Taiwan has displayed a comparatively heavy defense burden and rapid economic growth. Time series data from this case are used to analyze three models of the effects of defense burden on economic growth: the modernization model, the capital formation model, and the export-led growth model. The results indicate that all these models capture parts of the empirical reality, but none can account for all the complexity of this reality. Indeed, in some crucial respects each of the models—based, as they have been primarily, on intercountry comparisons—is contradicted by the Taiwanese time series. I conclude that Taiwan has not so much been able to avoid entirely the trade-offs between defense and growth as to relax these trade-offs. The reasons contributing to this relaxation tend to set the Taiwanese experience apart from the experiences of most other countries.

Scholars in both international relations and political theory have been turning their attention to Thucydides with increasing frequency but with dissimilar questions. We draw on both traditions of inquiry to reexamine Thucydides' view of Pericles. We argue that antithetical reasoning is present in the treatment of Pericles and is manifested in the opposition between the statesman's brilliance and the infelicitous consequences of his statecraft, as become evident in the work as a whole. This antithesis undermines the claim advanced by certain figures in the History, as well as by contemporary realists, that states (statesmen) should not be held to the same moral standards as individuals because to do so subverts their capacity to conduct prudent policy. We propose that Thucydides' work suggests, instead, that it is precisely when the norms of moral conduct are disrupted that states and individuals find it next to impossible to chart a prudent course of action.

This article is an effort to establish a comparative theoretical framework for the study of civil-military relations in communist political systems. Although the literature on civil-military relations in polyarchic and praetorian polities is theoretically as well as empirically rich, theories of civil-military relations in the field of comparative communism are still at the preliminary stage of development. It is argued that civil-military relations, like all the fundamental dynamics of communist political systems, derive from the structural relationship between a hegemonic Leninist party and the other institutions of the polity. Although the party directs and supervises all other institutions, its political supremacy is necessarily limited by the division of labor among various institutions. The relative autonomy of the military and its relations with the party vary from one country to another and can be described as coalitional, symbiotic, or fused. These relations are dynamic, changing over time in each country in response to contextual circumstances. The role of the military in politics is complex and variegated: on ideological issues, there is usually little conflict between party and army; on issues of “normal politics,” the military acts as a functionally specific elite engaged in bargaining to defend its perceived institutional interests; and in crisis politics, the military is a political resource that various party factions seek to enlist against their opponents.

Delegation to independent agencies can reap real benefits for policy-making. In the case of monetary policy, it shores up the credibility of the central bank. However, the discretion of IAs needs to be constrained to ensure their legitimacy. This letter focuses on one potential constraint, namely, the idea that IAs should not make choices on distributional trade-offs. Given that monetary policy today has significant distributive consequences, if this constraint were respected, the independence of central banks would have to be repealed. This would be just as undesirable as a monetary policy whose distributive consequences remain unchecked. Instead, this letter encourages the search for alternative solutions and puts forward three possible institutional arrangements to manage the tension between the distributive consequences of monetary policy on the one hand and central bank legitimacy on the other.

Is local attention a substitute for policy representation? Fenno (1978) famously described how legislators develop personal ties with their constituents through periodic visits to their districts and carefully crafted communications. Existing work suggests that such interactions insulate incumbents electorally, creating less need to represent constituents’ policy preferences. Surprisingly, this important argument has never been tested systematically. In this paper, I use data on senator travel and staffing behavior along with survey data from the 2011–2018 Cooperative Congressional Election Study to investigate this claim. In addition to showing that areas with important campaign donors are significantly more likely to receive resources, I find that local visits may decrease approval among ideologically opposed constituents. Furthermore, I find inconsistent evidence regarding the effectiveness of local staff. These results suggest that local attention does not always cultivate goodwill in the district. Under polarized politics, home style does not effectively substitute for policy representation.

