This article takes an empirical measure of the extent to which feminism has altered the discipline of Political Science in Canada and Québec since the mid-1980s. The authors, members of the second cadre of female political scientists in the field of women and politics, single out for particular attention the current relation between anglophone and francophone feminist scholarship in the field. They maintain that the two linguistic solitudes remain fundamental to the women and politics field as much as was the case before the emergence of feminist perspectives in the discipline.

In Australia, religion historically has been seen as a secondary but nonetheless significant sociopolitical cleavage, in part cutting across the class divide. In recent times, Australian scholars, like those elsewhere, have been inclined to argue that the political significance of religion is a legacy of the past and that religion no longer plays an important role in shaping mass political behaviour. Although class is also said to have declined in political significance, it is still treated as being of some importance as a cornerstone of the party system. However, many scholars seem more willing to dismiss the relevance of religion altogether. Using sample survey data collected over more than 25 years, this article examines the role of religion in modern Australian electoral politics and assesses the adequacy of such arguments.

There are three ideal types of revolutions: spontaneous, planned and negotiated. The role and importance of structural factors versus human agency vary according to the general category to which a particular revolution belongs. In spontaneous revolutions, both the transition and conslidation phases are heavily conditioned by prevailing structural factors, especially those that result in the weakening of ruling state institutions and the political mobilization of one or more social groups. By contrast, in planned revolutions self-declared revolutionaries take the lead in both mobilizing supporters and weakening the state, in fact often having a highly elaborate ideological—as well as tactical and strategic—blueprint for the acquisition and consolidation of power. Negotiated revolutions see the greatest coalescence of forces involving both structural developments and human agency. The seeds of the revolution have germinated, but the prevailing structural developments are not by themselves sufficient to bring about the revolution's success. Actors representing both state and society must step in to negotiate, and only then might the revolution succeed and be consolidated.

The author critiques two articles by Michael Howlett published recently by this Journal, and comments on policy agenda-setting theory. Howlett's articles use Canadian data to test three different policy agenda-setting theories forwarded by Anthony Downs, by Frank Baumgartner and Bryan Jones and by John Kingdon. This commentary suggests that the tests have several major flaws. These flaws are a product of several factors: Howlett's dataset and use of statistics, his interpretation of the theories at hand and empirical problems with the policy agenda-setting theories themselves.

I am pleased to respond to Stuart Soroka's set of criticisms of the concepts, methodology and conclusions of my research into Canadian federal agenda-setting. My two articles were not intended to be the last word on the subject, and I am glad to see that they have sparked some interest and, hopefully, some future additional research into the subject. That having been said, let me make several points with respect to the central issues raised in the discussion and the general arguments made about the role of empirical research in the policy sciences.

Despite the important role they played during Iran's constitutional revolution, ulama fell short of reaching their goal. Success came 70 years later during the 1979 revolution when the monarchy was overthrown under ulama's leadership. In this article, the author compares the theoretical relationships between these two revolutions.