Some analysts assert that a failure by the discipline of international relations to predict the end of the Cold War reinforces their conviction that predominant theories as well as systematic empirical analyses of international politics have proved fruitless. Accurate predictions are an important product of useful theory, partly because predictions cannot be modified in order to accommodate the events upon which they focus, since the outcomes to be accounted for are unknown. But predictions are contingent statements about the future, not unconditional assertions, which might more accurately be labelled prophecies.

Three related streams of work - a political forecasting model that relies on rational choice theory, insights and information provided by traditional area specialists, and democratic peace theory - together constitute an emerging basis for making accurate predictions about the political future, and deserve attention in any evaluation of the utility of systematic empirical analyses of politics. Moreover, the systematic empirical approach is not entirely bereft of potential to provide a better understanding of the end of the Cold War. The democratic peace proposition suggests that if the autocratic protagonist in a confrontation becomes more democratic, tensions should be significantly reduced. This implication of democratic peace did not go unnoticed in the years before the Cold War ended.

In Russia's lingering constitutional crisis, struggles over fiscal politics have taken on a broader institutional significance – at times even threatening to undermine the federal state. This article studies the evolving fiscal relationship between Moscow and the regional governments in the early post-Soviet period. To explain why some regions currently receive large net transfers (subsidies, grants, other benefits) from the centre while others pay large net taxes, net central transfers per capita have been regressed on a range of predictors reflecting social ‘need’, preferences of central politicians (electoral interests, pork barrel allocation, policy objectives) and lobbying capacity of regional governments. The most significant turn out to be three bargaining power variables that signal regional discontent and credible resolve to threaten economic and constitutional order – a low vote for President Yeltsin in the 1991 election, an early declaration of sovereignty and the incidence of strikes in the previous year.

This article attempts to explain why it is that in spite of being exposed to similar economic and social forces, cities in Europe and the United States have followed distinctive patterns of development. In continental Europe core urban areas have remained relatively resilient compared with equivalent areas in Britain and the United States. While economic and demographic factors are important explanatory factors, they cannot account for all of the important differences characteristic of the three urban systems, whether measured in quantitative or qualitative terms. It is argued that Continental cities are better protected because of a long-established elite commitment to specific urban areas which has its roots in the development of the modern state. This commitment is labelled ‘civic community’ which finds political expression through complex representational networks at the local, regional and national levels. In Britain no equivalent networks exist and civic community is low. As a result, elites have little commitment to core urban areas. In the United States, complex representational networks do exist, but they are not linked to a historically established elite commitment to core city areas. Instead, the economic market place determines the fortunes of central cities. It is concluded that these contrasting paths of development place considerable constraints on public policies designed to regenerate central city areas.

A methodology is proposed for assessing the impact of televised debates on electoral outcomes, and it is applied to a specific case, that of the 1988 Canadian election. We present four tests of the debates' impact: first, a cross-sectional group comparison, which contrasts the voting behaviour of those who did and those who did not see the debates; secondly, a panel analysis of the shift in party support, before and after the debates, among those who watched the debates and those who did not; thirdly, a panel study of the impact of reactions to the debates on voting behaviour; and, fourthly, a time-series analysis, which examines the evolution of vote intentions over the course of the campaign and, more precisely, before and after the debates.

It is argued that because non-watchers are influenced by what their friends or the media tell them about the debates, the first two designs, based on a comparison of debate watchers and non-watchers, are not appropriate. The empirical analysis of the 1988 Canadian election substantiates this point. While these first two designs seem to indicate no debate impact, panel reaction and time-series analyses show that the debates had a substantial and enduring impact on the vote and that they were decisive in the contest for second place between the Liberals and the NDP.

The results of a quantitative investigation into the factors affecting coalition government membership in West European parliamentary democracies are reported in this article. Using a new data set covering the post-war era to 1990, separate logistic regression analyses are performed to determine what influences the odds of becoming the government ‘formateur’ and the odds of becoming a coalition partner. In addition, Laver and Shepsle's portfolio allocation theory is subjected to testing. Among the independent variables considered are a party's size, its previous experience in government, its willingness to trade off policy for office, and its ideological position in the parliamentary party system. The findings point to the important roles played by the formateur's preferences and by the need to build workable coalitions, given party-system constraints. They also suggest several criteria that ought to, but often do not, guide formal theory-building.

