This article theorizes the circulation of violence in the realms of immigration and labor. Through Walter Benjamin, I conceptualize the relationship between racial violence and law, and note that although violence can support the authority of law, excessive violence makes law vulnerable to decay. This tension between authority and excess is eased by humanitarianism. I find clues for disrupting this circulation in Benjamin’s twin notions of the real state of exception and the general strike, introduced two decades apart and invested in theorizing how labor and other marginalized groups threaten the stability of law supported by violence. This reconstruction proceeds alongside an examination of the contemporary US regime of immigration enforcement, which combines the excessive violence of detention and deportation with marginal humanitarian adjustments, which ultimately legitimate violence. On the disruptive side, a Benjaminian reading of labor activism by the Coalition of Immokalee Workers offers three dimensions of emancipatory politics: (a) practices of refusal (to engage on the terms of the immigration debate), (b) the establishment of historical constellations (of racial regulation of labor constitutive of law), and (c) divine violence (through exposure of lawful violence in the food production chain).

Using two recently published folios by Jeremy Bentham, I draw out a fundamental but little-analyzed connection between pauperism and both domestic and settler colonialism in opposition to imperialism in his thought. The core theoretical contribution of this article is to draw a distinction between a colonial, internal, and productive form of power that claims to improve people and land from within, which Bentham defends, and an imperial, external, and repressive form of power that dominates or rules over people from above and afar, that he rejects. Inherent in colonialism and the power unleashed by it are specific and profoundly negative implications in practice for the poor and disabled of Europe in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries subject to domestic colonialism and indigenous peoples subject to settler colonialism from first contact until today. I conclude Bentham is best understood as a pro-colonialist and anti-imperialist thinker.

Most political scientists concern themselves in one way or another with values and interests. References to values are ubiquitous in the literature, and one need only cite such terms as interest groups, the public interest, the common interest, and the national interest to recall the frequent reference to interests.

The two words have already been discussed a great deal. Even so, there is considerable confusion about their meaning and about the interrelationships of their meaning. Rather than serve as effective tools for incisive analyses, they frequently lead into intellectual traps; and rather than serve as clear symbols for communication, they frequently lead to misunderstanding. These difficulties have been especially great in the field of foreign affairs, where so much has been made of the concept the national interest.

In accord with the office-seeking theory of parties, we explore the impact of the structure of electoral competition on French parties. We speculated that the Fifth Republic's electoral structure—dual-ballot elections in single-member districts—would produce a multiparty system consisting of parties tailored to the two-ballot mode of winning. To test our proposition we devised two measures of winning for the members of the national assembly's partisan groups: the percentage of members who won the absolute majority that was needed to win on the first ballot and the average shift in the electoral margin of the groups' remaining members from the first to the second ballot. The two measures revealed four distinct ways of winning, each of which fostered a prototypical party.

In the September 1987 issue of this Review, we developed a game-theoretic model of committee or legislative decision making, showing the extent to which members may have incentives to share, or conceal, information. Because the formal analysis and statement of results for this model were in error, we offer this correction.

What is the pluralistic theory of the state? Roughly speaking, we may identify the pluralistic theory as that theory which denies the logical validity and the practical and moral adequacy of the traditional doctrine of state sovereignty, or of the doctrines of sovereignty which have prevailed since the eras of Bodin and Hobbes, and have in a peculiar degree dominated political thought since the time of John Austin. Although the pluralist dogma does not take precisely the same form for all of its adherents, views held in common by them all are to be found in the chief criticisms which they offer against what they regard as the now prevailing notions of state authority and competence. The pluralists maintain that sovereignty is not, in any community, indivisible, and they deny that the state either is or ought to be sovereign in any absolute or unique sense. They cite many facts of recent political and social experience to discredit the belief that the state does persistently exercise sovereignty over other essential social groups; they argue that the tendency of social and industrial change today is in the direction of a progressive weakening and narrowing of state power; and they hold that the effect of a still further disintegration and decentralization of authority will be to improve the economic, moral and intellectual well-being of man and society.

