We contend that some people of color express anti-Black prejudice to cope with their own marginalization. Individuals stationed along an in-group’s periphery are often motivated to exclude others to bolster their own belonging in a community. Yet this process is sometimes triggered when individuals feel they are losing their marginal position. We examine these dynamics in the context of Latino prejudice toward Black individuals, with American as the in-group. Study 1 shows stronger American identity among Latinos is associated with anti-Black racism, which then correlates with weaker support for Black-centered policies. Studies 2 and 3 induce Latinos to feel more American, which sometimes increases anti-Black prejudice and decreases support for pro-Black policies. Study 4 causes Latinos to feel less American, which powerfully heightens anti-Black racism and drastically undercuts support for Black-centered policies. These patterns are generally conditioned by ideology, with liberal Latinos exhibiting more sensitivity to their rank as American.

This article explains the empirical connection between dyadic capability differences and international conflict as a consequence of how, when, and where states enter the international system. State capabilities are largely static, and, since states enter the system in geographic clusters, the processes of state maturation affect contiguous and regionally proximate states similarly. This makes dyadic capability differences static as well. The lack of change in capability differences over time suggests that the parity-conflict relationship is largely a product of the factors associated with state system entry. Indeed, as I demonstrate, several different proxies for the conditions of state system entry separately eliminate any statistical relationship between parity and militarized dispute onset, 1816–2001. I also find no relationship between parity and the wars that have occurred during that same time period. These results have a number of implications for the role of power and capabilities in explaining international conflict.

Interest in the thought of Hugo Grotius on international law and ethics is justified inasmuch as he attempted to define a theoretical position between an idealism he thought counterproductive and an amoral realism he found unacceptable. Grotius constructed a system in which the moral authority of natural law was combined with the flexibility of human law. This required him to develop a special understanding of the nature and relation of these two types of law. In giving the law of nations, as a product of human will, the authority to suspend provisions of natural law, he provided for a code of international conduct that could permit injustice where necessary, without abandoning moral ideals altogether.

Some twenty years ago Harold D. Lasswell, in his Psychopathology and Politics, attempted to show by case histories some of the motivations and personality characteristics of certain political types. This book was a pioneer in its field because it applied the psychoanalytic “free fantasy” technique to the field of political science. The case histories were chosen from those in selected hospitals and from the official files of certain psychiatrists. From these case histories, Lasswell was able to obtain information which threw new light on the actions of such political types as the agitator and the administrator. He then developed the formula p}d}r = P; where p equals private motives, d equals displacement onto public objects, r equals rationalization in terms of public interest, } means “transformed into,” and P signifies the political man.

Lasswell's techniques are invaluable for the study of political personalities and motives. It is unfortunate that others have not utilized them more fully and thereby added to the store of knowledge concerning the personalities of politicians; but a partial explanation lies in the fact that the techniques themselves present obstacles to their ready use by political scientists. In the first place, the case histories are usually confidential and difficult to obtain.

Since the writings of the judicial realists in the 1920's and 1930's almost all social scientists have accepted the concept that the judicial process is basically political. One line of reasoning points out that judges inevitably are policy makers because of their functions, such as constitutional and statutory interpretation. Politics is conflict among interests or values or demands, and any activity, including judicial decisions, which advantages one interest as opposed to others is political activity. Since judges decide cases involving interest conflicts, theirs is “interest activity not as a matter of choice but of function.” Robert H. Jackson made the point cogently when he argued that the “Supreme Court has, from the very nature of its functions, been deep in power politics …” Of the power of judicial review, he said, “The ultimate function of the Supreme Court is nothing less than the arbitration between fundamental and ever-present rival forces or trends in our organized society.” Although these remarks were addressed to the Supreme Court, they are true to a substantial degree of judicial power throughout the American system. Many of the conflicts adjudicated by the judiciary advance some interests or values and disadvantage others.

At the same time that the judicial function has been recognized as political in its consequences, the process of judicial decision making has come to be viewed as involving wide opportunities for discretion by the judges. The mechanical theory of judging, enunciated most clearly by the late Justice Owen Roberts, is now generally in disrepute, and realists prefer to cite Charles Evans Hughes who stated “We are under the Constitution, but the Constitution is what the judges say it is.”

Rules changes in the Democratic party have substantially altered one of the fundamental institutions of American politics. This article is an effort to assess some of the effects of the new rules on the selection of delegates to the Democratic National Convention on the strategic environment faced by presidential candidates. The article outlines the basic aspects of those rule changes, describes the problems involved in the implementation of the rules, and attempts to evaluate some of the consequences faced by the presidential campaign of Senator George McGovern in the context of the California primary of 1972.

