An understanding of Machiavelli's assessment of Cesare Borgia in The Prince is essential for interpreting his view of politics, but the ambiguity of that assessment has led to vastly different conclusions about Machiavelli's political teaching and Cesare's significance. We approach Machiavelli's ultimate intentions through a consideration of his more immediate concern for Italy. Machiavelli's great interest in Cesare and his criticism of this potential hero stem from the historical context of an Italy divided due to the Church. Cesare possessed—yet squandered—an opportunity to rid Italy of the evils plaguing it by killing his father, Pope Alexander, and by eliminating the College of Cardinals. Machiavelli's suggested denouement to the plot of The Prince is an assault on the ecclesiastical power. He invites his reader to contemplate the vulnerability of the Church and to act where Cesare and others shrank. Machiavelli ultimately counsels us to break our reliance on God or fortune and thus create the conditions for a reinvigorated civil life.

A continuum of voters, indexed by income, have preferences over economic outcomes. Two political parties each represent the interests of given constituencies of voters: the rich and the poor. Parties/candidates put forth policies—for instance, tax policy, where taxes finance a public good. Voters are uncertain about the theory of the economy, the function that maps policies into economic outcomes. Parties argue, as well, for theories of the economy. Each voter has a prior probability distribution over possible theories of the economy; after parties announce their theories of the economy, each voter constructs an a posteriori distribution over such theories. Suppose that voters are unsure how efficiently the government converts tax revenues into the public good. Under reasonable assumptions the party representing the rich argues that the government is very inefficient and the party representing the poor argues the opposite. What appear as liberal and conservative ideological views emerge as simply good strategies in the electoral game.

American social welfare policy involves a politically significant fiscal interaction between short-run, pay-as-you-go constraints and long-run equilibrium constraints motivated by the contributory principle and the concept of actuarial soundness. The fiscal constraints induce conflict between benefit recipients and payroll-tax-payers. To support small election-year reductions in payroll taxes, means-tested program benefits are slightly reduced in election years (compared to non-election-year levels under similar economic conditions). The existence of the constraints and of the election-year changes is tested using a multivariate time series regression model of monthly transfer payments and contributions for social insurance during years 1948–87. Short-run dynamics are found to be weakly incrementalist, but otherwise the results support the argument. Extraordinary manipulations are identified during 1972. Special technical features of the econometric analysis are a nonlinear, dynamic specification; robust generalized method of moments estimation; and near cointegration.

Previous investigations of strategic voting equilibria in mass electorates have looked only at single-member districts. I shall investigate such equilibria in multimember districts operating under the single nontransferable vote system. What appear to be the most natural equilibria conform to the M + 1 rule, according to which strategic voting in M-seat districts produces exactly M + 1 vote-getting candidates in equilibrium, any others having their support totally undercut. This result provides the beginnings of a formal underpinning for Reed's recent extension of Duverger's Law to the Japanese case. The model also generates specific and empirically testable hypotheses concerning the exceptions to the M + 1 rule that one ought to expect in equilibrium. I test these hypotheses with Japanese data. Finally, the model also reveals a type of strategic voting that is specific to multimember districts. I use Japanese data again to explore the empirical importance of this kind of strategic voting.

The problem of choosing an indigenous official language for multilingual states in general and for Ghana in particular is treated as one of coordination in an n-person tipping game. Even with an assumption that the equilibrium outcome of all-English is deficient, the mechanisms for reaching an indigenous language solution are difficult to find. A lottery (a theoretically attractive approach to the solution of coordination games) is less attractive when applied to the issue of language coordination. Empirical data based on interviews from six different regions of Ghana show the limits and possibilities of the theoretic solution. Going back to theory, a mechanism for the successful promotion of an indigenous language outcome is proposed.

Confirming Inglehart's prediction (1971) of an intergenerational shift toward postmaterialist values, a time series analysis controlling for the joint effects of inflation and unemployment demonstrates that there is a statistically significant trend toward postmaterialism in all eight West European countries for which data are available over the past two decades. Evidence from the 1981–83 and 1990–91 World Values Surveys indicates that this value shift occurs in any society that has experienced sufficient economic growth in recent decades so that the preadult experiences of younger birth cohorts were significantly more secure than those of older cohorts. Large intergenerational differences tend to be found in societies that have experienced rapid growth in gross national product per capita, and are negligible in societies that have had little or no growth. Accordingly, postmaterialism increased in 18 of the 20 societies on five continents for which we have comparable data over the past decade.

In comparative politics, an established finding—that economic development fosters democratic performance—has recently come under challenge. We counter this challenge with a dynamic pooled time series analysis of a major, but neglected data set from 131 nations. The final generalized least squares-autoregressive moving averages estimates (N = 2,096) appear robust and indicate strong economic development effects, dependent in part on the nation's position in the world system. For the first time, rather hard evidence is offered on the causal relationship between economics and democracy. According to Granger tests, economic development “causes” democracy, but democracy does not “cause” economic development. Overall, the various tests would seem to advance sharply the modeling of democratic performance.

