There is a great deal of political activity which can be explained adequately only by taking account of the personal characteristics of the actors involved. The more intimate the vantage, the more detailed the perspective, the greater the likelihood that political actors will loom as full-blown individuals influenced by all of the peculiar strengths and weaknesses to which the species homo sapiens is subject, in addition to being role-players, creatures of situation, members of a culture, and possessors of social characteristics such as occupation, class, sex, and age.

To a non-social scientist the observation that individuals are important in politics would seem trite. Undergraduates, until they have been trained to think in terms of impersonal categories of explanation, readily make assertions about the psychology of political actors in their explanations of politics. So do journalists. Why is it that most political scientists are reluctant to deal explicitly with psychological matters (apart from using a variety of rather impersonal psychological constructs such as “party identification,” “sense of political efficacy,” and the like)? Why is political psychology not a systematically developed subdivision of political science, occupying the skill and energy of a substantial number of scholars?

Games are paradigms of many political events, especially those that involve partial or complete conflicts of interest among the participants. As paradigms, they display in relatively simple social interaction the same fundamental forces found in the more complex interactions of the grander political events whose structure they share. This is the feature of games that makes them attractive vehicles for both theorizing and experimentation in the social sciences. The scientific expectation is that, by studying the quasi-political interaction of games—where the variations among institutional, psychological, and ideological components of behavior are minimized—one will be able to understand more profoundly the basic political activities of bargaining, forming coalitions, and choosing strategies. This more profound understanding is a consequence of obtaining answers to the following questions:

(1) What is the mathematical solution, that is, what amount of utility can players be expected to obtain, when it is assumed that players are rational and wish to maximize utility?

(2) What is the strategy (or method of playing) that will ensure players of achieving the solution?

An answer to the first question indicates what may be anticipated as the outcome of political events. If we know it, then, if also we can assume players are rational maximizers of utility, we can predict the political future with some confidence. An answer to the second question (about strategies) permits political engineers to give advice to politicians about how to behave successfully.

The Supreme Court of the United States, whose decisions not only define constitutional law but vitally affect national policy, has long held both an honored and a controversial place in American life. In no area do its decisions bring it more honor or more controversy than in the field of religion; for, as a member of the First Congress under the Constitution said, “the rights of conscience are, in their nature, of peculiar delicacy, and will little bear the gentlest touch of governmental hand. … Thus, the same decision of the Court may be hailed by some as a great landmark in the struggle for religious liberty, and denounced by others as a serious invasion of liberty of conscience. For although it may be pleasant to dream of religion insulated from governmental touch, the dual membership of citizens in the state and in religious bodies insures that conscience and government will touch at some points with inevitable friction, and, to the conscience so touched, it makes little difference whether the governmental hand is that of a local school board, the Congress, or the Supreme Court of the United States.

The Court has recently been attacked as antireligious, or at least as callous to our religious heritage, because of its decisions invalidating a state-prescribed prayer and state-prescribed Bible reading in public schools. The first of these decisions prompted the more excited outcry, but the two, at first singly and then together, have precipitated a renewed debate about the proper constitutional relationship between the state and religion.

Long periods of one-party domination, increased average tenure in office for Representatives, and the institutionalization of patterns of succession to the Speakership, have all contributed to a tendency toward leadership stability in the 20th-century House of Representatives. The election of Sam Rayburn (D., Texas) and John McCormack (D., Mass.) to the offices of Speaker and Majority Leader in 1940, of Joseph Martin (R., Mass.) to the office of Minority Leader in 1939, and of Leslie Arends (R., Ill.) to the position of Republican Whip in 1943, mark the beginnings of the longest tenures in these four positions for any incumbents in the history of Congress. When changes in top leadership occur—as with the overthrow of Minority Leader Charles A. Halleck by Republican Representative Gerald R. Ford, Jr., in 1965, or the succession of Majority Leader McCormack to the office of the Speaker in 1962 following the death of Rayburn—the consequences are considerable. In the case of revolt, individual careers are made and broken. The organization and policy orientations of a congressional party may be extensively altered. While orderly succession has less dramatic impact, it too has a significant effect on “who gets what, when and how.” Some members move closer to the seats of power and others fall out of favor. Key committee assignments, and hence the development of entire legislative careers, are likely to ride or fall on the outcomes.

Midterm congressional elections have been subjected to relatively little analysis. This is surprising because these elections exhibit three quite striking features which, when taken together, call for further explanation. First, every midterm House election since the Civil War, with the exception of 1934, has brought a net loss of seats to the President's party. Second, in the large majority of elections the net loss has approximated the gross loss. The in-party (i.e., the President's party) seldom has captured seats from the other party to offset its own loss. And third, although the in-party's loss has been persistent, the number of seats lost has varied widely.

Attempts to incorporate midterm elections into a broader interpretive framework of American election studies usually stress one of the first two features outlined above. The fact that only the in-party loses—and that its losses are mainly in marginal districts—has led commentators such as V. O. Key Jr. and the authors of The American Voter to interpret these midterm elections as part of the stable, long-term trends in voters' party allegiance.

