Public concerns about the social and political implications of energy choices have found expression in the nuclear debate. The Three Mile Island accident, in its complexity and far-reaching consequences, served to focus criticism of nuclear power that had been building up for a decade. It revealed with striking clarity that technology is a social concept to be understood in terms of social and political relationships if it is to be brought under public control. The ramifications of the accident revealed the conceptual difficulties of assessing social risks and the political difficulties in managing them. This article draws examples from the Three Mile Island accident to review several characteristics of nuclear technology, its scale and costs, its complexity, its uncertain and unpredictable physical effects, and its indirect risks. It then explores the implications for social, political and administrative institutions as they grope for ways to manage the risks of nuclear power in the context of critical public scrutiny. Finally it identifies a range of issues calling for policy research.

How did personal wealth and slaveownership affect the likelihood Southerners fought for the Confederate Army in the American Civil War? On the one hand, wealthy Southerners had incentives to free-ride on poorer Southerners and avoid fighting; on the other hand, wealthy Southerners were disproportionately slaveowners, and thus had more at stake in the outcome of the war. We assemble a dataset on roughly 3.9 million free citizens in the Confederacy and show that slaveowners were more likely to fight than non-slaveowners. We then exploit a randomized land lottery held in 1832 in Georgia. Households of lottery winners owned more slaves in 1850 and were more likely to have sons who fought in the Confederate Army. We conclude that slaveownership, in contrast to some other kinds of wealth, compelled Southerners to fight despite free-rider incentives because it raised their stakes in the war’s outcome.

September 11 did not fundamentally change world politics. Instead, it exacerbated already existing tensions about how to implement post-cold war collective security rules. Using a rule-oriented constructivist theory of global security, I argue that the dominant post-cold war global security trend is the gradual construction of collective security rules, including rules punishing human rights abuses, terrorism, and proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. Using an interpretive method called dialogical analysis, I analyze the debate about intervention in Kosovo and argue that the recent conflict over intervention in Iraq revolves around similar claims about how to implement collective security rules. This analysis challenges arguments that September 11 ushered in a new era of world politics that necessarily justifies more aggressive, preemptive U.S. policies.I would like to thank Karin Fierke, Yale Ferguson, Gavan Duffy, and David Ahola for comments on earlier drafts, as well as Maximo Sanchez Pagano for research assistance. Any errors are my own.

Motivated by recent developments in cyberwarfare, we study deterrence in a world where attacks cannot be perfectly attributed to attackers. In the model, each of $$ n $$ attackers may attack the defender. The defender observes a noisy signal that probabilistically attributes the attack. The defender may retaliate against one or more attackers and wants to retaliate against the guilty attacker only. We note an endogenous strategic complementarity among the attackers: if one attacker becomes more aggressive, that attacker becomes more “suspect” and the other attackers become less suspect, which leads the other attackers to become more aggressive as well. Despite this complementarity, there is a unique equilibrium. We identify types of improvements in attribution that strengthen deterrence—namely, improving attack detection independently of any effect on the identifiability of the attacker, reducing false alarms, or replacing misidentification with non-detection. However, we show that other improvements in attribution can backfire, weakening deterrence—these include detecting more attacks where the attacker is difficult to identify or pursuing too much certainty in attribution. Deterrence is improved if the defender can commit to a retaliatory strategy in advance, but the defender should not always commit to retaliate more after every signal.

What does the choice of the Gettysburg Address as a eulogy for the September 11 dead reveal about public mourning in the polity that made it? Tracing the genealogy of the Address back to Pericles' Funeral Oration, this essay argues that Thucydides provides two models of public mourning: one based on the Oration alone, the other on the rituals surrounding the Festival of Dionysia. Each generates a particular patriotic perspective: one unquestioning and partial, the other balanced and theoretical. Using Plato's Menexenus to distinguish the models, the essay employs them as a lens to view two moments of American public mourning linked by the Gettysburg Address. Suggesting that 1863 saw a Dionysian approach; and 2002, one based on the Oration alone, it traces the beneficial impact of the 1863 choice for American politics, and considers the possible consequences of the 2002 reading in light of American and Athenian historical experience.