Contemporary feminist scholars have devoted much attention to analyzing the relationship between justice and care theories but little to the ideas of early feminist authors. I bring the political philosophy of the Mary Wollstonecraft to bear on contemporary justice/care debates in order to highlight her unique contribution. Although usually interpreted as a classical liberal or republican thinker, Wollstonecraft is better understood as a feminist care theorist. She aimed at a revolutionary transformation of liberal society by emphasizing the importance of care-giving duties. Unlike some recent feminist scholars, however, she still recognized an important role for justice. She argued that before personal care-giving activities could transform the political, political justice had first to be extended to personal caring relationships. Wollstonecraft's political philosophy thus provides a feminist model for synthesizing justice and care theories and represents an innovative reformulation of classical liberal and republican ideas that incorporates the care perspective.

We pose the commensurability problem: When do the estimates generated by actual research designs correspond to quantities of theoretical interest? We study this question in settings where both treatment and outcome are behavior and the treatment effect of interest is decomposable into direct and informational channels. We establish two results. First, the quantity estimated by an actual research design is only commensurate with the total effect in the ideal experiment if treatment status in the research design is a sufficient statistic for the decision-makers’ information. Second, a research design corresponding to a nonideal experiment isolates just the direct effect in the ideal experiment if two conditions hold: (i) there is no information effect in the nonideal experiment and (ii) the decision-maker’s response function is additively separable in treatment and information. We apply our results to three substantive literatures: the efficacy of protest, the empowerment of female candidates, and indiscriminate violence in counterinsurgency.

Contrary to some belief, there are some, and possibly many, conditions under which survey research techniques can be put to use in the study of judicial decision-making. The present note reports on the successful use of such a technique in the collection and analysis of data drawn directly from the judicial bench of the State of Hawaii. In this case the plan to utilize survey techniques arose out of consideration of a problem that has plagued students of judicial decision-making from the beginning, i.e., the problem of getting direct information about those judicial attitudes and orientations which might reasonably be expected to function as determinants of judicial decisions.

In an earlier study of the impact of judicial role orientation upon judicial decision-making, I tried to handle the problem of taking independent measures of actual judicial attitudes and orientations which could then be related to judicial decisions. My approach at the time was to use accessible and measurable law students as stand-ins for actual judges. In contrast to this approach most of the political “judicial behavioralists,” while collecting data on actual functioning judges, do not attempt to solve the problem in any way. For these scholars continue to reason tautologically from information contained mainly in judicial votes and secondarily in judicial opinions, leaving us with such essential conclusions, in effect, as: “conservative” decisions are made by “conservative” judges, etc. Who is to say which is the worst procedure: the “judicial behavioralists,” which collects irrelevant data from relevant persons; or my own, which collects relevant data from irrelevant persons?

Despite advice to the contrary, I decided to try my hand at direct surveys of a judiciary, i.e., the one closest at hand.

The British House of Commons is frequently used in comparative analysis as a model of the kind of legislative institution that ratifies and legitimizes public policy decisions taken by the government. It debates but rarely does it actually legislate. Examination of the House of Commons of the 1970s reveals a very different legislature, one that regularly overturns the government on significant policy matters. Furthermore, backbench members of the government's own parliamentary party frequently join coalitions to defeat the government in standing committee and on the floor. The research describes the development of the House of Commons as a decision-making unit in the 1970s, compares its record during the 1970s to the workings of the Commons over preceding decades, and examines various factors that help explain why the behavior of the House and its members changed so over the recent decade.

Due especially to the work of Friedrich Hayek, “spontaneous order” has become an influential concept in social theory. It seeks to explain how human practices and institutions emerge as unintended consequences of myriad individual actions, and points to the limits of rationalism and conscious design in social life. The political implications of spontaneous order theory explain both the enthusiasm and the skepticism it has elicited, but its basic mechanisms remain elusive and underexamined. This article teases out the internal logic of the concept, arguing that it can be taken to mean several different things. Some are forward-looking (defining it in terms of present-day functioning), whereas others are backward-looking (defining it in terms of historical origins). Yet none of these possibilities prove fully coherent or satisfactory, suggesting that spontaneous order cannot bear the analytical weight that has been placed on it.

