What values should a society seek to maximize? Religious values, as in Calvin's Geneva or Khomeini's Iran? Power and Glory? The Wealth of Nations, the Gross National Product? The greatest happiness for the greatest number? Or, in Humboldt's phrase, ‘the highest and most harmonious development of [man's] powers to a complete and consistent whole?’

There is much to be said for wealth. Quite recently it has been discovered that the pursuit of wealth is a game against nature not a war game, a zero-sum game, with booty as its prize. The distribution of increments of wealth can, under these circumstances, be Pareto optimal. As Marx pointed out, winning the struggle against scarcity is a condition for everything else: men must eat before they can think. Similarly, in ordering a hierarchy of needs, the contemporary humanist psychologist, Abraham Maslow, makes the same obvious point: the satisfaction of physiological needs is a condition for the satisfaction of higher needs, in the end for self-fulfilment – for Humboldt's ‘harmonious development of man's powers’. Wealth gives satisfaction; Bentham believed it was the prime source of happiness. Adam Smith argued that ‘the desire of bettering our condition…[through] an augmentation of fortune’ was the most powerful (and vulgar) of motives, but it was often a mask for a concern for the good opinions of others. So strong a motive lends itself to social control: ‘the steadiest motive in ordinary business work is the desire for pay which is the material reward for work’. Like B. F. Skinner, Marshall held that money is a general reinforcer because of its universal appeal. And it is the foundation of civilization, not only because surplus value may be devoted to cathedrals, but, following Schumpeter, because a society guided by the rationalism of the market's manner of pursuing wealth, is reflected in the high art and science of the West. In the process of maximizing wealth, therefore, a society motivates its members, satisfies them, and provides the basis for high civilization.

The new British government formed in May 1979 contained a Butler, a Chalker, a Fowler and a Prior. It also, as the whole world knows, contained a Thatcher. It did not, however, contain a single Barrister, Solicitor or Journalist; nor, remarkably, did it contain anybody by the name of Politician.

American elections depend substantially on the vitality of the national economy. Prosperity benefits candidates for the House of Representatives from the incumbent party (defined as the party that controls the presidency at the time of the election), whereas economic downturns enhance the electoral fortunes of opposition candidates. Short-term fluctuations in economic conditions also appear to affect the electorate's presidential choice, as well as the level of public approval conferred upon the president during his term. By this evidence, the political consequences of macroeconomic conditions are both pervasive and powerful. But just how do citizens know whether the incumbent party has succeeded or failed? What kinds of economic evidence do people weigh in their political appraisals? The purpose of our paper is to examine two contrasting depictions of individual citizens – one emphasizing the political significance of citizens' own economic predicaments, the other stressing the political importance of citizens' assessments of the nation's economic predicament – that might underlie the aggregate entwining of economics and politics. Ours is an inquiry into the political economy of individual citizens.

The rise of pressure-group politics in Britain has stimulated a corresponding growth of academic interest in pressure groups. Some distinguished early case studies were crowned in 1965 with Beer's majestic interpretation, while the last decade saw various accounts of the constitutional significance and merits of group activity. These bursts of academic energy illuminated parts of the pressure-group universe but left others in twilight. We are well informed about the lobbying activities of manufacturing industry, of organized labour and some of the professions. By contrast, there exists hardly any systematic discussion of how the interests of financial institutions are represented in government.

‘In the last ten years on my individual reckoning’, observes S. E. Finer, ‘there have been seventy-three coups in forty-six countries’. ‘Coups’, Gurr comments, ‘can alter political processes and social institutions as drastically as any classic revolutions’. Yet the incidence and importance of coups are hardly reflected in the sparse literature proposing generalizations about their causes. Certainly, many case studies of individual coups have been undertaken, but the choice of the country has usually been decided by availability of data rather than its significance for a general theory. Given that coups have occurred all over the world, they clearly are a general phenomenon. Existing general explanations for them, however, are open to criticism. These suggest that essentially there is room for a theory which is about coups in particular rather than about wider forms of political instability, or about the narrower, military, coup; which is capable of falsification, avoiding inherently untestable hypotheses or concepts that are defined so loosely as to invite accusations of tautology; and which is, of course, able to withstand appropriate empirical examination.

The aim of this paper is to explicate the concept of manipulation, to show why it is of central importance in democratic theory, and to explain its relation to power. At first glance this might seem an unusual objective, since it remains one of the least studied of the concepts that are usually recognized as members of the power or control ‘family’. Yet allegations of the existence of manipulative practices, and demands for intervention by public agencies to prevent them, are commonplace in political life. Political science and political philosophy have contributed little to the understanding of how, for example, the following four claims about manipulation are to be evaluated.