Backed by studies finding only limited propensity for free-riding when communities have an interest in self-provision, the last few decades have seen a surge of interest in community-based development. A major caveat to the “second wave” of collective action studies, however, is that collective action often breaks down under hierarchical social relationships. This is unfortunate news for developing countries’ rural societies, which are often entrenched in patron-client networks. Using a natural experiment found in the construction of a motorway, the article finds that clientelist relationships do not, in and by themselves, block peasant collective action. Rather, it is the interaction between clientelism and isolation that empowers patrons to block community-based projects. Peasants in connected villages face no such constraints, but instead rely on their patrons’ assistance in collective projects, making the hierarchical network an additional resource.

One of the most interesting generalizations in the field of social science is Robert Michels' “iron law of oligarchy.” The commentary on this hypothesis has usually been motivated by a desire to attack or to support it; seldom has anyone made a serious attempt to understand it before passing judgment. This situation is partially Michels' responsibility, since his statement of the law of oligarchy is badly confused and quite incomplete. Nevertheless, the notion that “oligarchies prevail” has a high degree of general credibility, and even the realization that Michels' statement of it is inadequate and his evidence for it inconclusive does not destroy its intellectual appeal.

In this paper I shall be concerned exclusively with an attempt to make the law of oligarchy understandable. This involves formulating the generalization as precisely as possible, defining its important terms, and stating its sources of evidence. This is not an investigation into what Michels “really meant,” but an examination of what he said that is good political theory. I shall feel free to make any changes or additions which appear necessary to me. But such alterations will be primarily matters of definition and logical organization.

The unequal distribution of power among the members of a political system is one of the most pervasive facts of political life. Yet, while many studies have confirmed the fact that a few members exercise disproportionate control over many others in most systems, the configurations of power relations that occur among the few have generally not been subjected to systematic comparative analysis. In a few notable empirical studies, attempts have been made to compare the exercise of power in different issue-areas and across different decisions. Comparative analyses have suffered, however, from the lack of any means to make tractable and compare, except in a qualitative way, schematic representations of power relations either in different political systems or over different issue-areas in the same system. When diagrams of power structures become complex and unwieldy, it is easiest to forget about making precise comparisons about the way power is distributed among decision-makers somehow identified as being influential in the political process.

The purpose of this article is to define and to prove formally the existence of an equilibrium under proportional representation, as well as partially to characterize it. Specifically, let m be the quota that represents the minimal number of voters necessary for a candidate to be elected. We show that there is a set of elected candidates, each choosing an alternative and each receiving at least m votes, such that no other potential candidate, by offering an additional alternative, can secure at least m votes for himself. We then investigate the structure, at equilibrium, of the set of individuals who support a given candidate, as well as study stability properties of the equilibrium. We also provide necessary and sufficient conditions for the equilibrium to consist of a single candidate, thus generalizing Black's median-voter result.

The analysis of military regimes, as opposed to military coups, has attracted comparatively little attention. This paper examines whether the political, military, and economic performance of systems which have experienced a military regime differs from the performance of systems which have not. The comparison between the performance of these two types of system is then used to examine the validity of the occurrence of a military regime as an indicator of instability. The population consists of all independent countries of the world. The time span examined is 1961–70. The comparison is made across a number of political, military, and economic variables. The basic comparison is elaborated by introducing controls for GNP, area, number of coups, and duration of the military regime. While the controls show a number of variations, the main summary finding is that it is easy to differentiate military and non-military regime systems in political terms, but not in military and economic terms. This finding seriously questions the utility of the occurrence of a military regime as an indicator of instability.