A model of war costs is presented that is based on the utility nations expect to derive from the war as well as on the technological gap between adversaries and the short-term tactical tit-for-tat calculations that must occur on the battlefield. This model explains nearly three-quarters of the variance in battle deaths per million population per month of war experienced by war initiators. Approximately one-quarter of the variance in war costs is accounted for by considering the position of the initiator's opponent. A second model, based on marginal changes in expected utility, technological differences, and tit-for-tat, is shown to account for more than one-third the variance, regardless of whether war costs are viewed by the initiator or an opponent in a war. This study, therefore, provides a useful explanation of war intensity and contributes to the cumulative, lawlike implications of the expected-utility approach on which it is based.

Assuming that the symbols demonstrated to be important to the understanding of art, literature and religion are likely to be equally useful in the study of politics leads the author to identify seven basic notations: the point, the circle, the square, the dividing line (either vertical or horizontal), and the directional line (either vertical or horizontal). The article speculates on the consequences of casting political thoughts in spatial frameworks developed out of these basic notations. Special attention is given to the Left-Right and Up-Down dimensions and to the problem of the congruence between political ideology and its underlying spatial archetype.

I reformulate Mancur Olson's by-product theory of collective action as a theory of resource allocation by interest group managers. I then test alternative hypotheses about managers' objectives drawn from exchange theory and commitment theory. Financial data for 16 environmental citizen groups show that the production of public goods is subsidized by other activities, and revenues from member dues are not affected by spending on public goods. Spending on selective incentives and information generates revenues but also may contribute to the pursuit of collective goals. Estimated marginal revenues from fund-raising and selective incentives show that environmental citizen group managers are not preoccupied with maximizing revenues. Rather, they seek to maximize either spending on public goods or net resources available for influencing public policy and the environment, subject to a budget constraint.

From the perspective of quite different theoretical traditions, Simone Weil and Hannah Arendt present nearly identical and equally powerful critiques of technological determinism in modernity. Yet unlike Arendt, Weil develops a concept of work that draws a distinction between technology and instrumental action as “methodical thinking.” As a result, Weil's theory of action embraces something that Arendt's theatrical politics rejects—a concept of liberatory instrumentality, or purposeful performance. I shall reassess some of the inadequacies of Arendt's concept of work and develop Simone Weil's concept of methodical thinking in order to argue for a more neighborly affinity between work:interaction and purposeful:theatrical performance than Arendtian public realm theory, for all its power, currently allows. If such an affinity is possible, then public realm theory might be more adequately equipped to deliver on what I take to be its promise as an emancipatory project in late modernity.

At the heart of our research was a single basic question: What arms control and disarmament measures might be acceptable to Europeans in 1966, in 1971, and in 1976? And differently put: What would be Europe's attitude in those years either to arms competition or to arms control, and what particular policies would be most popular or least popular in Europe in this respect?

This basic question implied four more detailed questions. The first, What is Europe now, in 1966, and where is it going for the 1971 to 1976 period? Is it going to be a Europe of nation-states with only marginal common functional arrangements on matters not central in importance to the concerns of its citizens? Or will it be to some extent substantially integrated, with some major policy decisions made by common institutions? Or will it be a common body politic, speaking with a single voice and developing common institutions for a wide range of decisions?

Second, do Europeans in general approve or disapprove of arms control? Do they welcome the relaxation of tensions between America and Russia and between the East and West, or do they fear such relaxation?

Third, what specific arms control measures are likely to be most acceptable to Europeans, and which arms control measures are likely to be least acceptable?

And fourth, what are the strength, location, and time aspects of political support for specific policies, such as the policies of France and its President de Gaulle vis-à-vis the NATO Alliance and the United States?

