Today it is all the rage for political theorists and even philosophers to have theories of justice. Looking back on the history of political thought, we cannot help but notice that not all previous philosophers have taken justice and theories of justice so seriously. Among those who did not was Aristotle. To be sure, he had a theory of justice, and from this fact we might infer that he thought it necessary to have one. But I shall presently argue, primarily from Aristotle's treatment of the problem in the Nicomachean Ethics, that Aristotle thought all theories of justice, including his own, to be unsatisfactory. In his opinion, a politics that understands its highest purpose as justice and a political science that attempts to comprehend all political phenomena within a theory of justice are practically and theoretically unsound.

The central theoretical chapters of the Prince(chapters 15 ff.) yield forgotten justifications of the road the West has traveled. Machiavelli relieves us of our qualms; in chapter 16, over dangling the carrot; in chapter 17, over brandishing the stick. He thereby lays the moral foundations for societies based, as all modem societies have been, on collective aggrandizement recognizing no limits in principle, and on justice understood as the enforcement of “equal (but otherwise boundless) opportunity.”

This article examines the basic social science concepts of “power” and “social exchange” in order to determine the possibility and desirability of integrating them. It is argued that: (1) all exchange relationships can be described in terms of conventional power concepts without twisting the common-sense notions that underlie such concepts; (2) most–but not necessarily all–power relationships can be described in terms of exchange terminology; (3) there are some advantages to conceiving of power in this way; (4) recent social exchange theorists have neither illuminated nor recognized most of these advantages. After a preliminary examination of the concepts of “power” and “exchange,” the discussion focuses on the analytical and conceptual problems associated with volition, exchange media, asymmetry, sanctions, and authority.

In spite of the traditional legitimacy accorded the market mechanism of the private sector in advanced capitalist nations, governments in those nations have become more influential as providers of social services and income supplements, producers of goods, managers of the economy, and investors of capital. And in order to finance these various activities the revenues of public authorities have increased dramatically–to a point where they are now equivalent to one-third to one-half of a nation's economic product.

This growth in governmental activity in advanced capitalist society is examined by considering the causes, and some of the consequences, of the expansion of the public economy–defined, following Schumpeter's discussion of the “tax state,” in terms of the extractive role of government. The primary concern of this article is to discover why some nations have experienced a far greater rate of increase in recent years and, as a result, have a much larger public economy than other nations. Five types of explanation are elaborated to account for the growth of the scope of governmental activity: (1) the level and rate of growth in the economic product; (2) the degree to which the fiscal structure of a nation relies on indirect, or “invisible,” taxes; (3) politics–in particular the partisan composition of government and the frequency of electoral competition; (4) the institutional structure of government; and (5) the degree of exposure of the economy to the international marketplace. The article evaluates the five explanations with data for 18 nations, and concludes by discussing some implications of the analysis.

This paper specifies and estimates a model of the structural determinants of coups d'état for the new states of black Africa in the years from 1960 through 1975. Results indicate that (1) both social mobilization and the presence of a dominant ethnic group are destabilizing (these effects are additive); (2) multipartyism is destabilizing while electoral turnout in the last election before independence is stabilizing; (3) multipartyism is particularly destabilizing where a dominant ethnic group exists; (4) the presence of such a group reduces (but does not eliminate) the stabilizing effect of turnout; and (5) multipartyism has no pronounced effect on elite instability where turnout is high. Taken together, these patterns account for over four-fifths of the variance in coups d'état in black Africa in the period.

The diminishing salience of territorial issues, the restraints imposed by the nuclear balance, the shift away from the primacy of military-strategic elements of power to the primacy of economic elements, the day-to-day realities of economic interdependence, and changes in the nature of the nation-state have produced a new international order which resembles in important ways the domestic political systems prevalent in the industrialized noncommunist part of the world. This leads to the “domestication” of international politics. At the same time competitive nationalism, the vitality of the nation-state, differing perceptions of the proper role of government in the economy, and other considerations allow not much more than a tenuous coordination of foreign policies even among similar nation-states, making it unlikely that the European Economic Community and the Atlantic alliance will proceed beyond existing structures toward tighter integration.

This article attempts to examine alliance formation behavior as a stochastic process amenable to systems interpretation. We test two hypotheses linking the systems characteristics of bipolar distribution/tightly knit bloc structure to serial dependence and stability of alliance formation behavior and multipolar distribution/loosely knit bloc structure to randomness and process instability.

For testing these hypotheses, we have introduced a modeling strategy whereby identification of serial dependence and parameter estimation are accomplished by means of stochastic difference equations and time series autocorrelation and partial autocorrelation functions, and systems interpretation is facilitated by employing its continuous analogue in differential equation form.

We analyze data on three sets of observations corresponding to three distinct periods of international relations: 1815–1914, 1919–1939, 1945–1965. The results do confirm the proposed hypotheses revealing randomness and instability of alliance formation behavior in the multipolar/loosely knit periods of 1815–1914 and 1919–1939 and serial dependence and stability in the bipolar/tightly knit 1945–1965 period. Finally, we consider the implications of these results for the earlier findings, the balance of power model, and the probability of war.

Fair districting requires more than compact, contiguous equal-sized districts; namely, sets of districts should also possess certain features. Specifically, they should be neutral (treat all parties alike) and responsive to changes in votes. In order to establish the extent to which these goals can be achieved, we give a precise definition to the concept of neutrality and expand the notion of responsiveness into three characteristics: the range in actual votes over which a districting plan is responsive; the degree of responsiveness in the vicinity of the “normal vote” (i.e., competitiveness); and the constancy of the swing ratio (i.e., the rate at which vote changes yield seat changes) over a range of votes. We show that while all possible values for these features are readily attainable when considered individually, certain combinations of values cannot be achieved. Finally, we identify the nature of the compromises required and the properties that the compromises possess, and show the kinds of trade-offs that result in reasonably fair districting plans.

This article analyzes the social and political conditions associated with the incidence of racial violence in a sample of 119 American cities. Data on the incidence of racial disorders are drawn from newspaper accounts compiled by the Lemberg Center for the Study of Violence during the period 1967–1969. A total of 334 disorders are analyzed.

Two alternative hypotheses are examined. The first assumes that the causes of the black urban riots are rooted largely in the disorganized environment of socially marginal individuals. The second attempts to locate the outbreak of rioting primarily within a closed and unresponsive political system. Paradoxically, the results tend to provide empirical support for both theoretical perspectives. At the same time, the data suggest the need to reformulate and revise conventional interpretations of the black urban riots. This is done by synthesizing and testing a developmental model which implies a curvilinear relationship between the incidence of racial violence on the one hand, and black political development on the other.

This article develops a formal framework to aid political designers in the comparison of social choice functions. It generalizes earlier assumptions of “impartial culture” so that we may begin to investigate the effect of politically interesting variations on the probability that different social choice functions will satisfy given performance criteria. As an application of the framework, a detailed Monte Carlo study compares the ability of four different social choice functions to select a Condorcet winner when voter preference orders have been generated from a spatial representation of ideal points and alternatives. We also investigate the potential of alternative methods of selecting winners in presidential primary elections.