations of three commentators are considered here: Kirk Thompson, Jürgen Habermas, and Martin Jay. A detailed explication of the relevant texts from Arendt demonstrates the misreading of Arendt on which these criticisms are based and at the same time reveals the subtlety and power of Arendt's conception of the relationship between instrumentality and meaning in political action. Once this relationship is correctly understood, it becomes possible to appreciate the implications of Arendt's work for questions of political strategy.

Some critics of Jürgen Habermas have charged that his ideas have an affinity with authoritarianism. This criticism rests on a fundamental misinterpretation of Habermas' project for a communicative ethics. Political authoritarianism is deeply incompatible with his conceptions of practical rationality and normative legitimacy. After demonstrating this incompatibility, I propose an explanation for the persistence of misunderstanding on this question. In conclusion, some suggestions are offered as to the sort of political orientation one can justifiably derive from Habermas' philosophical foundations.

The conceptual and methodological outlines of a new approach to the comparative analysis of social change are expressed in a general time-series regression model which can serve as a framework for developing specific theories of social change for particular variables. The approach seeks to explain the variation over time in a macro-level attribute or action of a social system as a function of a combination of within-system, across-system, and across-time processes: (1) incrementalism or momentum, or the within-system temporal diffusion of the dependent variable; (2) within-system causal development, or the influence of other characteristics of the system itself; (3) spatial diffusion, or the spread of the dependent variable from system to system; and (4) global contextual forces, such as war, depression and shortage of resources. In addition to reconsidering the nature of “the comparative method,” the discussion focuses on the process of diffusion and how it fits in with the other processes, especially from a time-series perspective.

A heavy turnout is commonly believed to favor the Democrats. This study presents theoretical reasoning and empirical evidence that challenge the conventional view. Reasonable assumptions about the behavior of core and peripheral voters lead to the conclusion that the majority party is most likely to suffer when turnout increases, common sense notwithstanding. It also appears that the recent decay of partisan loyalties among voters has eroded the relationship between turnout and the vote.

The heart of Rousseau's thought, as he himself declared, is the claim that society (especially bourgeois society), while necessary now to man's preservation, corrupts the life it fosters. What, then, is this corruption? What, in Rousseau's view, is the problem of bourgeois society? The corruption, I argue, is disunity of soul, through which men lose the fullness of existence they seek by nature. Unity of soul, which is natural, is lost in society through the contradiction of personal dependence: using others entails serving them. Thus modern or bourgeois society, which builds on this contradiction by deriving men's sociability from their selfishness, necessarily divides their souls. There can be no psychic unity in society without true social unity. (Hence Rousseau's analysis of unity is also his defense of justice.) Psychic and social unity are more or less attainable in the just state through patriotism and virtue (“morality”), but perfect psychic unity is possible only beyond society and morality.

This article challenges recent socialization research which concludes that the family's influence is primarily limited to the generational transfer of partisan values. We first present a new conceptual approach for studying parent-child agreement. Then, we apply a multiple indicator methodology (LISREL) to operationalize this approach. Reanalysis of the Jennings and Niemi socialization survey finds quite substantial levels of family agreement in areas besides partisanship. These results argue for greater attention to the significance of family socialization, and to the persistence of political beliefs across generations.

The rise of the modern state has been accompanied by a decline in the importance of statutory law to the operation of Western democratic governments. Two of the strongest critiques of the modern state and of this decline in statutory law have come from Friedrich Hayek and Theodore Lowi. Each has argued that only the restoration of a rule of law can ensure the continued survival of democratic societies. Their indictments of the modern state suggest a standard by which legislative policy alternatives might be evaluated. This article develops such a standard, adapted specifically for use in American politics, and uses it to analyze legislative behavior in the House of Representatives under four different presidential administrations. The development and application of the rule of law standard provides a critique of American government from the Hayek-Lowi perspective and reveals a basic incompatibility between the imposition of a rule of law and the establishment of a responsible-party government system.