West of the one hundredth meridian, the average annual rainfall is generally less than twenty inches except for higher mountainous areas and the humid area west of the Cascade range in western Washington and Oregon and an area west of the Coast range in northwestern California. With less than twenty inches of rainfall, irrigation and dry-farming methods are required to supplement and conserve the native moisture if successful crops are to be produced. At twenty inches of rainfall successful agriculture is subject to extreme hazards from frequent droughts that call to mind the tragedy of crop failure and dust storms. In the humid Pacific Northwest the dry summer climate introduces another variable limiting successful agricultural production without supplementary water.

American institutional arrangements, sustenance patterns and resource policies were conceived in humid England and developed in the humid regions of the United States. However, the general aridity of the West stands in marked contrast to the humidity that prevailed in the physical environment where American social institutions and traditions were formed. This alteration of the physical environment has caused an important shift in the balance of human ecology requiring significant modification in institutional arrangements and social policy, especially in regard to the control and development of natural resources.

This study, based on the two-wave questionnaire data collected from legislative candidates in Iowa, attempts to test the “congratulation-rationalization effect,” a highly provocative hypothesis that John Kingdon formulated regarding politicians' beliefs about voters. The hypothesis asserts that winning candidates tend to develop complimentary beliefs about voters while losing candidates tend to develop beliefs deprecating to voters. The results of analysis indicate, however, no significant difference between winners and losers in terms of the direction and magnitude of changes in their beliefs about voters, suggesting that the hypothesis is invalid. When the hypothesis is reformulated in terms of “dissonance states” rather than “election outcomes,” the evidence is strongly supportive. Among winners, those who perceive a high degree of dissonance more than those who perceive little dissonance tend to change their beliefs about voters in a favorable direction. Conversely, among losers, those who perceive a high degree of dissonance more than those who perceive little dissonance tend to change their beliefs in an unfavorable direction. Therefore, the “congratulation-rationalization” hypothesis can be sustained only if cast in direct dissonance terms.

Africa's postindependence leaders are under enormous pressure. They must assume such new functions as the conduct of foreign relations and military defense and must expand developmental activities greatly, all at a time of falling world commodity prices, population explosion, and increasing indifference to foreign aid on the part of the wealthier countries. Local African expectations are rising, even though such requisites for satisfying these aspirations as capital, skills, and initiative remain in short supply. Nationwide linkages and a national identity must be built in the face of quickening ethnic anxieties and inward-lookingness. The functional benefits offered by a continued non-African presence must be secured without causing deep-seated popular frustrations; such frustrations could clearly jeopardize the regime's legitimacy should they become too extreme. The need for schools, hospitals, and welfare activities are juxtaposed against such pressing requirements as the development of power facilities, irrigation schemes, road networks, and industries. The choices are difficult and the demands heavy. No wonder Aristide Zolberg remarks that the “governments with the lowest load capability have assumed the heaviest burdens.”

If these restrictions of international environment and resources did not impose sufficient constraints upon governments as they attempt to cope with developmental needs, their flexibility of movement is further constricted by the pulls of ideology. African countries, fresh from an encounter with powerful, privileged European states, carry over a wide range of liberal commitments into the postindependence period. They are naturally determined to continue the struggle against any remaining manifestations of colonialism on the continent—white settler oligarchies, neocolonialist military and economic arrangements, or politically-inspired alignments with powers outside of Africa. Their leaders proclaim both nationalist and pan-Africanist objectives and call simultaneously for a leveling egalitarianism and rapid economic growth. The extent to which they can reconcile these somewhat overlapping, and even conflicting, goals with the compelling claims implicit in nation-building remains a crucial question with broad implications for regime stability.