Being able to hold politicians accountable is the hallmark of democracy, and central to this is the notion that politicians can run for reelection. Most research on reelection incentives compare politicians who are term-limited with those who are not. These studies concentrate mostly on relatively senior politicians in candidate-centered electoral systems. This article leverages a quasi-natural experiment posed by the staggered implementation of the 2014 Mexican Electoral Reform, which lifted an eighty-year-old ban on reelection. The author conducts a difference-in-differences analysis of the hypothesis that reelection encourages legislators to focus more on policies with the highest “electoral yield”—namely, particularistic legislation. Applying a correlated topic model to a new collection of transcripts from 6,890 legislative sessions in 20 Mexican states between 2012 and 2018, this article presents compelling evidence that it does, that the effect is synchronized with the electoral cycle, and that it is larger when the legislators’ political horizons are longer.

A long tradition in social sciences scholarship has established that kinship-based institutions undermine state building. I argue that kinship networks, when geographically dispersed, cross-cut local cleavages and align the incentives of self-interested elites in favor of building a strong state, which generates scale economies in providing protection and justice throughout a large territory. I evaluate this argument by examining elite preferences related to a state-building reform in eleventh century China. I map politicians’ kinship networks using their tomb epitaphs and collect data on their political allegiances from archival materials. A statistical analysis demonstrates that a politician’s support for state building increases with the geographic size of his kinship network, controlling for a number of individual, family, and regional characteristics. My findings highlight the importance of elite social structure in facilitating state development and help to advance our understanding of state building in China—a useful, yet understudied, counterpoint to the Eurocentric literature.

Sometimes, people engaged in politics actively refuse to speak for anyone but themselves. These unrepresentative claims multiply in social movements in times of crisis. During the French Yellow Vest movement of 2018–2019, such unrepresentative claims were routinely made by Yellow Vest leaders, to the point of being a condition for having a leadership position in the movement. By making these unrepresentative claims, they declined any representative mandate, asserting their freedom from any instituted influence. However, by claiming to speak only for themselves, they also selected the aspects of their identity they performed. This allowed them to embody the people sharing this identity, recalling the medieval repraesentatio identitatis, but in a way adjusted to today’s greater personalization of politics. Drawing on this movement and on other examples of unrepresentative claims, we can delineate three broad ideal-types of identities that may be put forward by unrepresentative claims: generality, particularity, and individuality.

In many ways, the city of Chicago is typical of the United States as a whole in the twentieth century. It is a cross-section of the mixture of races, religions, sects, linguistic groups, and economic classes that go to make up modern America. In the past two decades, the political behavior of the citizens of Chicago in national elections has been similar to that of the entire American electorate. Except for the election of 1916, when Hughes carried the city by a narrow margin, the presidential candidate who carried Chicago also carried the electoral college.

At irregular intervals, there have occurred in American party history certain crucial presidential elections which appear to have set the party alignments for several decades. The election of 1896 was such an election, since it determined the supremacy of the Republican party for a period of a quarter of a century, interrupted only by the Wilson Administration, which came to power because of a split in the Republican ranks. A new era in American politics was definitely started by the election of 1932 which ended the Republican dominance. An intensive study of the behavior of the voters in Chicago during this political upheaval will throw some light upon the motivation of the voters in the entire United States.

This article aims to correct the widespread imbalance in contemporary liberal thought, which makes explicit appeal to the “least advantaged” without parallel attention to the “most advantaged” as a distinct group in need of regulatory attention. Rawls's influential theory of justice is perhaps the paradigmatic instance of this imbalance, but I show how a Rawlsian framework nonetheless provides three justifications for why implementers of liberal justice—above all, legislators—should regulate the economic prospects of a polity's richest citizens: as a heuristic device for ensuring that a system of inequalities not reach a level at which inequalities cease being mutually advantageous, as protection against excessive inequalities threatening civic liberty, and as redress for a liberal society's inability to fully realize fair equality of opportunity with regard to education and politics. Against the objection that such arguments amount to a defense of envy, insofar as they support policies that in certain instances impose economic costs on the most advantaged with negative or neutral economic impact on the rest of society, I attend to Rawls's often overlooked distinction between irrational and reasonable forms of envy, showing that any envy involved in the proposed regulation of the most advantaged falls within this latter category.