Marx's century-old socio-political analysis of peasant nations and of India's traditional village and caste society, because it captures so much of contemporary social and political analysis, provides a convenient framework for critical discussion and evaluation of the relationship between traditional society and modern politics in India. Peasant nations such as mid-nineteenth century France, Marx observed in the The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon, are formed “by simple addition of homologous magnitudes, much as potatoes in a sack form a sackful of potatoes.” Objectively, peasants form a class; the mode of life, interests and culture which flow from their productive circumstances separate peasants from other classes and place their class in opposition to other classes. But subjectively and practically, peasants form a vast mass, “the members of which live in similar conditions, but without entering into manifold relations with one another.”

Two students of the committee assignment process, Nicholas Masters and Charles Clapp, as well as some congressmen, assert that the most crucial factor in filling committee vacancies is whether the appointment will enhance the recipient's chance of re-election. This statement is tested using data for Republican and Northern Democratic freshmen elected to the House between 1947 and 1967.

The freshmen are grouped on the basis of assumptions about which assignment or assignments should help them win re-election. When narrowly elected and safe freshmen are compared, there is no evidence that the former more frequently receive assignments likely to facilitate re-election. Thus there is no support for the Masters-Clapp proposition.

Investigation further reveals that even those freshmen from marginal districts who are awarded “good” appointments are not re-elected significantly more often than are comparable newcomers having less favorable assignments. Committee assignments therefore seem relatively unimportant in determining whether a congressman wins a sophomore term. Indeed, more than 70 per cent of the freshmen who triumphed in hotly contested races to reach the House are returned. When these incumbents are defeated it is typically as a result of nation-wide forces over which they exercise little if any control.

The implications of this research are that congressmen have a greater range of alternatives than is often thought. Even the narrowly elected novice is relatively free to seek appointment to committees for reasons other than constituency service or promotion. Largely symbolic activities are available through which concern for the district and its problems and needs can be demonstrated, thereby freeing much of the congressman's time and attention to pursue other less parochial goals.

Provision of schooling in the native language is an important regime policy that reflects a government's commitment to maintaining ethnic and linguistic diversity. This study tests hypotheses related to three principles that may have guided the use of non-Russian languages in Soviet schools: equality, efficiency, and political status. A newly generated set of data on the use of non-Russian languages in Soviet primary and secondary schools permits examination of aspects of Soviet language policy about which scholars previously lacked systematic information. The analysis does not support the interpretations suggested by others; official policy has neither shifted back and forth between a centrist and a peripheralist emphasis, moved inexorably in a russificationist direction, nor been absolutely egalitarian. Instead, the policy can be most appropriately described as a bilingual education policy that at the same time has long differentiated among the non-Russian nationalities on the basis of their population size, their geographic concentration, or their political status.

Rousseau inaugurated the counter-Enlightenment—that attack on secular rationalism and quest for “re-enchantment” that has, in one form or another, been with us ever since (and which, if the postmodern age has really arrived, now enjoys its heyday). The crowning expression of this event was Rousseau's effort to revive (while transforming) Christianity. Yet, paradoxically, it is also in Rousseau that the polemical core of the Enlightenment—the critique of Christianity—reached its fullest development. This strange co-presence of Enlightenment and counter-Enlightenment suggests an unsuspected continuity between the two. Rousseau, by pursuing more radically the underlying goal of the Enlightenment critique of Christianity—the restoration of human wholeness—was led to extend that very critique to Enlightenment rationalism itself and thence to propose a return to religion, but to one that, rooted in sincerity, would not only avoid the dangers of traditional Christianity but also better fulfill the Enlightenment's own humanistic goal.

The problem of sustaining and strengthening democratic institutions is of the first magnitude. The stakes are high.

“Democracy,” whatever else may be included, implies free discussion and popular election of governors, with alternative choices available. Presumably the governors will include a representative element, normally in the form of a legislative or policy-adopting body.

The term “cultural prerequisites” is less easily defined. The sociologists have an approach that sheds light upon that for which we are searching. They speak of the mores, those modes of thought as well as behavior by which men live and institutions are sustained. The mores are those elements of a culture which are regarded as essential for survival of the society itself. As regards democracy, our question is basically, “What is its cultural and psychological underpinning?” What cultural attitudes or mores will sustain democracy? In part they must do this by assuring its success in satisfying the psychological necessities of its citizens, in part by giving it and its institutions an emotional content which will make its survival a fighting matter for those who love it.

In this article I argue a thesis about Hegel's views on war different from most previous interpreters, e.g., Popper and Hook on the one side and Avineri and Pelczynski on the other. In particular I argue that his reflections on war are an attempt to answer the problem of political obligation or the question of why should anyone willingly die for the state. Accordingly, I examine briefly Hegel's critique of Kantian morality for its inability to account for political obligation proper and although ultimately I conclude that Hegel never completely extricated himself from Kant's belief in a providentialist historicism leading to a condition of “perpetual peace,” I still want to suggest that war remains for Hegel an essential moment in the “ethical” life of the state and perhaps the chief means whereby the dignity and autonomy of the state can be exerted over the network of private interests that constitutes civil society.