We study how officeholder gender affects issue accountability and examine whether constituents evaluate women and men legislators differently on the basis of their policy records. Data from 2008 through 2018 show that constituents’ approval ratings and vote choices in US House elections are more responsive to the policy records of women legislators than of men legislators. These patterns are concentrated among politically aware constituents, but we find no evidence that the results are driven disproportionately by either women or men constituents or by issues that are gendered in stereotypical ways. Additional analyses suggest that while constituents penalize women and men legislators at similar rates for policy incongruence, women legislators are rewarded more than men as they are increasingly aligned with their constituents. Our results show that accountability standards are applied differently across legislator gender and suggest a link between the quality of policy representation and the gender composition of American legislatures.

The right to vote is a keystone of democracy, but many groups, including those that were long excluded from the ballot, fail to exercise their rights in large numbers. In the United States, cutting edge research has argued that the first women to cast ballots were “peripheral” voters: their decisions to participate were even more sensitive to electoral competition than were men’s, producing larger gender gaps in turnout in less competitive districts. This paper argues that the portability of the peripheral voting thesis depends on the electoral institutions when suffrage was granted. Using the example of Norway, which transitioned from majoritarian rules to proportional representation just a few years after women won the vote, I show that proportional representation, which increases competition on average, produces a dramatic fall in the gender turnout gap, particularly in previously uncompetitive districts. These findings suggest that electoral systems, more than gender, made women peripheral voters

Politicians do not endorse rules of the game as reliably as is implied by traditional constitutional commentaries or by modern democratic theory. Interviews with Members of Parliament and candidates demonstrate that their views are deeply and systematically divided between alternative constitutional interpretations constructed upon foundations of party-political bias. Thus, attitudes towards nearly all rules of the game are powerfully shaped by political values such as authority and equality, values that differentiate views within as well as between the Conservative and labour parties. Similarly, patterns of support seem much affected by a disposition to boost norms that aid one's own party, depending on whether it is in Government or Opposition, and to downgrade norms that might aid political opponents. The article considers implications of these results for the viability of Britain's unwritten Constitution and for theories about the foundations of representative government.

The recruitment of political candidates is a basic function of political parties: a party that cannot attract and then nominate candidates surrenders its elemental opportunity for power. Two stages may conveniently be distinguished in the process of recruitment. Certification includes the social screening and political channeling that results in eligibility for candidacy, while selection includes the actual choice of candidates to represent parties in the general election. Selection is at the focus of the contest for power within parties, and is my focus here.

Considering its importance we know too little about the dynamics of the nominating process. Most of what we do know derives from the analysis of two modal institutional types of political selection: the convention system and the primary system. Experience indicates that despite their manifest purposes, these contrasting institutional types have not necessarily resulted in widely different internal party structures. A variety of party patterns in one-party states—from the tightly controlled machines in Virginia to the transient and multiple factionalism of Florida—flourish in the framework of the direct primary system. Patterns of diffusing factionalism on the one hand, and of disciplined party organizations on the other are also found in states without primaries. Perhaps a closer look at the active participants in the processes of selection, and their interrelationships, may shed some further light on significant factorsin party structure. By interviewing candidates in party primaries we hoped to disclose the steps in nomination and the precise political relationships involved.

In recent years, public opinion in the democratic countries has become increasingly aware of the dangers inherent in the unlimited competition of a host of rival nationalistic movements and sovereign nation-states. Having recognized it as a danger to be overcome, many liberal thinkers, like the experts of the Royal Institute of International Affairs, or Mr. Max Lerner, are prone to assume that the trend toward nationalistic disintegration has already reached its peak. Many consequent suggestions of policy are based on the assumption that nationalism is declining, or about to decline.

