The concepts of “party” and “party system” may be obscuring the nature of early national political culture. The presence of a modern party ethos before the 1830s seems to be taken for granted, as are assumptions regarding the alleged benefits of party. Historians have not yet demonstrated, however, the many dimensions of institutionalized party behavior. Focus is recommended on three observable elements of party (after Sorauf): as organization, in office, in the electorate. Studies of party self-consciousness developing over the entire 1789–1840 period are necessary in various political units. Evidence is inconclusive, but weighs on balance against a first party system of Federalists and Republicans (1790s–1820s). While relatively stable elite coalitions and even mass cleavage patterns perhaps developed at staggered intervals in different arenas, especially during the war crisis period of 1809–1816, the norms of party did not take root and pervade the polity. The era to the 1820s was transitional, a deferential-participant phase of mixed political culture roughly comparable to England's after 1832. Theories relating party to democratization, national integration, and political development, should be reconsidered.

National survey data demonstrate that support of the federal government decreased substantially between 1964 and 1970. Policy preference, a lack of perceived difference between the parties, and policy dissatisfaction were hypothesized as correlates of trust and alternative explanations of this decrease. Analysis revealed that the increased distrust in government, or cynicism, was associated with reactions to the issues of racial integration and U.S. involvement in the Vietnam war. A curvilinear relationship was found between policy preference on these and other contemporary social issues and political cynicism. The minority favoring centrist policies was more likely to trust the government than the large proportion who preferred noncentrist policy alternatives. This complex relationship between trust and policy preference is explained by dissatisfaction with the policies of both political parties. The dissatisfied noncentrists formed highly polarized and distinct types: “cynics of the left,” who preferred policies providing social change, and “cynics of the right,” who favored policies of social control.

The paper attempts, through an examination of Thucydides' treatment of a significant problem, to illustrate the character of an older approach to the understanding of politics and to argue, implicitly, for the validity of that approach. The approach in question is shaped by the thoughts that the barriers standing in the way of a “scientific” approach to politics are much greater than today is sometimes assumed and that there is no more direct path to the removal of those barriers than the painstaking elaboration and subsequent refinement of the assumptions which shape and frame our view of the issues of politics. Thucydides' “history” is seen as intended to facilitate such an elaboration and refinement; his treatment of Athenian imperialism is accordingly presented in various stages, which first appeal to the prejudices with which the reader is likely to approach the work and then lead him gradually, through an examination of these, to Thucydides' own understanding, which is much more heterodox than is ordinarily supposed.

The middle-class character of the leadership of American reform movements has been well established. While leaders of the progressive movement in early twentieth-century America also conform to this pattern, the nature of the voting base of support for progressivism has not yet been established. The purpose of this paper is twofold: first, to examine whether or not middle-class voters supported progressive candidates at the polls; and secondarily, to test the relative strength of cultural factors (i.e., ethnicity and religion) versus class considerations as determinants of voting behavior in the early twentieth century. The results demonstrate that, at least in the key progressive state of Wisconsin, middle-class voters failed to support progressive candidates in either general or primary elections; to the contrary, they provided the bulwark of support for conservative opponents of reform. Using bi-variate and partial correlational analysis, the paper also shows that ethnocultural factors remained as the most powerful determinant of voter choice among urban voters in general elections, but that class considerations often proved more influential in motivating voters in primary election contests.

“In God We Trust: Everyone Else Pays Cash.” America's political leaders should not pretend to godliness; no one will be fooled. According to prestigious biennial national surveys, the government's credit rating has steadily declined as a result of a disastrous foreign investment and growing consumer resistance to its “line” of products. Neither the country's present management nor its most prominent rivals inspire public confidence. How, then, can the political system rebuild its depleted reserves of political trust, the basis of future growth and stability? Will “one good season,” better advertising, new blood in the boardroom or product innovation be sufficient? Or is a drastic restructuring of the regime's organization and operating procedures the only alternative to liquidation?

Arthur Miller's article, “Political Issues and Trust in Government: 1964–70” makes an important contribution to our understanding of the sharp increase in political cynicism among the American public. Miller evokes the language of the corporation balance-sheet and the imagery of Executive Suite by suggesting that the cumulative outcome of exchanges between political authorities on the one hand and citizens on the other determines the level of public trust in government. Political elites “produce” policies; in exchange, they receive trust from citizens satisfied with these policies and cynicism from those who are disappointed. Since Miller defines both policy satisfaction and political trust in attitudinal terms, the exchange transactions he records are purely psychological in nature. Operationally, dissatisfied respondents are those whose own policy preferences are discrepant with their perceptions of the positions advocated by the party controlling the presidency.

This study reports the codification of basic authority characteristics of 336 national political systems (polities) that functioned in 91 nation-states between 1800 and 1971. In form the typical 19th-century polity was an autocracy with minimal functions. Its 20th-century counterpart was either an activist plural democracy or an activist autocracy. The incidence of system-transforming political change has been equally high and pervasive in both European and Third-world polities, but greater in the 20th century than the 19th. The data are used to test three hypotheses that attribute the persistence and adaptability of political systems to their authority characteristics. “Institutionalization” arguments about the stability-enhancing effects of complexity and directiveness receive no consistent support. Conventional beliefs about the greater durability of democracies vs. autocracies vs. anocracies (uninstitutionalized polities) are confirmed only in Europe in the 20th century. The most durable historical and Afro-Asian polities have been either autocratic or anocratic. The data generally support the hypothesis that “pure” political systems—consistently democratic or consistently autocratic—are more durable than systems of mixed authority characteristics. Long-term trends in political “development” and their determinants are discussed in the light of the findings.

