If two men of similar talents, identical training, shared values, and common interests were to study the same phenomena it would not be at all remarkable if they approached the phenomena in the same way, described them in the same terms, employed the same logic in analyzing them, drew the same conclusions from them, and formulated the same theories about their causes.

If, however, two men of similar talents but of rather divergent training, professing differing objectives, and displaying varied (perhaps even conflicting) concerns were to pursue studies of phenomena each believed to be quite distinct from the other's field of inquiry, it would be most astounding if their findings and inferences should turn out to be closely parallel in many important respects, particularly if there were little evidence of communication between them.

Despite clear evidence of a sharp income gradient in voting participation, it remains unclear whether income truly causes voting. In this article, we investigate how exogenous increases in unearned income affect voting in U.S. elections for two generations (parents and children) from the same household. In contrast to predictions made by current models of voting, we find the income shock had no effect on parents’ voting behaviors. However, we also find that increasing household income has heterogeneous effects on the civic participation of children from different socioeconomic backgrounds. It increases children’s voting propensity among those raised in initially poorer families—resulting in substantially narrowed participatory gaps. Our results are consistent with a more nuanced view of how individual resources affect patterns of voting than the dominant theoretical framework of voting—the resource model—allows. Voting is fundamentally shaped by the human capital accrued long before citizens are eligible to vote.

Conventional wisdom treats politicization in the international human rights regime as invariant: for any given violation, states condemn adversaries while coddling friends. However, we find that politicization patterns vary markedly across human rights issues. Some norms are more politicized than others, and states are more likely to punish geopolitical partners on certain violations. We offer a novel theory of politicized enforcement wherein states punish human rights violations discriminatively based on their perceived “sensitivity” for the target state. Using data from the UN Universal Periodic Review, an elaborate human rights mechanism, we show that states tend to criticize their adversaries on sensitive issues that undermine the target regime’s power and legitimacy while addressing safer topics with friends. By uncovering a strategic logic of human rights enforcement, this research contributes new theoretical insights on the relationship between norms and power politics in global governance.

We identify a form of gender-based governmental discrimination that directly affects billions of women on a daily basis: the setting of import tariffs for gendered goods. These tax rates, which can differ across otherwise identical gender-specific products, often impose direct penalties on women as consumers. Comparing nearly 200,000 paired tariff rates on men’s and women’s apparel products in 167 countries between 1995 and 2015, we find that women suffer a tax penalty that varies systematically across countries. We demonstrate that in democracies, women’s presence in the legislature is associated with decreased import tax penalties on women’s goods. This finding is buttressed by a comparison of democracies and non-democracies and analyses of the implementation of legislative gender quotas. Our work highlights a previously unacknowledged government policy that penalizes women and also provides powerful evidence that descriptive representation can have a substantial, direct impact on discriminatory policies.

I use Condorcet's information aggregation model to show that sometimes the best possible decision procedure for the majority allows the minority to “enforce” its favored outcome even when overruled by a majority. “Special” voting power gives the minority an incentive to participate meaningfully, and more participation means more information is aggregated, which makes the majority better off. This result can be understood as a mathematical corroboration of Lani Guinier's arguments that voting procedures can be designed to encourage minority participation, benefitting everyone.

A time-series analysis of individual level, perceptual data disconfirms the J-curve theory of the black urban riots (i.e., that they arise because a period of progress was followed by a sharp decline) and suggests that ambiguities surrounding black people's perceptions of their economic situation probably led to the frustration that culminated in urban violence.

The methodological component of the research deals with such problems of relative deprivation-based research as: (1) the substitution of aggregate, objective-level indicators for perceptual theoretical concepts; (2) the correspondences between objective and perceptual data on both a point-by-point basis and across time-series patterns; (3) the empirical implications of failing to look at important subgroup distinctions; and (4) the crucial assumption of all forms of relative deprivation theory that future expectations of need fulfillment, especially in the period of rising satisfactions, are a function of current levels of need fulfillment. The research calls for modifications in the structure and application of relative deprivation theory in light of the findings in these areas.

The conversion of multiple regression analysis to discriminant analysis is not only of theoretical interest, but—in view of the extensive use of these methods in political science—it also has considerable value for applications. It is the purpose of this presentation to explain the underlying theoretical relationship and to demonstrate its application in the form of an example chosen from the judicial process. Specifically, the Supreme Court's acceptance or rejection of the fact that the defendant was not advised of his right to counsel in an involuntary confession case is considered as a function of the appearance, nonappearance, or denial of the fact in lower court records and appellate briefs. Since the acceptance or rejection of the fact by the Supreme Court is a dichotomous dependent variable, discriminant analysis is appropriate. It is shown in this study how discriminant analysis can be employed by initially using regression analysis, not only in the example presented for illustration, but in any situation in which a phenomenon with dichotomous manifestations may be examined as a function of specified variables.