If the welfare state embodies a collective obligation to give to those in need, it also attests to the failure of individual, private giving, which from the advent of industrialization has been far too modest and capricious to care adequately for the sick and indigent. Private, individual giving simply cannot compete with state help when it comes to guaranteeing people's welfare. But its failure to do a job better handled by the state does not mean that private giving is an irrelevant anachronism. Even the welfare state's most ardent supporters should appreciate its value. Private giving has intrinsic worth. It reveals how humane society is. Giving and helping palpably enrich public life, although, unlike high per capita income or low crime rates, they elude statistical composites of collective well-being. Private giving also has instrumental value. In so many ways – ranging from assisting an old lady off a bus to saving a drowning stranger – people can help each other when the state may be helpless. Privately-given funds, time, attention and ideas can supplement what the state offers; limited state resources inevitably leave some people with less than they need, and the gaps in state aid can be filled, at least in part, by private efforts.

According to Steven Lukes ‘A exercises power over B when A affects A in a manner contrary to B's interests’. Although he is not willing to contend that this general concept of power is altogether beyond reasonable dispute Lukes argues that it is the specific conceptions of power to which this more general concept gives rise when we fill in what is to count as B's interests that pose the fundamental problem for social and political science. For, although the conceptions are, to some degree, assessable in terms of their descriptive accuracy and explanatory scope, they are also ‘ineradicably evaluative’ and ‘essentially contested’. Three important ‘normatively specific conceptions of interests’, implying three corresponding conceptions of power, particularly concern him:

(1) the liberal conception, which relates men's interests to what they actually want or prefer, to their policy preferences as manifested by their political participation; (2) the reformist conception, which, deploring that not all men's wants are given equal weight within the political system, also relates their interests to what they actually want and prefer, but allows that this may be revealed in the form of deflected, submerged, or concealed wants and preferences; and (3) the radical conception, which maintains that men's wants may themselves be a product of a system which works against their interests and, in such cases, relates the latter to what men would want and prefer, were they able to make the choice.

Among the arguments that have featured in the recent revival of libertarian thinking is one purporting to show that a free market economy, protected by a minimal state – or even no state at all – is neutral as between capitalism and a certain form of socialism. The argument runs as follows. The market places no limits on the manner in which people may associate for purposes of economic activity. They may choose capitalist forms of organization, in which case those who become owners of capital assume a greater degree of risk and responsibility and stand to gain correspondingly higher rewards, or they may choose co-operative forms, where groups of producers supply their own capital and share the profits between them. If capitalist forms are overwhelmingly favoured, as the historical evidence shows, this reveals something about the preference structure of the population as a whole. Either the bulk of the population actively wish to avoid the risks and anxieties of capital ownership, and so willingly transfer these responsibilities to the few willing to bear them; or the efficiency of the capitalist firm is such that it can pay wages high enough to compensate the work force for their loss of autonomy in comparison with the co-operative alternative.

Regimes are often preoccupied with maintaining their credibility. Great powers wish to convey to their allies the impression that they are not only strong but reliable. In limited adversary relationships, credibility is viewed as a resource to perpetuate and develop the more co-operative aspects of a fragile relationship. During war time, during the Cold War, or in other sharply adversarial relationships, leaders have an interest in conveying to their rivals a sense of what they consider important. Regimes also cherish credibility as part of their own self-image. There is yet another, more paradoxical, reason why credibility is valued: it can be used as a resource to achieve deception. On the occasions when statements are meant to deceive, the effort will not be effective if it is based on a reputation for thoroughgoing mendacity.

Geographical mobility is a striking characteristic of modern societies. Since migrants are often faced with social, economic and political changes which may affect their political behaviour, population movement is crucial to an understanding of politics.

Once again, Spain is in political transition. The death of Franco in 1975 provided the opportunity for rationalizing an awkward political system. The objective of the politicians who gathered to draft a new constitution was twofold: to organize a state that was to be both modern and legitimate in a society that is still in many ways ‘pre-civic’ but, at the same time, increasingly tied to the industrial and post-industrial West.

Probably no group of political actors is more misunderstood than American assassins. My purpose in this preliminary report is to identify the sources of this misunderstanding and to suggest an alternative interpretation based on a reconsideration of the evidence.

A standard criticism of the welfare state which is enjoying a resurgent popularity is that many of its operations are inefficient, even counter-productive, in relation to their assumed objectives. At the level of political and journalistic rhetoric it is asserted or implied that large sums of tax-payers' money are being spent in ways which benefit mainly the army of officials that administers them, and that much needless legislative effort goes into securing complexes of rights which serve only to provide work for tribunals and lawyers. At its most extreme the claim is that some welfare enactments actually cause more harm than good in that their intended beneficiaries would be better off without them.

Charles Lindblom and Aaron Wildavsky are both prolific writers, so out of necessity a relatively brief review of their work would have to be either very selective as to the themes dealt with or quite superficial in its treatment of their many contributions to contemporary social science. I have essentially adhered to the latter strategy in this article. Any reader who expects an in-depth analysis and a critical appraisal of, for example, incrementalism will be disappointed. What I oner instead is a first acquaintance with all the major themes in the scholarly production of Lindblom and Wildavsky and also with the critiques they have provoked.

