Charlie Wilson (D-TX) described his decision to retire from the U.S. House of Representatives as the best of the three options open to him: “To get defeated, to get carried out feet first, or to … start another life” (Gerhart and Groer 1995). Although much research has been undertaken on electoral defeat (Collie 1981; Ferejohn 1977; Jacobson 1992; Mann 1978) and voluntary retirement (Gilmour and Rothstein 1996; Groseclose and Krehbiel 1994; Hall and Van Houweling 1995; Hibbing 1982; Kieweit and Zeng 1993; Schansberg 1994), research on death is still in its infancy. Indeed, rather than staring death in the face, political scientists have buried the issue. In one recent study, for example, mortality is treated as a form of retirement:

Members of the House leave for a number of reasons, most prominent among them being electoral defeat and retirement. Other avenues of departure include death and expulsion. … Simplifying somewhat, we categorize all departures as either the result of electoral defeat or the result of ‘retirement’ (Gilmour and Rothstein 1996, 56).

Of course, some deaths—suicides—are voluntary. However, although many members of Congress die in office, suicide is extremely rare. Accordingly, we caution against treating death as a form of retirement. Otherwise, members of Congress must be presumed to engage in such implausible calculations as the following: “Let's see now. How shall I spend the next few years? I suppose I'll run for re-election. But maybe I should retire so I can spend more time playing golf. Or, since I'm thinking of retiring, why don't I just shuffle off this mortal coil, cross over Jordan's bank to the Stygian shore, pay my debt to nature, and join the choir invisible?”

In an age of diminished resources for higher education, the ranking of programs takes on special significance, particularly for programs that rate poorly in the eyes of their peers. Before cost-conscious administrators use the apparent precision of the National Research Council's 1995 ratings to justify rewarding highly rated programs, and penalizing those that fared less well, an analysis of the factors that contribute to ratings success—particularly department size—draws attention to the importance of factors that lie outside the range of departmental control.

Our motivation is only partly ‘academic’. As members of a faculty that rated poorly in this exercise (UB political science ranked 72nd out of the 98 programs surveyed on faculty quality and tied for 48th on “effectiveness”), we have a special interest in reminding our colleagues, and especially our administrators, that our less-than-stellar performance reflects a variety of considerations, only some of which are our “fault.”

Rating academic departments as the NRC has done by relying on peer perceptions (nearly 8,000 graduate-faculty members participated in the ratings survey) involves tapping into a complex set of social processes that are not easily measured. However, we contend that the outcome of this process can be modeled successfully and parsimoniously with a six-variable model of the “determinants of ratings success.” We estimate the parameters of this six-variable model in this article, and show that the most statistically robust and important predictor of ratings success—department size—reflects a characteristic of departments that is beyond their control, and has no direct bearing on the quality of the members of the departments concerned, while a second important indicator—the proportion of full professors—is at least in part similarly beyond departmental control. Our confidence that this model taps central features in the ratings game is enhanced by the consistency of its performance in explaining the ratings of other social science departments.

Not surprisingly, the ratings of doctoral programs in the United States by the National Research Council (NRC 1995) are controversial. Some interpret the ratings as an indicator of relative program quality; others view them as little more than a gauge of the size and age of graduate programs, and still others deem them to be simply a popularity barometer.

Employing data assembled in the NRC report, we examine whether the political science program ratings reflect two general sets of characteristics—the size and the productivity of faculty.

All other things equal, program quality should vary directly with faculty size, and indeed size is emphasized as a key explanatory factor in the NRC report. The logic is straightforward. Very small departments lack the means to field a range of graduate courses of sufficient breadth to form the basis of a serious program. Larger departments enjoy the increased resources that allow for greater program depth and breadth. In addition, holding quality concerns constant, larger programs should on average receive higher ratings simply because they include more faculty.

Twenty-two states have established state legislative term limits since 1990 and several others are considering similar action. Legislative term limits, intended to force a continuous turnover in a legislature's membership, can produce a number of consequences seldom considered in the voluminous rhetorical literature on the subject. Several unanticipated ramifications have occurred in California's political system, for instance, since its adoption of term limits. California's experience suggests that term limits can influence legislators' early retirement rates, as well as the incidence of special elections, and can also produce alternative legislator career paths.

While there is an abundance of conflicting rhetoric surrounding the issue, there is a paucity of empirical research to support the various contentions. Term limit advocates use only theoretical arguments to support their claims that restricting tenure of office makes legislators more sensitive to constituent desires and thus more reflective of public opinion (Jacob 1994). Historical references, but no empirical evidence, serve term limit proponents who suggest that limited incumbent time in office makes legislative bodies more deliberative (Will 1994). Term limit opponents similarly utilize only speculation when arguing that limited tenure of office handicaps effective governing (Cain 1994) and decreases needed policy-making expertise (Eastland 1993; Kesler 1994). None of these claims are supported by reliable, empirically verified data.

Just what do you have to do to successfully run for public office in the United States?

• In her first try at public office, a North Carolina musician and television personality with no prior political experience is steeling herself for the morning's round of “money calls” to potential contributors to her congressional congressional campaign, none of whom she's ever met.