Career mobility is conceptualized in terms of the amount and bias of organizational, occupational, vertical and geographical movement. An operational measure is offered for the amount of mobility (not the bias) which permits comparative generalizations to be made about officials based on simple sampling procedures. For illustrative purposes, the amount of organizational mobility is measured for two samples of federal officials: David T. Stanley's sample (N = 557) of higher civil servants and a sample (N = 300) of foreign affairs officials. Several dichotomous background variables are included for both samples of officials including: age, rank, and education. Varying background characteristics is found to make only a small mobility difference for higher civil servants and a much greater difference for foreign affairs officials. Several speculations are offered to explain the political significance of the empirical findings, and a comparative typology of career mobility is developed.

A recent note by Robert Butterworth is critical of William Riker's size principle on several important grounds. There is, however, an important omission in his analysis which this present essay aims to correct. The author goes on to tie assertions about coalition structure in n-person zero-sum games to a solution theory for such games. In the appendix to this essay the general five-person game, of which Butterworth's game is a special case, is considered in some detail. The effect, with one reasonable solution theory, is a favorable appraisal of the size principle.

Starting with nineteenth-century jurisprudence, this essay traces the changing perceptions of the nature and role of groups in politics as affected in turn by scientific reformism, classic pluralism, and descriptive science orientations to the study of politics. The work of Laski and Bentley is highlighted.

The essay contends that political science has not grown by scientific study laid upon scientific study, but rather by a process of gradual encroachment of ideas in which basic premises, questions, and terms shifted without adequate examination. It is argued that this change is not properly portrayed as a trend from abstract legal metaphysics to ever more sophisticated approximations of reality. The forgotten contributions of past orientations are stressed, and the reasons that Bentley was ignored in his day discussed.

More specifically, the study concludes that the process of accretion of ideas was of some benefit to political science as a discipline, but the heritage left by this process was negative in two important respects: the neglect of a dynamic in favor of a static perspective, and the divorce of normative theory from empirical research on American politics.

Rules changes in the Democratic party have substantially altered one of the fundamental institutions of American politics. This article is an effort to assess some of the effects of the new rules on the selection of delegates to the Democratic National Convention on the strategic environment faced by presidential candidates. The article outlines the basic aspects of those rule changes, describes the problems involved in the implementation of the rules, and attempts to evaluate some of the consequences faced by the presidential campaign of Senator George McGovern in the context of the California primary of 1972.

In 1958 only 22 per cent of the total population felt that they could not “trust the government in Washington to do what is right” all or most of the time. By the fall of 1972 that figure had climbed to 45 per cent. Furthermore, the percentage of eligible voters participating in the 1972 presidential election was the lowest it has been since 1948; crises and scandals have continually plagued the government since the Watergate revelations; and the economic conditions of the country have provoked widespread uncertainty and anxiety among the populace. There is good reason, then, for the intense current interest in attitudes of political disaffection and alienation.

Present U.S. conditions demonstrate that political alienation is a phenomenon of fundamental significance in political processes. Feelings of political cynicism and alienation may substantially diminish the willingness of citizens to participate in politics or to support programs directed at resolving the social problems that stimulate discontent. Attitudes of political alienation have likewise been related to public demands for radical political reforms during trying periods of social or economic discontent. Alienation and non-participation, however, go beyond just questions of voluntary compliance with policies or the possibilities for radical change; they strike at a very basic democratic norm. Democratic theory emphasizes voluntary consent as the basis of political obligation and legitimacy. Democratic government assumes—indeed, requires—widespread participation, political equality, the accountability of leaders and protection of the individual citizen's constitutional guarantees. The full attainment of these values is only possible when the relationship between the leaders and the public is based on mutual understanding and reciprocal trust rather than on the use of coercive and arbitrary authority.

Philip E. Converse has challenged the findings of a 1965 article, “The Changing Shape of the American Political Universe,” and other work by Burnham. Converse asserts that most of the very high voter participation which occurred before 1900 can be explained by a combination of electoral corruption, the absence of personal-registration requirements and other “undramatic” factors, and thus that the anomalies which Burnham reported are largely spurious. Issues of major importance for social-science explanation are joined. The present article attempts to demonstrate that intervening structural variables cannot come close to explaining all the post-1900 decline in voting participation and that the genuine existence of universal nineteenth-century rural corruption has yet to be demonstrated. These efforts to explain away anomaly are held to be unpersuasive. The weight of evidence supports the objective reality of the phenomena originally reported. This in turn means that more adequate conceptualizations are needed to integrate empirical findings than those which have hitherto dominated the voting-behavior research community.

Immediately prior to the 1970 parliamentary election in the Republic of South Africa, 462 white voters in Cape Town were questioned about their demographic backgrounds, voting intentions, and political attitudes. The study showed that ethnicity is the major determinant of party vote: Afrikaners vote for the National Party, the English-speaking for the United Party. SES-related factors predict party identification only insofar as they covary with ethnicity. While a liberalization of political attitudes with rising SES can be observed, this has no bearing on electoral behavior. Party vote is not related to ideological or issue orientations, but is related to the intensity of the voter's identification with his own ethnic group and with white South Africans in general. Voters tend to react positively or negatively to the NP, with the UP serving chiefly as a vehicle for protest votes against the government. The slight drop in NP support in 1970 was due to a key group of abstainers who—while basically Nat supporters—were more liberal than those who said they would vote for the NP. It is “Ambiguous Afrikaners” (those who are changing to an “English” identity), and only some of those, who are defecting completely from their traditional political allegiance. They represent the one sign of potential change in South Africa's uniquely stable political system.