Perhaps the most important decisions that the United States Supreme Court makes consist of which sorts of issues it will entertain and how, when, and in what forms it will resolve them. Indeed, as Mr Justice Brandeis once remarked, the ‘most important thing [the Court does] is not doing’, i.e. winnowing cases. Yet, until quite recently, few studies focused on the politics of the agenda-building process on the Supreme Court. From the important researches of Tanenhaus and his associates and of Ulmer and his colleagues we know that under certain conditions and in certain cases the justices operate on the basis of a few ‘cues’ in decisions to grant or deny petitions for certiorari – the main mode of obtaining a hearing from the Court. And Ulmer has instructed us that in making choices on certiorari, ‘Supreme Court justices are predisposed to support underdogs and upperdogs disproportionately but, also, are motivated to hide any “bias” that may be at work in determining votes’. So, although we do know more about some segments of agenda building than before, investigations are still at a relatively early stage. Furthermore, few have treated the Supreme Court as an institution that operates across time as well as space or have accounted for variations in its behaviour across that temporal dimension.

As Jon Elster remarked in an earlier review, G. A. Cohen's Karl Marx's Theory of History: A Defence ‘sets a new standard for Marxist philosophy’. In one way, the praise is too faint. Existing paradigms of continental Marxist philosophy are marred by an absence of careful definition, clear and precise argumentation, and the sort of sustained discussion that is committed to the teasing out of the intellectual difficulties of the author's own position – in short, marred by an absence of those virtues in the attainment of which the philosophy practised in Britain, the United States, and the Scandinavian countries on the whole excels. Cohen would, presumably, agree that this has nothing intrinsically to do with Marx, or Marxism, but in the main arises from the fortuitous coupling of Marxism with continental philosophical fashions. If this sounds like some sort of cultural chauvinism, it also happens to be the truth. So the ‘new’ standards for Marxist philosophy, then, are only the same standards by which it is right to judge all philosophy, wherever it is written, and which any philosophy must pass in order to be accounted good. What is perhaps less faint praise of Cohen is to say that his book is good philosophy (without the qualifying adjective ‘Marxist’). It is an ingenious and imaginative volume, in which precision and detailed attention to argument count for everything.

I first encountered the work of Harold Lasswell in the late 1950s, when I was a barely awake undergraduate at a university whose reputation for mediocrity was richly deserved. I opened Politics: Who Gets What, When, How to the first paragraph: ‘The study of politics is the study of influence and the influential. The science of politics states conditions; the philosophy of politics justifies preferences. This book, restricted to political analysis, declares no preferences. It states conditions.’ I had never heard of Lasswell, for my political science courses limited themselves to subjects like Congressional seniority and Cabinet responsibility in Britain. One course discussed the law of piracy, a subject I had trouble linking to international politics in the 1950s. Some enterprising instructors occasionally discussed the balance of power, and one even assigned David Truman. But Lasswell was terra incognita to me, as he no doubt was to most undergraduates in those years.

This paper deals with the theories of electoral or party competition in liberal democracies which have been put forward in ‘economic’ models of democracy by Downs, Riker and Ordeshook, Robertson and others. There can be few doubts about the growing importance or appeal of these models, especially for North American political science. Barry, for example, argues that ‘we have seen the last of the “sociologists” in political science’, while in contrast the economic approach has ‘flourished quantitatively and qualitatively’. Barry attributes this change-round since the early 1960s to political scientists' penetration of sociologists' ‘characteristically sloppy logic and flabby prose to discover the deeper problems of circularity and vacuousness inherent in the approach’. In contrast, economic models have claimed the mantle of strictly developed deductive theory and displayed remarkable elusiveness as objects of criticism. Most attacks have been represented as irrelevant by appealing to the Friedmanite epistemology which denies any significance to the descriptive ‘realism’ of a deductive theory's assumptions. As Downs argued: ‘Theoretical models should be tested by the accuracy of their predictions rather than by the reality of their assumptions’. That such a naive verificationism cannot discriminate between the (potentially large) range of non-falsified explanations has not impeded economic models' progress, largely because a similar position is espoused in almost all competing ‘mainstream’ electoral analysis.

Members of the House of Representatives often forsake re-election to run for the Senate. Do they realize what they might be giving up? In the 1978 elections only 5 per cent of House incumbents who sought another term were denied it, compared with 40 per cent of the Senators seeking to continue in office. While several students of House elections have referred to the few members in serious electoral trouble (and even fewer who actually lose) as ‘vanishing marginals’, the safe incumbent Senator, particularly a liberal Democrat, is an endangered species. In the 1976 and 1978 elections, ten moderate-toliberal Democratic Senators were defeated, five in each election. Over a dozen more faced the electorate in 1980, facing the threat that the liberal majority within the Senate Democratic party would be erased – or at least eroded. While 93·7 per cent of House incumbents seeking re-election won in 1978 (a figure which has changed little since 1968), the Senate figure of 60 per cent is the smallest percentage since the Democratic landslide of 1958. In an era when House seats have become relatively safe by almost any standard, incumbent Senators appear increasingly more vulnerable.