Anorm of civility defines a standard of conduct that citizens can rightfully expect from strangers. What are appropriate norms of civility for citizens of liberal states? I argue that two approaches to civility are prominent in our political culture, one requiring “mere” tolerance, the other, that we affirm the worth of others' pursuits (and thereby the worth of those others). This split parallels a division in liberal theory between an interest-based account of liberalism (represented primarily by J. S. Mill) and a status-based account (represented principally by John Rawls and Ronald Dworkin), respectively. The exploration of this theoretical divide and how it relates to contending notions of civility helps to clarify disputes in the broader culture. I conclude that interest-based liberalism offers a more satisfactory approach to the issue at hand.

In the now considerable literature reevaluating the reception of Locke's Two Treatises, no mention has been made of perhaps his first systematic critic, the commissioned Tory political pamphleteer, Mary Astell. Contemporaneous with Charles Leslie, who is usually credited with the honor, Astell had diagnosed Locke's political argument by 1705 and perhaps as early as 1700. Why has her contribution remained unacknowledged for so long? It is argued here that for too long commentators have been looking for the wrong person in the wrong place. Astell correctly saw that Locke's political philosophy was inextricable from his psychological and theological systems, addressing all three in works that were political, theological and homiletic. But why Locke, and why in 1700–1705? Did Astell already know the authorship of the Two Treatises, only officially established in 1704 with the publication of the codicil to Locke's will?

Since there exists philosophy, there exists the attempt to bring it in relation with politics; and this attempt has succeeded in so far as it is today recognized to the degree of a truism that political theory and that part of philosophy we call ethics are closely connected with each other. But it seems strange to assume—and this essay tries to verify this assumption—that there exists an external parallelism, and perhaps also an inner relationship, between politics and other parts of philosophy such as epistemology, that is, theory of knowledge, and theory of values. It is just within these two theories that the antagonism between philosophical absolutism and relativism has its seat; and this antagonism seems to be in many respects analogous to the fundamental opposition between autocracy and democracy as the representatives of political absolutism on the one hand and political relativism on the other.

I

Philosophical absolutism is the metaphysical view that there is an absolute reality, i.e., a reality that exists independently of human knowledge. Hence its existence is objective and unlimited in, or beyond, space and time, to which human knowledge is restricted. Philosophical relativism, on the other hand, advocates the empirical doctrine that reality exists only within human knowledge, and that, as the object of knowledge, reality is relative to the knowing subject. The absolute, the thing in itself, is beyond human experience; it is inaccessible to human knowledge and therefore unknowable.

To the assumption of absolute existence corresponds the possibility of absolute truth and absolute values, denied by philosophical relativism, which recognizes only relative truth and relative values.

This article uses a variety of multilevel data collected from a nine-county study of felony courts to examine the joint effects of contextual and individual level (sociopolitical characteristics of decision workers) upon decisions made in face-to-face groups. The research finds that although the sociopolitical characteristics of decision makers (attitudes toward punishment, Machiavellianism, and operating styles) made a difference in the outcome of interactions, their role could not be accessed independent of the contextual factors surrounding the interactions. Some of the most important contextual factors were the kind of criminal case being handled, prosecutor office policies restricting discretion, and the configuration of attributes in the group handling the case. Although the data are wholly derived from the criminal court setting, the implications of the findings for studying decision making in other face-to-face groups are developed.

John Rawls's theory of justice is best understood as an attempt to adapt Rousseau's theory of the general will to the modern liberal democratic state. Central to the theory is a belief in the rationality of human nature and dynamics. In a well-ordered society men's natural sentiments will prove to be both unified and stable, and they will not permit morally arbitrary advantages to influence their social arrangements. Rawls's theory offers a rational accommodation of freedom and equality. His philosophical perspective opens him to the charge that his theory slights the historical dimension of human justice. His conception of human personality is somewhat ambiguous. There is incongruity between his ethical theory and the realities of democratic politics. Nevertheless, Rawls's formulation of the moral and political principles of liberalism is a major achievement and entirely worthy of his intellectual ancestry

Why do some armed groups kidnap for ransom? Despite a dramatic spike in kidnappings by political groups over the last several decades, there are scant existing explanations for why groups use this tool of coercion. Leveraging evidence from extensive interviews with former combatants from Colombia’s civil war, including the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and National Liberation Army (ELN), as well as military and security personnel, I show that ransom kidnapping is used to enforce groups’ protection rackets, their main source of funding. Kidnapping is both the most lucrative way to punish tax evasion and an effective means of deterring future shirking. Thus, groups that tax local populations are more likely to kidnap; groups relying on external or voluntary forms of funding are less likely to take hostages. This article explains when we should see kidnapping in armed conflict, describing an underexplored way that selective violence bolsters insurgency.

Attentive observers of conditions in Italy are well aware that Fascism is an exceedingly complicated phenomenon; that what seems to be simply a dictatorship of the upper classes in reality presents many surprising and apparently contradictory features. Fascism, indeed, has been likened to a great river into which numerous tributaries have poured their waters. Among these tributaries are such movements as Nationalism, Futurism, and Syndicalism. Besides, Fascism is more than a practical experiment in government. It has developed a theory and a philosophy, and, one may even add, an art, a mysticism, and a religion. “Fascism,” declares Mussolini, “has a doctrine, or, if you will, a philosophy with regard to all the questions which beset the human mind today.” And again he remarks, “We play upon every chord of the lyre, from violence to religion, from art to politics.”

