Strikingly innovative developments in brain science during the past two decades, reflecting advances in a dozen different biological disciplines (such as biochemistry, biophysics, endocrinology, neuropsychology, genetics, and human development) have created a new psychobiology that thus far appears to have had only slight impact upon mainstream political science theory and research. This field analysis examines the implications of psychobiology for the study and practice of politics, from the perspective of the founding father of political behaviouralism. The article discusses the psychobiology of mind in terms of human consciousness and memory and then examines the epigenetic and recursive relationships between brain structure and political perception; between brain lateralization and dynamics, and political thinking and decision-making; and between brain development and political equality, with particular regard to sex, age, health, race, and intelligence.

A formal analysis of the amending formula of Canada's Constitution Act, 1982 is presented. It is shown that larger provinces have greater voices in determining constitutional amendments, except that there are two groupings of provinces within which power with respect to constitutional amendments is exactly equal. Further, it is argued that differences in power among the provinces are disproportionately small in comparison to differences in population, so that the amending formula systematically directs greater influence to the individual citizens of smaller provinces.

This note reports the results of an attempt to detect a systematic pattern in the development of terrorist activity of the Palestine Liberation Organization during the period 1967-1978. Since its establishment in 1964 the PLO has seen the Palestinian-Israeli conflict as insoluble by political, as distinct from, military means. A quantitative analysis of Palestinian military activities explores a downward trend in the annual frequency of activity in the administered territories and an upward trend in the annual frequency of activity within the pre-1967 lines. Israeli punishment did not work as a deterrent but remained an essentially retaliatory activity despite the apparent intentions of its authors. The changes in the military activity of the PLO were systematic rather than coincidental. The main cause of significant long-term increases in the activity of the Palestinian organizations was the impetus provided by political events for the recovery of operative bases of action and motivation for guerrilla activity. Reinforcement of both organizational and motivational militancy followed the perception by the Palestinian organizations that political victories could not be gained without terrorist activity.

This note considers the possibility that the format of the interview schedules in the 1965 and 1968 national election surveys may have influenced respondents' ratings of the major political parties on the seven-point left-wing/right-wing scale. It argues that the use of 12 additional scales, defined by more widely understood adjectives such as good/bad and powerful/weak, reduced the willingness of respondents to admit their ignorance and increased their use of the midpoint on this scale. The instructions in 1968 also urged respondents to use the scales even if they were unsure of their meanings. Some idea of the magnitude of these effects is provided by the 1979 survey in which only the left/right scale was employed. Eliminating these artifacts in 1979 contributed to a picture of a party system that was more clearly differentiated and polarized along the left/right continuum.

This note argues that, widespread opinion to the contrary, Marx did not make a distinction between a class in itself and a class for itself but between a class against capital and a class for itself. Marx's formulation of a “class against capital” exhibits a political dimension lacking in a “class in itself”; political institutions and arrangements are not simply the instrument or the expression of a pre-existing class structure but rather condition or shape the class structure. The implications of the erroneous attribution to the theoretical understanding of class formation as well as practical politics are explored.

Social choice theory demonstrates that interesting and nonobvious perversities can result when majoritarian methods are applied to the selection of a single alternative from among more than two alternatives. The “voters paradox” is a well-known example of this phenomenon. This note demonstrates that the outcome of the 1983 federal Conservative party leadership convention is another example of the interaction of a decision rule and preferences producing a nonoptimal outcome.

The import of social choice theory lies in its examination of the various choice rules available for the recording and weighing of preferences in an election and the consequences of those rules for democratic political life. A choice rule is a method for aggregating individual preferences into a collective determination. Choice rules vary in their capacities to maximize (and minimize) various values desired in a system of decision-making. They also vary in their capacities to reveal information about preferences.

Professor Levesque's note raises a number of interesting and important questions. I shall be concerned directly with only one of these—the question of whether or not John Crosbie was the “best candidate,” as that term has been defined in Levesque's note. I shall try to show that while there was good reason to suppose that Crosbie was the “best candidate,” in fact he was not. I shall then comment briefly on why Brian Mulroney won the convention. The data on which these observations are based are from a series of surveys of delegates to the convention—the first conducted by mail beginning in the first week of May, the second conducted face-to-face by student interviewers during the three-day registration period at the convention, and the third conducted by mail beginning two weeks after the convention.

Professor Carmichael's critique appears to demolish my reading of Hobbes so completely, and contains such minute reasoning, that readers will be apt at least to carry away the impression that there can be no smoke without fire. In this case, there is. As I shall show, Carmichael's most confident judgments, and his essential arguments, are without foundations.