There are many similarities between Dewey and Marx, particularly the claim by each to have united theory and practice. But this article argues that the distance between the two remains great. Dewey denies what Marx affirms; namely, that partisanship performs a variety of positive functions in the movement towards a more morally adequate society and in the moral transformation of man. Against Marx, Dewey argues that the “rivalry of parties” must come under the control of the norms of critical inquiry which, Dewey believes, can also serve as the site of a more comprehensive and nonpartisan social interest. The article concludes that both Dewey and Marx are correct in what they have to say about partisanship, but in a more limited way than either would acknowledge. If partisanship is functional in the reconstruction of society, as Marx holds, and dysfunctional to the moral growth of the individual, as Dewey holds, then the controversy between liberal amelioration and radical politics is likely to persist.

This paper attempts to examine carefully the problem of determining a numerical measure which reflects the quality of the population apportionment in a legislative body. We desire a single index, an index which takes advantage of the available population data, and an index which is readily understood. It should be said that we are not concerned with the much more difficult problem of legislative districting—actually drawing district boundaries on a map—but concentrate our attention only on the quality of apportionment in the particular, but important, sense of population equality.

In order to accomplish this purpose I review a number of increasingly complex possibilities and eventually arrive at a measure which superficially seems somewhat esoteric, but which turns out ultimately to be easily interpretable.

It will be convenient to proceed heuristically with the development by carrying along a small concrete example. For this purpose, consider the six congressional districts of Connecticut.

A recent and perhaps surprising development in political theory has been the revival of neo-Kantian liberalism, with its doctrines of the neutral state and equal concern and respect. Critics of liberalism have suggested, however, that Kantian notions of rights and rationality are too thin a foundation on which to build satisfactory forms of community and political life. In this paper I examine the critique of rights-based liberalism by returning to the philosophy of Hegel. Hegel's position, I suggest, provides us with a much needed middle ground between liberalism and its contemporary critics. Like the modern communitarians he is critical of the individualistic and ahistorical conceptions of rights underlying the liberal polity, but like many liberals he is skeptical of the claims to recreate a democratic, participatory Gemeinschaft that would leave citizens defenseless before their particular communities. I conclude that like Montesquieu before him and Tocqueville after, Hegel looked to the “corporations” or intermediary associations to skirt the extremes of the market place and civic virtue.

The 1944 campaign was the second presidential election in which the ceilings of the Hatch Act were operative, and the first campaign in which contributions from labor organizations were prohibited. It furnishes convincing evidence of the ineffectiveness of these limitations and of the imperative need for complete revision of existing regulations of campaign funds.

The financing of the 1944 campaign was subjected to close study by special committees of both the House and Senate, and their hearings and reports supplement at many important points the reports required by the Corrupt Practices Act. The most controversial issues of the campaign centered about the Political Action Committee of the CIO, and this organization was subjected to close study by both committees. The House committee, headed by Representative Clinton P. Anderson (now Secretary of Agriculture), also stressed the increasing importance and questionable practices of non-party “opinion moulders,” but did not attempt to summarize the total expenditures of the campaign. Senator Green's committee, in addition to studying certain party committees and independent organizations in detail, made a great effort to compile complete data on receipts and expenditures affecting the presidential campaign, and its report makes available what is probably the most complete and accurate over-all picture of the financing of a presidential election ever recorded. The notable recommendations of this committee will be discussed later.

The evolution of business organization is from the unsystematized through the systematized to the scientific. Governmental work—federal, state and municipal—is still almost exclusively in the unsystematized stage.

Among the causes of municipal inefficiency are the attempt to hamper and control the action of individuals by a multiplicity of petty restrictions unknown in private business, and the separation of the municipal service into scores of divisions with little or no mutuality of interest. Both of these practices tend to prevent group action in the large sense. But undoubtedly the greatest bar to efficiency is the unwillingness to trust the individual as shown by the attempt to thwart evil or selfish designs of the official by board control. This committee management is in my opinion, the most costly hallucination of democracy. As a present day cause of expensive and inefficient government, this bulwark of the stand patter, of special privilege, of the politician and of the crook makes other influences tending in the same direction such as the complacency of civil service and the lack of definite standards, seem almost negligible.