• On the streets of Honolulu, savvy candidates for governor on down, know that the best way to reach their voters is to put on a colorful lei, grab as big a sign as they can carry, and stake out the corner with the busiest rush hour traffic passing by, to “sign wave.” If they don't do it, they'll never get elected.

• On the Crow Indian reservation in Montana—where one candidate for tribal leader describes local politics as cutthroat, “just like Mayor Daley's Chicago”—winning may be determined by which candidate throws the best venison feast or has the largest extended family of voters. And 80% of eligible voters will turn out on election day at the one polling place for 1700 square miles.

The publication of the latest rating of doctoral programs by the National Research Council (NRC 1995) has sparked great interest among university faculties. For some, the results vindicated years of focused efforts to improve their department's capacity, performance, and image. For others, it generated frustration because of the small change in scores from previous NRC rankings. And for still others, the NRC report occasioned soul-searching or defensive rationalization, including complaints that the reputational rankings did not reflect the “true” quality of the faculty (Magner 1995).

The NRC study conducted surveys of faculty in each of 41 scientific fields to learn about each doctoral-granting faculty's reputation for scholarly quality (93Q) and for the effectiveness of their doctoral program (93E). In addition, the NRC gathered information about the performance of departments (number of publications, citations to the publications of faculty, and external funding) as well as some other characteristics of the faculty (number of faculty, number of full professors) and doctoral student enrollments (number of students enrolled, number of Ph.D.'s granted in recent years). With these data, it is possible to explore the extent to which reputations are responsive to the performance of the faculty as well as to other department characteristics.

In his recent book on the many puzzles of Canadian nationalism, Richard Gwyn (1995, 9) notes that more Canadians (97%) cite their own country as the best in the world than do citizens of any other country. Notwithstanding this coup and the fact that Canada is one of the world's oldest continuously functioning democracies, in an October 30, 1995 referendum, the citizens of Quebec were again asked (as they had been in May, 1980) to vote oui or non on a proposal that would secure the political independence of Quebec. Although Quebeckers rejected the 1980 sovereignty proposal by a three to two margin, the 1995 sovereignty proposal failed by the proverbial eyelash. Why a country described by British writer Jan Morris as “all in all, on the whole, the most admirable on earth” (cited in Gwyn 1995, 51) should periodically appear on the brink of falling apart is a question that has engaged us because of our longstanding interest in the conditions under which democratic political systems are sustained over time.

It can be argued that many of the conditions associated with the emergence and development of a democracy were already obtained in 1867 when the new Dominion of Canada was created by an act of the British parliament. Inter alia, these included a Westminster-model parliamentary government, the rule of law, nascent political parties and free, competitive elections. However, as we have argued elsewhere (Kornberg and Clarke 1992, 12–19), the downside of “Confederation” (as the establishment of the Canadian state is termed) was that it either laid the groundwork for, or exacerbated, many of the national integration problems Canada has experienced.

Can philosophically inclined political scientists, as well as quantifying behavioralists, use diagrams? Of course … and have at least since Plato depicted Socrates drawing lines in the sand below the walls of Athens. Nothing will more quickly or comprehensively convey the relationships between the elements within a complex idea than a carefully constructed, skillfully rendered schematic diagram.

A few years back, I published a book on American politics (Roelofs 1992b). Some readers found it interesting, but others seemed unable to credit—much less to critique— its central claim: to have presented a detailed, integrated, and comprehensive account of the American political system as a conceptual whole. Apparently, for these readers, my argument was so extended, the elements to be connected within it so numerous (and sometimes individually so strange), they simply lost sight of my overall intent.

In a phenomenological perspective, the American political system, viewed comprehensively, is an Idea, extraordinarily complex, and filled with ingenious devices as well as major contradictions and paradoxes. Yet it is still a single system, as the diagram I have now developed to illustrate the argument of my book (Figure 1) attempts to show.

Is there an American political culture? Do Americans share a set of attitudes and assumptions powerful enough to shape their politics? A generation ago, most social scientists thought so. Important books bore titles like The American Mind (Henry Steel Commager 1950), The American Political Tradition (Richard Hofstadter 1948), or The Americans: The National Experience (Daniel Boorstin 1965). Critics occasionally damned the cultural consensus for its suffocating homogeneity (Hingham 1959), but few questioned its existence.

Today, agreement over a shared American culture has vanished. Some observers insist that it is still going strong. Americans, they argue, remain deeply committed to their core beliefs—things like individualism, equal opportunity, political rights, and government bashing. (Greenstone 1986, 1993; Huntington 1981) Others fear that centrifugal cultural forces bode serious trouble. America increasingly “belittles unum and glorifies pluribus,” writes Arthur Schlesinger Jr. Ethnic militancy “nourishes prejudices, magnifies differences, and stirs antagonisms…. Will the Center hold? or will the melting pot give way to the Tower of Babel” (1993 17–18)? And still others cheer precisely the diversity that Schlesinger laments. American political culture, they argue, was more the hegemony of the powerful than any real harmony among the people. From this perspective, that “Babel” is the welcome sound of overlooked voices. (Thelen and Hoxie 1994; Fox and Lears 1993; Foner 1990)