The appearance of the second Hoover Commission reports is an invitation to attempt to place them in the context of official and unofficial efforts over the past quarter century to give order and meaning to the study of public administration and of its leading example, our national administration. The object here is more than bibliographical, and if it seems ambitious it can hardly be more so than the Commission's own work. No previous study has been so amply financed, or has employed so many people, or has enjoyed such official and public relations support, in and out of government, as this one. What do the reports have to contribute, to knowledge and to policy about organization?

In this research note I seek to determine whether a significantly predicting social background model for analyzing the votes of Supreme Court justices is time-bound. I argue that an affirmative result poses serious questions for past uses of such models, none of which has controlled for the possibility that time is a confounding variable. A model that significantly predicted the votes of the justices in the Court's 1903–1968 terms was constructed. Analysis with this model for two periods—from 1903 to 1935, and from 1936 to 1968—established that the model was not timeneutral. Appropriate theoretical implications are drawn.

This study empirically tests three theoretical approaches to explaining specific support for a policy output among members of its target group. The utilitarian model posits support as a function of objective costs and benefits to the individual stemming directly from the policy. The attitudinal model relates specific support to diffuse predispositions rooted in socialization. The perceptual model holds that specific support derives from beliefs about the character of the political decision process by which the policy was formulated. Tests of these three approaches are based on survey data on specific support for school district desegregation plans among a large sample of black and white parents of public school children in Florida. In both subsamples, the utilitarian approach explained very little of the variance in support, but the attitudinal and perceptual models were corroborated. Implications of these findings are drawn for desegregation policy making and for public policy theory.

When issues (i.e., dimensions) are voted on one at a time, a voter whose preferences are not separable across issues must forecast the outcome of later issues in order to know how to vote in the present. This is the problem of expectations. In this article, we develop a general theory designed to handle this problem. Assuming that voters are risk averse and maximize expected utility, we demonstrate that a random variable forecast of how later issues will be decided reduces to a point forecast, which is the mean of the multidimensional random variable. We also show that single-peaked preferences are induced on each issue, and consequently there exists an equilibrium across issues.

No concept has raised so many conflicting issues and involved nineteenth-century jurists and political theorists in so desperate a maze as the concept of Sovereignty. The reason is perhaps that the original, genuine philosophical meaning of the concept had not been, from the very start, sufficiently examined and seriously tested by them.

In the same measure as crucial practical problems dealing with international law developed, the controversies about State Sovereignty, considered in its external aspect (relations between states), grew deeper and more extended. The question was asked whether the international community as a whole is not the true holder of Sovereignty, rather than the individual states. And, in some quarters, the very notion of Sovereignty was challenged. Such was the stand taken first by Triepel, then by several other international lawyers, including Willoughby and Foulke. Yet that challenge to the concept of Sovereignty remained only juridical in nature, and did not go to the philosophical roots of the matter.

My aim, in this essay, is to discuss Sovereignty not in terms of juridical theory, but in terms of political philosophy. I think that the grounds for doing so are all the better since “Sovereignty,” as Jellinek once observed, “in its historical origins is a political concept which later became transformed” in order to secure a juristic asset to the political power of the State.

This paper links the theory of interest groups influence over the legislature with that of congressional control over the judiciary. The resulting framework reconciles the theoretical literature of lobbying with the negative available evidence on the impact of lobbying over legislative outcomes, and sheds light to the determinants of lobbying in separation-of-powers systems. We provide conditions for judicial decisions to be sensitive to legislative lobbying, and find that lobbying falls the more divided the legislature is on the relevant issues. We apply this framework to analyze supreme court labor decisions in Argentina, and find results consistent with the predictions of the theory.

The study of rhetoric has recently undergone a revival in political theory as a response to deliberative democratic approaches that value reason over affect in the political sphere. Most rhetorical revivalists look to Aristotle and develop accounts of ethos (character) that privilege the epistemic dimensions of trust, while overlooking the importance that considerations of propriety play in shaping the political speech of democratic leaders. We reconsider the rhetorical approach by integrating the regulative standards suggested by two political thinkers who also were theorists of rhetoric: Cicero and Adam Smith. Committed to character's role in collective judgment, Cicero and Smith both hold that sincerity and context shape decorum or propriety: Leaders rely on decorum to shape their rhetorical appeals, and audiences look to the fit between speech and character to gauge moral trustworthiness. Smith, however, goes beyond Cicero to develop a rhetorical theory more relevant for democracies by highlighting the importance of political context for rhetorical appeals and evaluations. We conclude by suggesting that attention to these components of decorum moves beyond Aristotelian accounts of rhetorical character in a way that is consistent with much empirical research on how voters judge the character of elected officials.