Even as he recommends it as the extra-constitutional solution to the inefficiencies and insufficiencies of legislative constitutionalism, Locke's Second Treatise is far more aware of the dangers of executive prerogative than the more optimistic accounts in the recent scholarship have appreciated, making Locke pessimistic about the permanent sustenance of legislative constitutionalism. This pessimism stems from Locke's recognition that the people are far too constitutionally passive for the vigilance essential to ‘umpire’ well the necessity of executive action outside the laws. In fact, liberalism itself can contribute to such passivity: the people are content to allow an executive to act with a significant degree of discretion outside the laws so long as those actions do not interfere with their short-term interest in security and prosperity. Understanding Locke's pessimism regarding popular vigilance casts into new light his argument for a legislative constitutionalism based on fundamental laws that establish a clear separation of powers. Such fundamental laws provide legislative elites with the constitutional ‘signals’ by which they can alert the otherwise slumbering people about an executive intent on usurpation and tyranny.

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.

The presidential election of 1952 offered a unique opportunity for the study of the effect of television upon voting behavior. By happy accident—the FCC freeze on the construction of new television stations—it was possible to find areas of the United States where there were counties within television reception range and also counties otherwise similar to these with respect to their past voting behavior, but outside the reception area. In these areas the presence or absence of television can be regarded, with reasonable safety, as a genuine independent variable; and if television influenced voting behavior, there is some hope of detecting its effects.

The uniqueness of the situation and its utility for testing hypotheses about the effects of television deserve some comment. Ordinarily, one is confronted in ecological studies with an insurmountable confusion of cause and effect. For example, had there not been an “artificial” restriction on the extension of the television network in 1952, we would not be safe in regarding a county without television as comparable with a county having television. For in that case, absence of television would imply remoteness from centers of population of any size, and we could not assume that influences upon voting behavior in such remote counties would be the same as in counties closer to population centers.

Does secular party incumbency affect religious violence? Existing theory is ambiguous. On the one hand, religiously motivated militants might target areas that vote secularists into office. On the other hand, secular party politicians, reliant on the support of violence-hit communities, may face powerful electoral incentives to quell attacks. Candidates bent on preventing bloodshed might also sort into such parties. To adjudicate these claims, we combine constituency-level election returns with event data on Islamist and sectarian violence in Pakistan (1988–2011). For identification, we compare districts where secular parties narrowly won or lost elections. We find that secularist rule causes a sizable reduction in local religious conflict. Additional analyses suggest that the result stems from electoral pressures to cater to core party supporters and not from politician selection. The effect is concentrated in regions with denser police presence, highlighting the importance of state capacity for suppressing religious disorder.

We analyze the election data from the first “almost free” political contest in the Eastern bloc, the Polish election of June 1989. Voting data for state socialist societies provide a novel source of information on the political transitions in process in East Central Europe; the source of electoral support for opposition candidates in Poland affords a glimpse of the emerging political groups that must deal with continuing economic crises while attempting to reconstruct or consolidate democratic procedures. Data on turnout and on the ecological patterning of votes for Solidarność and for the government coalition are reviewed. Electoral victory has transformed Solidarność from an opposition movement with strong trade union roots to a political coalition with a rather different constituency: the strongest relative support for Solidarność candidates was found in rural areas, particularly in the southeast, rather than in the urban, industrial centers where the movement was born.

Immediately prior to the 1970 parliamentary election in the Republic of South Africa, 462 white voters in Cape Town were questioned about their demographic backgrounds, voting intentions, and political attitudes. The study showed that ethnicity is the major determinant of party vote: Afrikaners vote for the National Party, the English-speaking for the United Party. SES-related factors predict party identification only insofar as they covary with ethnicity. While a liberalization of political attitudes with rising SES can be observed, this has no bearing on electoral behavior. Party vote is not related to ideological or issue orientations, but is related to the intensity of the voter's identification with his own ethnic group and with white South Africans in general. Voters tend to react positively or negatively to the NP, with the UP serving chiefly as a vehicle for protest votes against the government. The slight drop in NP support in 1970 was due to a key group of abstainers who—while basically Nat supporters—were more liberal than those who said they would vote for the NP. It is “Ambiguous Afrikaners” (those who are changing to an “English” identity), and only some of those, who are defecting completely from their traditional political allegiance. They represent the one sign of potential change in South Africa's uniquely stable political system.

