Although the role of reciprocity in international cooperation is central to neoliberal institutionalism, empirical understanding of the concept remains weak. We analyze strategic response patterns—the use of reciprocity or inverse response (bullying)—in the Bosnia conflict from 1992 to 1995. We construct weekly time series of conflict and cooperation among the parties to the Bosnia war, using machine-coded events data. Time-series statistical analysis identifies several important patterns of strategic response, both reciprocal and inverse. These include bilateral responses, which are central to the concepts of reciprocity and evolution of cooperation, and triangular responses, which are central to the debates on containment versus accommodation in regional conflicts. Specifically, Serb forces displayed inverse triangular response, cooperating toward Bosnia after being punished by NATO. Outside powers displayed triangular reciprocity, increasing hostility toward Serb forces after Serbian attacks on the Bosnian government.

With which political and economic variables is change in international financial regulation robustly associated? I undertook multivariate regression analysis of this question using a quantitative measure of the regulation of international financial transactions. The measure was created by coding the laws of 64 nations. The associations between change in international financial regulation and measures of long-run economic growth, corporate taxation, government expenditures, and income inequality are estimated, using the models, methods, and data of Batro (1991), Deininger and Squire (1996a), Leamer (1983, 1985), and Levine and Renelt (1992). The findings point to a new agenda for research on international financial regulation.

Previous studies of political decision making have used only “static” choice sets, where alternatives are “fixed” and are a priori known to the decision maker. We assess the effect of a dynamic choice set (new alternatives appear during the decision process) on strategy selection and choice in international politics. We suggest that decision makers use a mixture of decision strategies when making decisions in a two-stage process consisting of an initial screening of available alternatives, and a selection of the best one from the subset of remaining alternatives. To test the effects of dynamic and static choice sets on the decision process we introduce a computer-based “process tracer” in a study of top-ranking officers in the U.S. Air Force. The results show that (1) national security decision makers use a mixture of strategies in arriving at a decision, and (2) strategy selection and choice are significantly influenced by the structure of the choice set (static versus dynamic).

Framing is the process by which a communication source, such as a news organization, defines and constructs a political issue or public controversy. Two experiments examined the effect of news frames on tolerance for the Ku Klux Klan. The first presented research participants with one of two local news stories about a Klan rally that varied by frame: One framed the rally as a free speech issue, and the other framed it as a disruption of public order. Participants who viewed the free speech story expressed more tolerance for the Klan than participants who watched the public order story. Additional data indicate that frames affect tolerance by altering the perceived importance of public order values. The relative accessibility of free speech and public order concepts did not respond to framing. A second experiment used a simulated electronic news service to present different frames and replicated these findings.

The average voter falls far short of the prescriptions of classic democratic theory in terms of interest, knowledge, and participation in politics. We suggest a more realistic standard: Citizens fulfill their democratic duties if, most of the time, they vote “correctly.” Relying on an operationalization of correct voting based on fully informed interests, we present experimental data showing that, most of the time, people do indeed manage to vote correctly. We also show that voters' determinations of their correct vote choices can be predicted reasonably well with widely available survey data. We illustrate how this measure can be used to determine the proportion of the electorate voting correctly, which we calculate at about 75% for the five American presidential elections between 1972 and 1988. With a standard for correct vote decisions, political science can turn to exploring the factors that make it more likely that people will vote correctly.

In some African countries, democratic openings have intensified ethnic competition and led to protracted transitions or outright conflict. In Kenya, I argue, the stalled transition reflects the effects of republican citizenship in ethnic political communities and liberal citizenship in the national political community. This duality in citizenship engenders conflict over democracy—conceived as liberal majoritarian democracy—and results in ethnic coalitions disagreeing over which institutions are appropriate for a multiethnic state. I provide evidence from discourses over institutions from two transition periods in Kenya: at independence and in the recent shift from one-party rule. This study makes two contributions. First, it adds to current citizenship theory, which is largely derived from Western experience, by demonstrating that republican and liberal citizenships are not necessarily compatible and that the modern nation-state is not the only relevant community for forming citizens. Second, it adds to studies of African transitions by highlighting citizenship issues in institutional design with regard to ethnicity in Kenya.