Chronic communal conflicts often embody prisoner's dilemmas. Both communities prefer peace to war. Yet neither trusts the other, viewing the other's gain as its loss, so potentially shared interests often go unrealized. Achieving positive-sum outcomes from apparently zero-sum struggles requires a particular kind of risk-embracing leadership. To succeed leaders must (a) see power relations as potentially positive-sum, (b) strengthen negotiating adversaries when tempted to weaken them, and (c) demonstrate hope for a positive future and take great personal risks to achieve it. Such leadership is exemplified by Nelson Mandela and F. W. de Klerk in the South African democratic transition. To illuminate the strategic dilemmas Mandela and de Klerk faced, we examine the work of Robert Axelrod, Thomas Schelling, and Josep Colomer, who highlight important dimensions of the problem but underplay the role of risk-embracing leadership. Finally we discuss leadership successes and failures in the Northern Ireland settlement and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Growing economic inequality has raised concerns that democratic governments are no longer responsive to popular demands for redistribution either because the state capacity is eroded by footloose capital or because the wealthy subvert democracy through the power of money. In this paper we critically assess these conjectures against long-standing arguments about redistribution and insurance under democracy. We test the alternatives on a new comprehensive dataset on income inequality from 17 advanced democracies between 1980 and 2019. We find that before taxes and transfers income inequality has increased markedly everywhere but also that government redistribution has played a critical role in compensating the middle class and to a perhaps surprising degree also the poor. However, the United States is a large outlier.

Does UN peacekeeping promote democracy in countries wracked by civil war? Existing studies are limited and reach contradictory conclusions. We develop a theory to explain how peacekeepers can help overcome obstacles to democratization in conflict-affected countries, then test our theory by combining three original datasets on UN mandates, personnel, and activities covering all UN missions in Africa since the end of the Cold War. Using fixed effects and instrumental variables estimators, we show that UN missions with democracy promotion mandates are strongly positively correlated with the quality of democracy in host countries but that the magnitude of the relationship is larger for civilian than for uniformed personnel, stronger when peacekeepers engage rather than bypass host governments when implementing reforms, driven in particular by UN election administration and oversight, and more robust during periods of peace than during periods of civil war.

Robertson (2005) and Rakove (1996) argue that Roger Sherman was surprisingly influential at the Constitutional Convention. Using empirically estimated ideal points, we show that Sherman was a pivotal voter from a pivotal state. We also demonstrate that if the votes were tallied by individual delegates, rather than being grouped by the home state, then Sherman would have been less pivotal. This suggests that the voting procedures adopted at the Constitutional Convention may have affected Sherman's ability to get his interests enacted. Such institutions might have been more responsible than his legislative ability for making Sherman effective.

This article defends the value of partisanship for political commitment. It clarifies what political commitment is, how it resembles and differs from other forms of commitment, and under what conditions it can prosper. It argues that political commitment is sustained and enhanced when agents devoted to particular political projects form a lasting associative relation that coordinates future action both on behalf of their future selves and of similarly committed others. Partisanship contributes to the feasibility of such projects, and helps strengthen them from a motivational and epistemic perspective. Although partisanship is also often criticized for sacrificing individuals’ independence of thought and action, if we value political commitment, this is a necessary trade-off.

To analyze intersecting power relations in reproductive and immigration politics, I examine Garza v. Hargan (an appellate case regarding unaccompanied immigrant minors’ abortion rights) alongside systemic injustices in immigration detention (e.g., exposure to miscarriage risks, coerced sterilization, shackling). These injustices, I argue, emerge from conflicts and compromises over fetal citizenship within the American radical right. Although pro-life and anti-immigrant discourses assume opposing logics of citizenship, respectively interpreting immigrants’ fetuses as “fetal citizens” or “anchor babies,” these contradictions are neutralized by two techniques. Debilitation (systematic degradation of a disposable population) enables the appearance of fetal protection to coexist with de facto exposure to death, injury, and risk. Paralegality (quasi-legal policy making by enforcement agents) allows situational shifts in the meaning of fetal citizenship and adjustments to the pro-life/anti-immigrant compromise. Both obscure culpability for reproductive injustice, reinforce interlocking oppressions, and control women’s bodies in order to control the body politic’s demographic future.

The purpose of this article is to develop a theoretical framework for analyzing why individuals support private environmental “public interest” groups. The model attempts to integrate past contributions which have argued that these decisions could be explained by one of several factors, including: bounded rationality and imperfect information (Moe, 1980); the features of the public goods provided (or influenced by) these groups (Mitchell, 1979); the existence of a disequilibrium in households' demands for public goods (Weisbrod, 1977); or as a response to contract failures (Hansmann, 1980). The article uses a theoretical framework originally developed to explain individuals' decisions to join private clubs and specifies the conditions for the efficient provision of access to different types of private, nonprofit groups. By describing the optimal access conditions as if individuals could be coordinated to assure this efficient outcome, the model provides insights into the benefits and costs associated with membership in the environmental groups in practice.