We develop a theory of the accumulation of state capacity as the outcome of a political competition between elites and (civil) society. State capacity is accumulated by elites, and it is productive as well as useful in controlling society. However, society can fight back and accumulate its own capacity, facilitating collective action. The theory leads to three distinct equilibria depending on initial conditions. One type, a weak state, emerges when society is strong relative to the elite. Another, a despotic state, originates where the elite is initially relatively powerful. A third type, an inclusive state, emerges when the elite and society are more evenly matched. The theory has several important implications; first, variation in state capacity does not require large structural differences; second, inclusive states have the highest levels of state capacity in the long run; third, the effects of shocks or external threats like wars are conditional on the balance of power between elites and society.

The core of welfare economics consists of the proof that, for certain classes of goods, perfectly competitive markets are efficient in that they provide Pareto optimal allocations of these goods. In this paper, the efficiency of competitive elections is examined. Elections are modeled as two-candidate zero-sum games, and three kinds of equilibria for such games are identified: pure, risky, and mixed strategies. It is shown, however, that regardless of which kind of equilibrium prevails, if candidates adopt equilibrium strategies, an election is efficient in the sense that the candidates advocate Pareto optimal policies. But one caveat to this analysis is that while an election is Pareto optimal, citizens can unanimously prefer markets to elections as a mechanism for selecting future policies.

The study of international relations has been considerably advanced in recent years by the application of findings from other areas of the social sciences. These have included decision-making, game theory, conflict, bargaining, communication, negotiation, systems, geography, attitudes, and simulation. International relations scholars such as Morton Kaplan, Charles McClelland, Richard C. Snyder, and Harold Sprout have built important bridges between international relations and other disciplines. It has been fortunate that such innovators have often found men from other disciplines, such as Kenneth Boulding, Harold Guetzkow, Charles Osgood, and Anatol Rapoport, in the middle of the bridge. The volumes of the Journal of Conflict Resolution offer one example of how far this remarkable effort at cross-fertilization has gone.

In “A Culturalist Theory of Political Change” in the September 1988 issue of this Review, Harry Eckstein argued that “a cogent, potentially powerful theory of political change can be derived from culturalist premises.” But Herbert Werlin finds Eckstein's effort to accommodate culture theory to political change unsatisfactory. Werlin argues that politics in the sense of political engineering, rather than cultural changes, mainly accounts for transformations in political life. Eckstein responds, arguing that the political methods for inducing change are themselves culturally conditioned.

In its evolution over the past century, mainstream political science has failed to take account of changes in the development of interpretive approaches to politics. Adherents of the dominant approaches to political inquiry have misunderstood the nature of meaning of social and political action and the import of that meaning for the explanation of political life. Or, to put it more sharply, its understanding of the nature and importance the meaning of political life and of interpretive political inquiry have stagnated, not evolved. As a consequence, although conventional empirical and rationalist modes of explanation capture many aspects of political life, they misunderstand or ignore other important political phenomena or important dimensions to politics. Hermeneutic modes of interpretative theory offer the prospect of a competing and/or complementary perspective on the explanation of politics. The prospects for a modern version of practical reason that would allow for a more engaged political science are available but not widely recognizedIt is appropriate here to make several points concerning terminology. The literal English translation of the German word “hermeneutics” is interpretation. In the modern world, the term was first applied in the human sciences in attempts to offer explanations of ambiguous and allegorical passages of the Bible and the Torah. In the twentieth century, the term has come to mean something more than that. The German term has been widely adopted for English use and refers to a specific approach to understanding and explaining in the social sciences and humanities. For present purposes, it refers to the attempt to explain social and political life in terms of the language and complex meaning of that political action for social and political actors. I elaborate on the nature of hermeneutic-interpretive explanation later in this essay. For the remainder of the essay, I use hermeneutic-interpretation to refer to those modes of interpretation that see distinctively human behavior and understanding as linguistically mediated. I use interpretation and interpretive theory in a more general sense, referring to any form of social science that emphasizes understanding the meaning that social behavior has for actors, whether or not that perspective emphasizes the centrality of language. I hope to make these distinctions clear in my account of the evolution of this perspective. The term “practical reason” borrows from, but is not identical with, Aristotle's discussion of phronesis in Book VI of the Nicomachean Ethics. There, Aristotle distinguishes between theoria, knowledge about those things that are not open to deliberation and human decision (e.g., the structure of the solar system) and phronesis, knowledge about those things that are subject to deliberation and intersubjective agreement, for example, how ought one to live one's life or what kind of constitution a society ought to have. In this respect, interpretive accounts, and hermeneutic interpretation in particular, emphasize the importance of public engagement with the political life under examination. For an argument from a somewhat different perspective that political science needs to become more publicly engaged, see Putnam (2003). The German term verstehen also found its way into Anglo-American social science lexicon. It refers to the interpretive understanding of the intended meaning and significance that an action has for an actor performing it..