Most political support models imply that in evaluating economic performance, voters use a standard that would provide poor predictions of the future and leave the economy vulnerable to manipulation by vote-hungry politicians. Drawing on macroeconomic theory, we develop a simple standard of evaluation which encompasses a concern not only for current economic outcomes, but also for accurately assessed future consequences of current policies. We find that political support for the president can be explained as well by models that assume that voters use this sophisticated standard as by models that assume voter naivete.

Our analysis questions the wisdom of measures typically used to assess voter evaluation of economic performance in a variety of theoretical contexts. The results also help to explain the absence of convincing evidence that governments exploit voter ignorance in manipulating the economy.

This article reevaluates American realignment literature based on Clubb, Flanigan, and Zingale's (1980) admonition to focus on control of government and political leadership rather than electoral results. I put forward a theory of policy change in the House of Representatives which shows, like Sinclair (1977), that the effect of electoral realignments is to create a strong and unified majority party in the Congress. However, unlike other work that focuses on electoral courses, I show that structural features of elections created the new majority party in both the Civil War and the 1890s realignments. Specifically, I argue that in these two realignments a strong regional seats-to-votes distortion created the Republican majorities that enacted the policy changes associated with these realignments.

The persistent decline in voting in presidential elections since 1960 has resulted in serious scholarly attention being given to nonvoting. Despite the quality of these studies, however, the ratio of what we know about nonvoting to what we do not know is rather low. In the hopes of improving this situation, I advance the hypothesis that one reason that individuals do not vote is that their interests are not represented by any of the major candidates. To test this hypothesis, I used the SRC election studies (1968-1980) to construct measures of individuals' perceived distance from the major candidates on a variety of issues. Net of an extensive set of factors usually invoked to explain participation, increased distance from candidates significantly decreases the probability of voting. The implications of these results are discussed.

The paradox of not voting is examined in a model where voters have uncertainty about the preferences and costs of other voters. In game-theoretic models of voter participation under complete information, equilibrium outcomes can have substantial turnout even when voting costs are relatively high. In contrast, when uncertainty about preferences and costs is present, only voters with negligible or negative net voting costs participate when the electorate is large.

Despite its normative importance, the question of why people join interest groups remains open. It has certainly provoked a wealth of theoretical attention. Regrettably, however, it has inspired only a handful of empirical tests. The introduction of this article places the empirical debate into its normative context. The first section develops a rational model of individual evaluations of group membership, focusing upon the effect of changing personal circumstances—preferences, needs, resources, insecurity, and information—on the calculus. In particular, the theory predicts responsiveness to political or collective benefits in threatening times. Analyses of aggregate changes over time in membership in the Farm Bureau, the League of Women Voters, and the Home Builders, reported in the second section, bear the model out. Finally, the conclusion takes on the complementary question of group supply, sketching a theory of group mobilization that emphasizes subsidization.

Converse's findings of low constraint and stability among mass attitudes are only one side of the story; mass attitudes often manifest much more coherent and stable patterns at the aggregate level than would seem possible if one took the results of panel survey analysis at face value. Items designed by Rokeach and Inglehart to tap basic value priorities, show modest individual-level stability, together with remarkably high aggregate stability structured in ways that could not occur if random answering were the prevailing pattern. Materialist/postmaterialist values show large differences between birth cohorts that not only persisted throughout 1970-1984 but seem to reflect distinctive formative experiences that occurred as much as 50 years ago. These aggregate results are much too skewed to result from equiprobable random answering and cannot be attributed to methods effects. They reflect underlying attitudinal predispositions in the respondents themselves. While random response to given items does play an important role, it is much less widespread than Converse's Black and White model implies and does not generally reflect an absence of relevant preferences. Structural equation analysis of multiple indicators demonstrates much stabler, broader orientations underlying the response to given items that account for the high aggregate-level stability observed here. Because it usually measures such orientations imperfectly, individual-level survey data tend systematically to underestimate constraint and stability in mass attitudes.

This article examines a mode of political participation that frequently has been overlooked—individual efforts to obtain assistance from government officials. Using the seven-nation data set of Verba, Nie, and Kim, we develop and empirically evaluate alternatiave models of citizen contacting. Our first model draws on variations in the distribution of social and economic resources to explain the likelihood of contacting. The second focuses on differences in political ties to locate those most likely to contact government officials. We find greater support for the political ties model. Persons active in political parties and election campaigns are the most likely to engage in citizen contacting. Without political ties, few poor or uneducated persons would ask officials for assistance. We conclude by noting the more general theoretical and normative implications of our study.

The purpose of this article is to develop a theoretical framework for analyzing why individuals support private environmental “public interest” groups. The model attempts to integrate past contributions which have argued that these decisions could be explained by one of several factors, including: bounded rationality and imperfect information (Moe, 1980); the features of the public goods provided (or influenced by) these groups (Mitchell, 1979); the existence of a disequilibrium in households' demands for public goods (Weisbrod, 1977); or as a response to contract failures (Hansmann, 1980). The article uses a theoretical framework originally developed to explain individuals' decisions to join private clubs and specifies the conditions for the efficient provision of access to different types of private, nonprofit groups. By describing the optimal access conditions as if individuals could be coordinated to assure this efficient outcome, the model provides insights into the benefits and costs associated with membership in the environmental groups in practice.

Van de Kragt, Orbell, and Dawes (1983) reported the results of a series of experiments in which n subjects each receive a monetary endowment and then may choose privately whether to contribute it to a monetary public good; the good is supplied if a prespecified number m < n of contributions or more is made. Decision policies maximizing expected value are derived for this experimental paradigm under three different assumptions about the expectations each individual has about the decisions of the other n – I members: A homogeneity assumption postulating that each other member contributes with fixed probability p, a heterogeneity assumption postulating that the n – I p's are independently selected from a subjective probability distribution, and a partial homogeneity assumption postulating that the n – I members are partitioned into distinct subsets with the same p for all members of each subset. The theoretical and social implications of these assumptions are briefly discussed.

The expected utility framework developed in The War Trap is revised to correct several deficiencies. Risk-taking orientations are now treated as an integral part of the model by introducing concavity or convexity into the utility functions. The zero-sum properties of the theory are largely eliminated, and the tendency toward interpersonal comparisons of utility is removed. Several earlier results are replicated with the new model, and with annual capabilities data. New propositions are deduced that identify important limitations on conflict initiation, and relationships resulting from differences in perceptions are tested. Support is found for the contention that the revised version of the theory, of which the original model is a special case, is a powerful tool for integrating many extant hypotheses about conflict and for explaining a substantial portion of the tendency for some threats to escalate to violence or warfare and for others to be resolved peacefully.

In the course of making and justifying decisions, judges on state supreme courts often rely on precedents from other jurisdictions. These judicial references across boundaries constitute at least one means of communication and, in turn, demonstrate a complex web of deference and derogation between and among various courts. I attempt to uncover patterns of citation between the several state supreme courts and to evaluate alternative explanations for these patterns, including distance between courts; similarity of political culture; the prestige, professionalism, legal capital, and caseload of the cited court; the social diversity of the environment; differentials between courts on a number of dimensions; and presence in the same legal reporting region. More globally, I ask: Does the intensity of communications between a pair of courts result from the characteristics of the cited court or from differences and similarities between courts or jurisdictions? The results indicate the importance of legal reporting districts, distance between the courts, cultural linkages between the jurisdictions and, especially, characteristics of the cited court.