The present arrangements for the government of the colonial territories taken from Germany and Turkey in the World War, arrangements which may collectively be described as the system of mandates under the League of Nations, may work well or they may work badly. They may persist into an indefinite future, they may come to an abrupt termination and leave nothing of their own kind in their place, or, most probable of all, they may be progressively modified in one way or another with the passage of time and changes of circumstances. But, whatever happens hereafter, the present system is now an accomplished fact, and will necessarily be taken as the basis for any action in the future. The apparent inclination of at least one great power to insist upon all its rights in former German and Turkish territories now under mandate to other powers, and the firmness of the latter in defending their position under the mandate system, indicate, further, that the present system has already created rights, interests, and claims on one side and another which will call for constant consideration and regulation as time goes on.

The doctrine of the pluralistic state has found its most outspoken advocate in this country in Mr. Harold J. Laski,—an Englishman, recently of Harvard University, and more recently still called back to England to the London School of Economics of the University of London. A number of channels of thought have come together in Mr. Laski's present formulation of the doctrine. Among those in England from whom he received much inspiration and suggestion may be mentioned the late Professor Maitland, and Dr. J. Neville Figgis, as well as Mr. Graham Wallas, and Mr. Ernest Barker.

Professor Maitland's work in this field is closely associated with that of Dr. Otto Gierke in Germany, to the third volume of one of whose works, Das Deutsche Genossenschaftsrecht, which Professor Maitland translated, he wrote his famous Introduction in which he stated his own views with regard to the real and truly corporate personality, not only of the state but of other social groupings as well. Another of Gierke's works is Die Genossenschaftstheorie, in which it is attempted to show, to quote Dr. Figgis, “how under the facts of modern life the civilian theory of corporations is breaking down on all hands, and that even in Germany, in spite of the deliberate adoption of the Romanist doctrine, the courts and sometimes even the laws are being driven to treat corporate societies as though they were real and not fictitious persons, and to regard such personality as the natural consequence of permanent association, not a mere mark to be imposed or withheld by the sovereign power.”

With data from 15 Indian states, in this study I demonstrate that political capacity, defined as the ability of government to penetrate society and extract resources, has a more significant—though indirect—effect on fertility behavior than does level of economic development. A path-analysis model with six variables—crude birth rate (the dependent variable), family-planning-program effort, mean female age at marriage, physical-quality-of-life index (PQLI), income per capita, and political capacity—showed a strong indirect effect by the political-capacity measure on fertility decline through both the PQLI and family-planning effort. Within the model, income per capita had little effect on birth rate or any of the intervening variables. The conclusion drawn is that under conditions of economic backwardness as exist in India, it is politics, not economics, that is the primary determinant of fertility patterns.

Britain and the United States have long taken an intense mutual interest in the methods by which they arrive at a defense policy and the two countries have frequently borrowed from each other's experience. In the last few years the British scene has been worthy of special attention because Britain has faced, in a peculiarly acute form, the universal military problem of limited resources and extensive commitments. Recently Conservative governments have tried to resolve this dilemma by plunging heavily for certain strategies and weapons: as a Minister of Defence told the Commons, “We have to pick the winners out of the stable.”

To set a crude financial ceiling and leave the selection of strategy and design of forces wholly to bargaining among the services is frequently regarded as an invitation to aimlessness. An obvious and tempting remedy is to compel the services to conform to a single, coherent and supposedly economical strategic doctrine. This solution carries its own risks of neglecting important aspects of the total problem and of discouraging flexible response to experience. Such a risk is especially serious in a field, such as military policy in peacetime, where there can rarely be conclusive practical tests of policy. Thus the more one searches for comprehensive strategic answers, the more important it is to enquire whether strategic ideas are debated in a market wide and open enough to offer every possible assurance of conceiving and evaluating alternatives. The recent course of British policy is of interest in this respect.

Several of the earliest advocates of proportional representation upheld the “principle of free association”: that electors should be free to choose the constituencies to which they belong. This article analyzes this principle in game-theoretic terms and investigates how far the free association “game” can be simulated through proportional representation. It is assumed that each voter's prime concern is that his most-preferred candidate should be elected. If preferences are single peaked, the outcome of an election based on free association can be predicted; the same outcome would result from a modified form of the single transferable vote.