A decade ago, political scientists were deploring the “lost world of municipal government” and calling for systematic studies of municipal life which emphasized the political, rather than the administrative, side of urban political life. In recent years, this demand has been generously answered and urban politics is becoming one of the most richly plowed fields of political research. In terms originally introduced by David Easton, political scientists have long been concerned with inputs, but more recently they have focused their attention on other system variables, particularly the political culture and policy outputs of municipal governments.

The present paper will treat two policy outputs, taxation and expenditure levels of cities, as dependent variables. We will relate these policy choices to socio-economic characteristics of cities and to structural characteristics of their governments. Our central research concern is to examine the impact of political structures, reformed and unreformed, on policy-making in American cities.

A question that has puzzled students of ethnic politics can be stated as follows: in the face of increasing assimilation why do ethnics continue to vote as ethnics with about the same frequency as in earlier decades? On the basis of his New Haven study, Robert Dahl observes that “… in spite of growing assimilation, ethnic factors continued to make themselves felt with astonishing tenacity.” Nevertheless, he asserts, “the strength of ethnic ties as a factor in local politics surely must recede.” Dahl sets up a “three-stage” model to describe how political assimilation will follow a more general social assimilation. However, one of his co-researchers, Raymond Wolfinger, demonstrates in a recent article in this Review that ethnic voting patterns persist into the second and third generations, and that “at least in New Haven, all the social changes of the 1940's and 1950's do not seem to have reduced the political importance of national origins.” The same observation can be made of religious-ethnic identities, for as Wolfinger notes, citing data from the Elmira study, social mobility in no way diminishes the religious factor as a determinant of voting behavior; in fact, in the case of upper and middle class Catholics and Protestants, religion seems to assume a heightened importance as a voting determinant. Wolfinger marshals evidence to support the arresting proposition that, melting pot or not, ethnic voting may be with us for a long time to come, a finding which craves explanation.

Part of the reason for the persistence of ethnic voting may rest in the political system itself. Rather than being a purely dependent variable, the political system, i.e., party, precinct workers, candidates, elections, patronage, etc., continues to rely upon ethnic strategies such as those extended to accommodate the claims of newly-arrived ethnic middle-class leadership; as a mediator and mobilizer of minority symbols and interests, the political system must be taken into account.

This article represents an attempt to assess the degree of legal certainty in post-February 1948 Czechoslovakia and, more specifically, the intervention of political bias in the work of the courts. This conflict will be viewed and evaluated through an analysis of the class struggle, a process most appropriate for testing the interaction between political pressures and judicial integrity. The study of basic laws, published court decisions, and legal literature support the contention that the Communist Party has not given up the discriminatory concept of class justice which subordinates law to politics, and that the absence of legal “definiteness” is a conditio sine qua non of a totalitarian mode of government. It should be added that my first hand experience with the Czechoslovak judicial system is limited to the period 1953–1959. As far as the sixties are concerned (Part VI), it has been necessary to rely exclusively on the published and available sources. Without benefit of “hard evidence,” the conclusions in that section must be regarded as merely interpretative and inferential.

With a claimed membership of over 12 million members, possession of over 1000 seats in local and national legislative assemblies, a widespread domestic reputation, and a sensationalistic treatment in the foreign press, the Sokagakkai has come in recent years to be a subject of some academic, and much religious and political interest in both Japan and the United States. An organization of lay believers of the Sho sect of Nichiren Buddhism (noted for its intolerance and vigorous propagation methods), the Sokagakkai has gone into Japanese politics with a striking degree of success; the extent to which it has brought its religious characteristics into the political sphere and the question of whether such religious groups should be in that sphere at all are at present the focus of considerable debate in Japan.

Most criticisms of the Sokagakkai have to date concentrated upon its religious activities, its doctrinal truth or falsehood, its alleged militaristic tendencies, and the proper place of religion in the political system of a secular state, I would like to touch on some of the social (or antisocial) functions performed by the Sokagakkai in Japanese society, as proclaimed by the Gakkai itself and as evidenced in the Gakkai's performance, and on the implications of these social functions for the Japanese political process.

As its name, the “Value-Creation Society,” suggests, the Sokagakkai postulates pursuit of absolute happiness by means of the creation of certain values in one's life as the proper direction of human life. So that all men may be able to achieve this happiness, the Gakkai emphasizes equality of all men; so that they may be fully able to enjoy their values, the Gakkai stresses freedom. Absolute freedom, equality, and happiness may be sought by the individual through religious faith; the agency for the realization of these ideals for society and the world is the political system.

The role of education as a significant political socialization process is widely accepted among social scientists and educators. Numerous studies point to positive correlations between education level and political cognition and participation. But beyond this point agreement ends. While many studies have demonstrated with varying degrees of certitude the formal role of curriculum and the teacher in the socialization process, the inconclusive and contradictory nature of the findings has led many students of socialization to a closer examination of the less formal environment of the school. Yet only a few studies have examined the influence of the informal school environment upon political socialization.

The purpose of this paper is to examine empirically the impact of the class climate in peer groups and schools upon the reinforcement or resocialization of political attitudes and behavior patterns.