Increasingly, it is said that the main determinants of electoral outcomes are class, ethnicity, and religion and that local political organizations occupy only marginal roles in national elections. I assess the effects of local party organizations in the presidential election of 1989 in Brazil. Given the long hiatus in competitive politics, the absence of any parties linked to the country's previous democratic experience, and the weakness of citizen identification with political parties, Brazil should be a textbook example of the collapse of local political organizations. The presidential candidates, however, acted as if party endorsements mattered, and in the context of Brazilian politics, it was rational for municipal mayors to trade blocs of votes for future local benefits. Applying a series of increasingly complex models to the vote shares of the leading candidates, I show that all candidates did significantly better in municipalities where the mayor represented their party. I also show that spatial factors affect the tactics of local politicians, and I distinguish charismatic from purely organizational components of support.

Constitutional design proceeds under the assumption that institutions have predictable consequences, but modern political science has not pursued the empirical verification of these predicted consequences with much vigor. I shall attempt to link the theoretical premises underlying one important aspect of constitutional design, the amendment process, with the empirical patterns revealed by a systematic, comparative study of constitutions. An examination of all amendments in the 50 American states since 1776 reveals patterns that are then confirmed using data from 32 national constitutions. The interaction of the two key variables affecting amendment rate can be described by an equation that generates predicted amendment rates close to those found in the cross-national empirical analysis. A constitution's length measured in number of words, the difficulty of an amendment process, and the rate of amendment turn out to have interlocking consequences that illuminate principles of constitutional design.

While the allocation of interest group monies to specific politicians has been extensively studied, little is known about the factors that determine of the overall level of political activity across groups. We study total contributions by corporate political action committees at the industry level. We create a large data set on industry political activity, covering 124 industries across five election cycles from 1978 to 1986 and sketch out a simple benefit-cost model to predict total corporate PAC contributions in each industry. The few previous studies of this phenomenon use relatively small samples and employ statistical techniques that are either biased or impose untested restrictions. The selectivity-corrected regression technique used here solves these problems. We find that industries with greater potential benefits from government assistance contribute systematically more but that the ability to realize these benefits is constrained by collective action problems facing firms in each industry.

Bargaining failure has been neglected in the study of interparty coalitions. I examine the unsuccessful attempt by three Norwegian nonsocialist parties to defeat a Labor party minority government in June 1987 when the majority opposition twice failed to agree on a simple vote to that end. This failure of coalition bargaining was facilitated by incomplete information, intraparty constraints and misdelegation of authority, and by anticipation of the impending parliamentary recess. Despite these complexities, simple noncooperative games like the war of attrition can shed considerable light on this and other unsuccessful negotiations. The “Presthus debacle” demonstrates that political parties bring many different objectives to the bargaining table and that the trade-offs between these objectives vary according to organizational and institutional conditions.

A causal model of relationships between structural properties of states, civic culture attitudes of the general public, and change in level of democracy is tested with cross-national data. The model permits inferences about the possibility of unidirectional or reciprocal causation between civic culture attitudes and democracy, controlling for macrosocietal variables such as economic development, income inequality, and subcultural pluralism. Most civic culture attitudes do not have any significant impact on change in democracy. One of them, interpersonal trust, appears clearly to be an effect rather than a cause of democracy. The exception is the percentage of the general public that prefers gradual reform of society instead of revolutionary change or intransigent defense of the status quo. Support for gradual reform has a positive impact on change in democracy, and it is unrelated to a country's years of continuous democracy—findings that support the hypothesis of a unidirectional civic culture effect on democracy.

We address two questions: How do people form their expectations about the likely winner of the next general election? and What are the links between expectations and votes? Using data collected by the Gallup organization in Great Britain, we find that the expectations formation process (1) has a significant inertia component but also a rapid adjustment to current information; (2) reflects voters' ability to translate economic expectations into political forecasts; and (3) is “time-bounded,” possessing special characteristics immediately before and after a general election. The analysis also confirms the existence of a small bandwagon effect, whereby expectations that one party will win inflate that party's vote. The ability of voters to make reasonable forecasts without being unduly influenced by their own preferences suggests that under normal circumstances voters are expressing real preferences and not simply following the crowd.