The president's difficulties in inducing Congress to pass his legislative program are usually ascribed to the different constituencies of the two institutions. This difference would make for disharmony under any circumstances, but it is said to be particularly important because the seniority system bestows the most power on congressmen whose constituencies are most unlike the president's. His policy commitments are responses to the needs of a heterogeneous, industrialized, urban society. The occupants of the most influential congressional positions come from districts that re-elect them regardless of national political trends. The representative from such a district “views with alarm the great issues that sweep the nation and threaten to disrupt the familiar and comfortable politics of his district,” which is usually characterized as a rural backwater.

Both political parties are described this way. Because the Democrats have controlled Congress for all but four of the past 36 years, most illustrations of this thesis are drawn from conflicts between Democratic presidents and Democratic congresses. More specifically, the focus of attention is usually on the refusal of southern Democratic congressional leaders to support presidential legislative requests.

This article examines the interplay between gendered electoral financing (GEF) and other crucial factors in democratic elections worldwide to determine whether, how, and why these understudied mechanisms help achieve gender balance in national parliaments. Integrating qualitative comparative analysis and minimalist causal mechanism case studies, the sequential mixed methods study of GEF implementation in 31 elections in 17 countries shows that enhanced gender balance is achieved when GEF is combined with several conditions, providing a much-needed financial incentive—payments and penalties—for party gatekeepers and eligible women to change their behavior. In successful cases of top-down GEF implementation, gender quotas combine with a PR electoral system or a 15% minimum of women MPs, a measure developed for this study. Success in bottom-up GEF implementation is unexpected and complex and occurs without a quota. The article ends with a discussion of the research agenda, policy recommendations, and implications for the pursuit of democratic quality.

Henry Thoreau's Walden is frequently read as the tale of a disaffected Romantic individualist escaping the rigors of community and modern society to seek refuge in a pondside idyll. I argue that this is a fundamental misreading which misses the political import of the book. Walden reveals itself to be a democratic advice-book focusing on the tensions between the political ideal of free self-direction and the unfavorable work conditions that laborers often face. Thoreau's goal is to set out a strategy by which economically vulnerable citizens may enact their liberty and autonomy in threatening employment conditions. To that end, Thoreau reformats themes and practices from various ancient philosophical traditions. Walden is one of the few texts in our tradition in which strategies are thought through for the individual laborer attempting to maintain freedom while at the same time making a living. It therefore merits our closest attention.

In many ways the study of political groups from a theoretical point of view can be said not to have progressed much beyond the conceptions of Arthur F. Bentley. There have been countless studies of political groups, to be sure, but it seems most have been little more than the collection and presentation of ad hoc facts obtained from the testing of ad hoc hypotheses, the concepts of “group” and of “group behavior” having been little altered in the process.

Much of the difficulty no doubt stems from Bentley's strict empiricism and the interpretation given his position by most social scientists who have aspired to translate him. When Bentley said that we know nothing of ideas and feelings but only of activity, he was merely reminding the social scientist to remain close to the operations of the phenomena he was studying. Activity, or behavior, can be worked with and studied directly, but it is questionable whether or not the same can be said of ideas and feelings. Scientific progress, Bentley would say, can be made only if one deals with what is visible and replicable. Critics as well as followers of Bentley, however, have interpreted him to mean that such matters as subjectivity are outside the pale of science, since subjectivity is presumed to be private, idiosyncratic, and nonreplicable.

As government welfare programming contracts and NGOs increasingly assume core aid functions, they must address a long-standing challenge—that people in need often belong to stigmatized groups. To study other-regarding behavior, we fielded an experiment through a text-to-give campaign in Greece. Donations did not increase with an appeal to the in-group (Greek child) relative to a control (child), but they were halved with reference to a stigmatized out-group (Roma child). An appeal to fundamental rights, a common advocacy strategy, did not reduce the generosity gap. Donations to all groups were lower near Roma communities and declined disproportionately for the Roma appeal. Qualitative research in 12 communities complements our experiment. We conclude that NGO fundraising strategies that narrowly emphasize either in-groups or out-groups, or fundamental rights language, may not be as effective as broader appeals, and we discuss implications for public goods provision in an era of growing nationalism.

The approach of another presidential campaign should bring with it a renewal of plans for the study of the election process by a number of students of parties and of public opinion. An important instrument for use in any such investigation would be a scale for the measurement of attitude toward candidates for elective governmental office. The writer considers it timely, therefore, to release for possible use a candidate scale which has undergone considerable testing during the past four years. The psychophysical methods adapted to the use of scale construction by Professor Thurstone have been employed in the production of this scale.