Research has shown that place of residence (urban-rural) has an ambiguous influence on political participation. Japan is one of several major nations in which rural people participate politically more than their urban counterparts. An analysis of urban-rural political attitudes in Japan shows some of the roots of the tendencies in participation. While urban residents are more psychologically involved in national politics, they also tend toward greater pessimism and have lower feelings of the vote being a duty than do their rural counterparts. In contrast, rural voters are highly dutiful in orientation, as well as being strongly involved in local politics and more concerned than urban residents about having their political needs represented. A Coleman effect parameter analysis of the urban-rural attitudes and political participation shows that the attitudes do in fact account for differences in political participation in local politics. But the attitudinal tendencies are less important for national political participation, and it is possible that the older social influence interpretation of Japanese urban-rural differences is most applicable to sectoral trends in this case.

Has the scope of public planning in contemporary capitalist economies promoted or hindered economic growth and income distribution? We explore this question by assessing the impact of various mechanisms for raising government revenues on investment, growth, and income distribution in 22 developed market economy countries. The article considers whether growth and distribution are affected differently by governments' relative reliance on personal and corporate income taxes, social security contributions, property taxes, and sales and value added taxes, or by the relative progressivity of tax mechanisms. Our findings lend support to the assertion that fiscal instruments (especially personal income taxes) can be used successfully to achieve greater income equality. On the other hand, these findings run counter to the conventional notion that an automatic trade-off exists between an active public sector and a dynamic, expanding economy: although there is surely some tension between the economic goals of growth and equality, it is not at all clear that they are necessarily incompatible or that government can contribute only to the latter.

This article attempts to assess the role of courts and other adjudicative institutions in the definition, interpretation, and management of conflict. Understanding the function of courts requires an understanding of a society's entire range of conflict management mechanisms. Particular emphasis is placed on those variables most likely to determine where and how conflicts will be solved.

Adjudicative institutions can be effectively differentiated by a typology which measures the level of formality in procedures and the degree of “publicness.” The structure of a dispute-resolving institution will have an important effect on which disputes are presented to it and how they are decided. The nature of the dispute, goals of the disputants, social context, and political culture are also important variables.

Government has an important stake in the manner in which disputes arise and are resolved. It may promote or require the resolution of some disputes in the courts while allowing others to be resolved in less public and formal arenas. Formal litigation may provide a model for private dispute resolution. It may also absorb and deflect grievances before they escalate into more organized and intense demands on the political system. Finally, litigation may have an important effect on system stability by promoting support for regime values.

Separation of powers existed in the British Empire of North America long before the U.S. Constitution of 1789, yet little is known about the strategic foundations of this institutional choice. In this article, I argue that separation of powers helps an imperial crown mitigate an agency problem with its colonial governor. Governors may extract more rents from colonial settlers than the imperial crown prefers. This lowers the Crown’s rents and inhibits economic development by settlers. Separation of powers within colonies allows settlers to restrain the governor’s rent extraction. If returns to settler investment are moderately high, this restraint is necessary for colonial economic development and ultimately benefits the Crown. Historical evidence from the American colonies and the first British Empire is consistent with the model. This article highlights the role of agency problems as a distinct factor in New World institutional development, and in a sovereign’s incentives to create liberal institutions.

This article examines the legitimacy of the use of force by armed nonstate actors resisting the imposition of state rule over territories they control. We focus on the rights of warlords: subnational strongmen who seek autonomy within geographically demarcated territories, but not secession or control of the state itself. We argue that behind the resistance to state-building lies a twofold question of legitimate authority: the authority of states to consolidate power within their own internationally recognized borders and the authority of warlords to resist that expansion, by force if necessary, when it threatens social order and the protection of basic rights. This article draws on just war theory to develop a set of conditions under which such resistance may be justified, explores the argument's practical implications for state-building under the tutelage of third parties (e.g., the United Nations), and demonstrates its empirical relevance through an application to Afghanistan.

Does political affirmative action undermine or promote development? We present the first systematic analysis of Scheduled Areas in India, home to 100 million citizens, where local political office is reserved for the historically disadvantaged Scheduled Tribes. A newly constructed dataset of 217,000 villages allows us to probe conflicting hypotheses on the implementation of the world’s largest workfare program, the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme. We find that reservations deliver no worse overall outcomes, that there are large gains for targeted minorities, and that these gains come at the cost of the relatively privileged, not other minorities. We also find improvements in other pro-poor programs, including a rural roads program and general public goods. Reservations more closely align benefits to each group’s population share, allaying concerns of overcompensation for inequalities. Contrary to the expectations of skeptics, results indicate that affirmative action can redistribute both political and economic power without hindering overall development.