The stages in the outward history of Fascism need only be mentioned. The movement had humble and, its enemies say, even sordid beginnings. The first Fascio di Combattimento was formed in March, 1919, by Mussolini and other derelicts of the war. This organization, swollen by all sorts of unexpected accretions, was transformed into the National Fascist party in November, 1921. In October, 1922, occurred the sensational march on Rome, which placed the party exultantly, but none too securely, in the seat of power. The murder of Matteotti in May, 1924, precipitated a dangerous crisis in which Fascism appeared to be momentarily on the defensive, but from which it triumphantly emerged as complete master of the situation. Since then it has effectually quelled all opposition and has proceeded to the realization of its constructive program, of which the great Labor Charter of April, 1927, is thus far the most impressive item.

On an early page of his celebrated Constitutional Limitations, Judge Cooley defines “constitution” in the following curt terms: “That body of rules and maxims in accordance with which the powers of sovereignty are habitually exercised.” Returning later to the subject, he quotes with approval a more elaborate conception, couched in these words: “What is a constitution, and what are its objects? It is easier to tell what it is not than what it is. It is not the beginning of a community, nor the origin of private rights; it is not the fountain of law, nor the incipient state of government; it is not the cause, but consequence, of personal and political freedom; it grants no rights to the people, but is the creature of their power, the instrument of their convenience. Designed for their protection in the enjoyment of the rights and powers which they possessed before the constitution was made, it is but the framework of the political government, and necessarily based upon the preëxisting condition of laws, rights, habits, and modes of thought. There is nothing primitive in it, it is all derived from a known source. It presupposes an organized society, law, order, property, personal freedom, a love of political liberty, and enough of cultivated intelligence to know how to guard it against the encroachments of tyranny. A written constitution is in every instance a limitation upon the powers of government in the hands of agents; for there never was a written republican constitution which delegated to functionaries all the latent powers which lie dormant in every nation, and are boundless in extent, and incapable of definition.”

In an article previously published in this Review I demonstrated that power-seeking, by which I mean the pursuit of social dominance, has a biochemical marker, namely, whole blood serotonin (WBS). Those individuals who are especially hard-charging and competitive have especially high WBS levels. This paper presents the results from an investigation of dynamics in the response of high WBS individuals to actual competition. My expectation—that they would exhibit special physiological activation in the face of challenge—is fully borne out by the evidence. Four hormonal indicators of activation were followed in blood samples taken during a series of social competitions. All four show distinctive patterns for the high WBS group. These results, in addition to providing new evidence on the behavior of the endocrine system in competitive settings, impressively support the view that WBS is a biological property having fundamental significance for behavioral political science.

Taking advantage of a unique event in American history, the Second Great Migration, we explore whether the rapid entry of African Americans into nearly exclusively White contexts triggered “racial threat” in White voting behavior in the state of California. Utilizing historical administrative data, we find that increasing proximity to previously White areas experiencing drastic Black population growth between 1940 to 1960 is associated with significant increases in aggregate White voter support for a highly racially-charged ballot measure, Proposition 14, which legally protected racial discrimination in housing. Importantly, we find that this result holds when restricting the analysis to all-White areas with high rates of residential tenure and low rates of White population growth. These latter findings indicate that this relationship materializes in contexts where a larger share of White voters were present during the treatment and exercised residential-choice before the treatment commenced, which is suggestive of a causal effect.

Encompassing labor movements and coordinated wage setting are central to the social democratic economic model that has proven successful among the nations of Western Europe. The coordination of wage bargaining across many unions and employers has been used to explain everything from inequality to unemployment. Yet there has been limited theoretical and quantitative empirical work exploring the determinants of bargaining coordination. I argue formally that more unequally distributed resources across unions should inhibit the centralization of strike powers in union federations. Using membership as a proxy for union resources, I find empirical evidence for this hypothesis in a panel of 15 OECD democracies, 1950–2000. I then show that the centralization of strike powers is a strong predictor of coordinated bargaining.

Renewed interest in the concept of political judgment—a mode of reasoning that steers a middle way between abstract, technical reasoning and willful self-assertion—frequently takes the form of a return, qualified in various ways, to Aristotle's concept of phronesis or prudence. I examine this renaissance of interest in Aristotelian prudence through a study of the works of several leading democratic theorists and Aristotle scholars and conclude that they stop short of some of the very elements of Aristotle's thought that can assist us in promoting prudence. In particular, I try to show that these contemporary advocates of political judgment undermine the case for political science (Aristotle's primary concern) and thereby risk losing the independent judgment that Aristotelian political science supports. They fail to give sufficient weight to Aristotle's claim that phronesis, while distinguishable from scientific reason or philosophy, functions best even as a practical science when it accepts certain of philosophy's guiding insights.