Electorates in several East European countries have thrown their support behind reconstructed communist parties. Is personal economic hardship driving this phenomenon? We argue that political behavior in postcommunist societies is fundamentally structured by interpretations of the transition histories, which were centrally constitutive events. We propose a structural equation model in which understandings of the past mediate the relationship between personal circumstances and satisfaction with economic reforms. We analyze cross-sectional data collected in Poland immediately after the 1993 parliamentary elections and find, consistent with our hypotheses, that understandings of the past exert as much of an effect on attitudes toward reforms as do personal economic assessments. We use multinomial logit to analyze vote choice and find that personal economic circumstances are of little importance. Attitudes toward economic reforms have a limited effect on voting behavior, but their importance is eclipsed by understandings of the past and other factors, such as religion.

In Political Liberalism, John Rawls employs a distinctive method of “political constructivism” to establish his well-known principles of justice, arguing that his principles are suited to bridge the ineradicable pluralism of liberal societies and so to ground an “overlapping consensus.” Setting aside the question of whether Rawls's method supports his principles, I argue that he does not adequately defend reliance on this particular method rather than alternatives. If the goal of Rawls's “political” philosophy is to derive principles that are able to overcome liberal pluralism, then another and simpler method should be employed. The “method of convergence” would develop liberal principles directly from the convergence of comprehensive views in existing societies, and so give rise to quite different moral principles.

Contrary to a prevailing wisdom, the Christian ethos was at least as sympathetic to republicanism as it was to monarchy, especially to the primacy of the public welfare but also to corporate decision making. This can be seen in the early church, especially in the writings of St. Cyprian, in the medieval civic-communal movement, in conciliar constitutionalism, and in political Calvinism. Significant aspects of Rousseau's thought may be seen as a restatement of a Christian political dynamic.

Plato's proposal for the equality of the sexes remains one of the most controversial aspects of his argument in the Republic. I explore this argument with special emphasis on locating it within larger themes of the work, themes whose relevance to the argument on gender equality have often been ignored. On this basis, I find that Plato's defense of gender equality is serious, but that the foundation and the consequences of that argument have not usually been well understood. Plato's argument for gender equality rests on a distinctive view of human nature, and his elaboration of the consequences of pursuing gender equality reveal that a price would have to be paid for it that few are willing to accept. His argument should be considered by contemporary advocates of gender equality.

The attempted coup in August 1991 provides an acid test of whether a democratic political culture is emerging in the former Soviet Union. This paper considers the hypothesis that active resistance to the coup was partly a function of attachments to democracy. Relying heavily on earlier models of collective action, and based on a 1992 survey of mass opinion in all the republics, this hypothesis is tested within a broader theory of rational choice and expectancy theory. Generally, it seems that reactions to the coup were not based on strictly rational calculations and that basic commitments to the collective good of democracy motivated resistance. My general conclusion is that a mass culture has emerged in Russia that nurtures democracy. The 1991 coup demonstrates that for many people in the former Soviet states there is little alternative to democratic politics.

Institutional design can affect the logic of ongoing collective action in groups with heterogeneous members. This article corrects a mathematical error in a seminal article by Bendor and Mookherjee (1987) and shows how the amended result strengthens the case for centralized monitoring and enforcement mechanisms. In solving their original model, Bendor and Mookherjee neglected that groups under centralized control will become increasingly talented over time, as headquarters detects and replaces untalented members. Expected improvements in the talent of the group should heighten the incentive for its members to work and curtail the incidence of costly free riding, as well as reduce the average per-worker cost of production. These gains in efficiency will not materialize in decentralized regimes, where the fraction of talented members will remain constant over time. Depending on the effectiveness of monitoring in the centralized group and the level of patience and talent in society as a whole, centralized regimes can produce greater group welfare than decentralized ones, even when decentralized institutions operate flawlessly.

Schwartz and Tomz (1997) have correctly pointed out an error in our 1987 article: We had neglected to analyze how changes in group composition improve the performance of centralized institutions over time. The change affects only the case of perfect monitoring, however. We argue, moreover, that even in this special context, our main qualitative conclusion—that the centralized structure has no positive advantage over the decentralized one—continues to hold. We reach different conclusions about the relative roles of the two institutions, partly because we had in mind a positive interpretation, whereas Schwartz and Tomz select a normative interpretation of the issue of institutional choice. Finally, we believe that imperfect monitoring is essential to the theory, in order to derive conclusions that are not driven by artifacts of the model or by arbitrary equilibrium selections.