Critics of what is called the “Enlightenment project” have argued that it has been responsible for a number of current social pathologies. At the same time, the term “civil society” has been used to designate those patterns of solidarity that the Enlightenment project allegedly disrupts. This article (1) argues that characterizations of the Enlightenment project tend to be elusive and historically questionable, (2) suggests that the concept of civil society is ambiguous in both its object and its intent, (3) explores how Kant provided a more rigorous account of the relationship between enlightenment and civil society, an account which rests on a contrast between civil and cosmopolitan society, and (4) considers some of the difficulties that plague attempts to define “civility” as a virtue.

Although James Madison has been invoked by justices and judicial scholars for over 100 years, Madison's principle of religious liberty has never been fully grasped or adopted by the Supreme Court. Judges and scholars have failed to understand Madison's radical but simple teaching that religion is not part of the social compact and, therefore, that the state may not take religion within its cognizance. In this article I set forth Madison's principle of “noncognizance” in light of the social compact theory he articulates in the “Memorial and Remonstrance.” I then attempt to show how it consistently explains Madison's political actions and writings on religious liberty. I conclude by explaining how a “Madisonian” approach, properly understood, would adjudicate the First Amendment's religion clauses.The author would like to thank Mark Blitz, Charles R. Kesler, Nicholas May, Ralph A. Rossum, and Michael Uhlmann for their comments on drafts of this article.

Political scientists have largely overlooked the democratic challenges inherent in the governance of U.S. public education—despite profound implications for educational delivery and, ultimately, social mobility and economic growth. In this study, we consider whether the interests of adult voters who elect local school boards are likely to be aligned with the needs of the students their districts educate. Specifically, we compare voters and students in four states on several policy-relevant dimensions. Using official voter turnout records and rich microtargeting data, we document considerable demographic differences between voters who participate in school board elections and the students attending the schools that boards oversee. These gaps are most pronounced in majority nonwhite jurisdictions and school districts with the largest racial achievement gaps. Our novel analysis provides important context for understanding the political pressures facing school boards and their likely role in perpetuating educational and, ultimately, societal inequality.

Studies of property rights overwhelmingly focus on whether states expropriate or protect property, overlooking the crucial issue of whether private sector actors will use state institutions. By contrast, I argue that the “supply” of formal legal institutions often fails to ensure firms will rely on the state for property rights protection. Instead, firms frequently avoid formal legal institutions and turn to illegal strategies based on violence or corruption. Whether firms adopt legal strategies depends on: (1) firm-level practices and beliefs that impede the use of law, (2) the effectiveness of illegal strategies, and (3) coordination problems resulting from firms’ expectations about each other’s strategies. Drawing on interviews with firms, lawyers, and private security agencies, as well as an original survey of Russian enterprises, I illustrate how “demand-side” factors led to a surprising increase in Russian firms’ reliance on formal legal institutions over the past two decades. The findings suggest that comprehensive understanding of property rights and the rule of law requires not only attention to state institutions’ effectiveness, but also to private actors’ strategies.

Gun violence is a large and growing problem in the United States. Many reformers look towards elections to spur policy change in this area. In this paper, we explore the effects of school shootings on electoral mobilization and election outcomes. We pair data from several sources that measure validated voter registration; validated voter turnout; and the electoral performance of officials at the local, state, and federal levels with regression discontinuity and panel methods. Our effects show that shootings have little to no effect on electoral outcomes in the United States. Our work demonstrates that even when tragic events occur that are squarely in the realm of elected officials’ responsibility, have high levels of issue salience, are highly-covered by the media, draw citizens’ attention, and (perhaps) shift public opinion, these seemingly favorable conditions may not be enough to elicit democratic accountability.

We test whether politicians’ communications shape their supporters’ policy priorities by conducting a field experiment in collaboration with several local elected officials. In the experiment, the officials sent out email messages to the constituents on their distribution lists. Half the constituents received messages where the official advocated for the priority of a given issue, while the other half received a placebo email. We surveyed the constituents one to two months before the message went out and again the week after the official sent the message. The experiment shows that politicians did not change citizens’ priorities in the desired direction. Moreover, citizens who received a message where the official indicated the issue was a priority were not more likely to act when invited to sign a petition on the issue. Elected officials’ ability to shape the priorities of the politically active citizens with whom they regularly communicate is limited and can even be self-defeating.