Rural France is often seen as culturally isolated and politically uninvolved. Using a combination of community studies and survey evidence, one can show that the lack of declared interest in politics of rural Frenchmen seems to mean an absence of involvement in the party system rather than a passivity toward public life. Nevertheless rural France produces higher voting turnouts in local and national elections than are found in other sections or population groups.

The weakness of partisan involvement, as opposed to citizen involvement, seems to bespeak not merely apathy, but actual hostility, toward party politics. This political hostility is widespread among French workers but is politically more important among French peasants. Thus voting choices are less party-oriented precisely where urban-based campaign organizations are least effective. Local non-party notables therefore probably play a greater brokerage role in national election campaigns, and election results are less predictable than in the rural sectors of many other societies. The degree of antipartisanship in rural constituencies also seems to encourage candidates to avoid national party labels in election campaigns.

Three kinds of factors are suggested to account for both the high citizen involvement and the low partisan involvement: First, historically, the extension of the suffrage to the rural periphery long before the French party system was capable of the same kind of penetration may have habituated rural Frenchmen to the exercise of the vote in a non-partisan context. Second, the achievement of stable landholding for most peasants removes visible class conflict as a legitimizing factor for party organization, while an extensive interest group structure increases the tendency to keep informed, to participate, and to run for local office. Third, the political ecology of the French village both encourages high citizen involvement and discourages partisan involvement. While many of these factors are universal among peasant societies, the particular historical, sociological, and ecological configuration of the French village seems to produce a rural resident who is more informed and active than our inherited wisdom would suggest, but less partisan than are urban citizens with similar levels of involvement.

A large literature suggests that the presence of refugees is associated with greater risk of conflict. We argue that the positive effects of hosting refugees on local conditions have been overlooked. Using global data from 1990 to 2018 on locations of refugee communities and civil conflict at the subnational level, we find no evidence that hosting refugees increases the likelihood of new conflict, prolongs existing conflict, or raises the number of violent events or casualties. Furthermore, we explore conditions where provinces are likely to experience substantively large decreases in conflict risk due to increased development. Analysis examining nighttime lights as a measure of development, coupled with expert interviews, support our claim. To address the possibility of selection bias, we use placebo tests and matching. Our research challenges assertions that refugees are security risks. Instead, we show that in many cases, hosting refugees can encourage local development and even conflict reduction.

A new specification of the expected utility model of international conflict places expected utilities within a polar coordinate system; treats third-party choices in a manner more consistent with classical forms; estimates the expected utilities derived from not challenging existing policies; more fully represents the expected costs of conflict; and normalizes expected utilities regardless of system size. By assuming that the probability of escalation of a dispute increases monotonically with leaders' expectations of gain, we derive continuous functions for the probabilities of war, intervention, violence, and peace. The revised theory significantly improves our ability to discriminate between violent and nonviolent disputes and between violent disputes that escalated to warfare and those that did not in Europe between 1816 and 1970.

The article defines indirect government as self-government through intermediaries authorized by the people, as opposed to the direct rule of the people. It requires that the people abstain from government after authorizing it, and hence that political debate center on whether or how the government is representative, not on what it should do. Almost all modern government is indirect and based on the indirect question of representation. Hobbes, though not the founder of indirect government, was the founder of the science by which men could be induced to consent to be governed not in accordance with their opinions of good and bad but on the basis of their passions, particularly fear. To achieve a form of consent that was voluntary and yet not based on opinion, he was forced to understand consent almost as resigning to the inevitable, yet his purpose in attempting to expel opinions from politics was to clear away divisions of opinion, especially religious opinion, and thus remove the obstacle to progress in human power. Hobbes' doctrine and modern representative government must both be understood from the historical standpoint of Hobbes' hostility to Christianity.