The unification of Germany revives several questions about the future of Germany's democracy. Given the socialist-authoritarian background, how supportive are East Germany's elites of liberal democratic rights? Has the socialist-democratic experience instilled into elites a social egalitarian conception of democracies? In what ways, if at all, do elites support direct democracy procedures? I examine political elites' conceptions of democracies in the united Germany in 1991, using a survey of 168 parliamentarians from the united parliament in Berlin. I find that the socialist and parliamentary institutions in the East and the West, respectively, have substantially influenced elites' conceptions of democracies in Germany, leading to a value divergence across the East-West boundary. Yet the findings also suggest that a partial value convergence in terms of liberal democratic rights among postwar elites has taken place. The results support an institutional learning theory, but they also suggest that support for liberal democratic values has been diffused into East Germany.

The European Parliament under the current cooperation procedure has an important power: it can make proposals that, if accepted by the Commission of the European Communities, are easier for the Council of Ministers to accept than to modify, since only qualified majority is required for acceptance, whereas full unanimity for modification. The importance of this power, which I call the power of the conditional agenda setter, has not been recognized in previous scholarly work. For structural reasons explained in the text, this power is likely to increase in the future. I conclude by arguing that the conditional delegation of power to international actors (the European Parliament, Commission, and the Court of Justice) is a frequent phenomenon in European institutions. This delegation presents three important advantages: it makes possible the selection of one among many possible equilibria, it accelerates European integration, and it diffuses responsibility for politically unpopular measures.

The moral economic school, which has flourished among anthropologists, economic historians, and classicists, has received only limited attention from political scientists. This is perplexing, since at its core is to be found an intersection of debates over rational choice theory, the character of modern and premarket societies, and the normative standing of the market—in other words, over issues of formidable importance to our discipline. I seek to correct that neglect by mapping out and critically analyzing the moral economists' conception of modernity, their critique of the economic approach to human behavior and institutions, and their attempt to formulate an Aristotelian theory of the economy. These projects, though flawed, together are more than rich enough to provide fertile ground for political scientists and philosophers. I conclude with a discussion of the moral economists' effort to develop a normative theory of the economy together with a related critique of the market.

In the opening sentence of the Republic, Socrates recounts his intention to combine the operations of piety and theoretical speculation. Nevertheless, many readers regard Cephalus' subsequent abandonment of rational inquiry to perform certain sacred rites as a definitive indication of Plato's opinion that piety and philosophy are fundamentally incompatible. I find this interpretation untenable inasmuch as it depends upon the misidentification of Cephalus as the dialogue's representative of piety. I suggest that the true nature and philosophical significance of piety are indicated instead in Socrates' conversation with Cephalus' son, Polemarchus. As this conversation unfolds, Polemarchus' pious inclinations culminate in a perception of the dearness of the unknown good. Inspired by this piety, Socrates and Polemarchus defend the conventional paragon Simonides and, at the same time, launch a truly philosophical inquiry into justice.

Previous articles in this Review, including a Controversy in 1992, debated the comparability of alternative forms of the question about partisanship asked in Gallup and Michigan SRC surveys. Bishop, Tuchfarber and Smith contribute to this debate by reporting and analyzing evidence from 15 experimental surveys in Ohio in 1991–1993. They conclude that the distribution of partisan loyalties will generally be the same whether one uses the Gallup or Michigan Survey Research Center question and that, contrary to findings of Abramson and Ostrom, the Gallup form is no more responsive to short-term political forces than its SRC counterpart. In response, Abramson and Ostrom agree that during many time periods there will be little difference between aggregate levels of macropartisanship regardless of which measure is used. But they argue that during periods of political volatility the Gallup approach will accentuate differences, while the SRC version will attenuate them.

Aristotle's science of the best regime brings to light an almost forgotten hut by no means settled quarrel between reason and faith concerning the best way of life and its political embodiments. Aristotle denies the claimed superiority of divine legislation, in favor of the guidance supplied by unaided reason. Aristotle knows, however, as contemporary political science may not, that only by confronting the divine law as such can science avoid collapsing into dogmatism. The present study attempts to sketch that confrontation by considering Aristotle's analysis of justice—the concern fundamental to both Aristotle and divine law—in order simply to encourage the kind of reflection necessary to reinvigorate rationalism, or that which, according to Aristotle, is closest to the divine in man.

The neorealist-neoliberal debate about the possibilities for collective action in international relations has been based on a shared commitment to Mancur Olson's rationalist definition of the problem as one of getting exogenously given egoists to cooperate. Treating this assumption as a de facto hypothesis about world politics, I articulate the rival claim that interaction at the systemic level changes state identities and interests. The causes of state egoism do not justify always treating it as given. Insights from critical international relations and integration theories suggest how collective identity among states could emerge endogenously at the systemic level. Such a process would generate cooperation that neither neorealists nor neoliberals expect and help transform systemic anarchy into an “international state”—a transnational structure of political authority that might undermine territorial democracy. I show how broadening systemic theory beyond rationalist concerns can help it to explain structural change in world politics.