A number of writers have drawn upon the republican tradition in political thought to criticize liberals like Rawls and Dworkin for neglecting the importance of public service and civic virtue. In this article, I present and evaluate one version of this critique, which can be found in recent work by Quentin Skinner and Charles Taylor. I argue that their critique, which I term ‘instrumental republicanism’, is caught on the horns of a dilemma. Depending on how the critique is formulated, either there is no interesting disagreement between liberals and republicans, or there is, but not one which should concern liberals. Either way, instrumental republicanism cannot be said to offer an improvement on the liberal attitudes towards public service and civic virtue.

This article explores the properties of paradoxical voting situations in legislatures as illustrated by the decision-making process attending passage of the 1951 Electoral Reform Act in Fourth Republic France. First, conditions for demonstrating existence of a voting paradox for the case are developed and applied to data describing the voting behaviour of individual deputies. There follows an exploration of how a voting cycle over reform alternatives was overcome, focusing on the ways institutional rules and procedures structured the behaviour of parties and individual members and on the strategic manœuvring of political leaders. We conclude by relating characteristics of the case to general propositions found in the theoretical literature on the paradox of voting.

President Jimmy Carter twice attempted to enact major reforms of the US welfare system. Using archival material from the Carter Presidential Library, this article argues that one major reason for the failure of both initiatives was the persistence of regional divisions between representatives from the north and south in the Congress. This factor is as germane to the welfare failure as poor presidential-congressional relations and changes to the committee seniority system in the Congress. American welfare programmes were institutionalized in such a way that, from the 1930s, building a coalition across sectional interests (as represented by members of the Congress) was nearly impossible: gains to one region constituted losses to the other. The consequence of the way Carter pursued and failed to achieve welfare reform was to enhance the priorities, particularly ‘working for welfare’, exploited by Reagan in the final year of his administration when the Family Support Act was enacted.

This article presents spatial models of three legislative procedures in the EC: the consultation, co-operation and assent procedures. The theory characterizes for each procedure the set of policies that can be adopted and the equilibrium EC policy as a function of the ideal policies of the countries, the Commission and the Parliament, and the location of the status quo. It yields comparative statements about EC policy and the institutions' powers under the three procedures, thus providing a framework for assessing arguments about the merits and demerits of existing EC institutions and proposals for institutional change.

The hypothesis that parties are better able to carry out mandates in Britain than the United States is tested for the Reagan and Thatcher years. A list of specific pledges was compiled and it was determined whether or not the pledges were fulfilled. The primary finding is that more Conservative party pledges were fulfilled, compared to those of the Republican and Democratic parties in the United States. In each country policy took a conservative turn, but because more pledges were fulfilled in Britain, the ‘Conservative revolution’ was more thorough there than in the United States. It is suggested, in contrast to the findings of previous literature, that institutional differences between the two countries are one factor that matters when it comes to bringing about policy change.

We examine the systemic conditions that have influenced the electoral success of parties of the extreme right in West European politics from 1970 through 1990. Empirical estimates based on 103 elections in sixteen countries suggest that electoral and party-system factors interact with each other to generate conditions conducive to these parties. Specifically, increasing electoral thresholds dampen support for the extreme right as the number of parliamentary parties expands. At the same time, multi-partism increasingly fosters parties of the extreme right with rising electoral proportionality. Our analyses also indicate that higher rates of unemployment provide a favourable environment for these political movements. These results suggest that levels of electoral support for the extreme right are sensitive to factors that can be modified through policy instruments.

Tactical voting has become increasingly salient in recent elections in England. However, it is not only voters who behave tactically. Political parties may also act tactically by focusing their election campaigns on marginal seats. This Note provides a unique exploration of the relationship between local campaigning and tactical voting in England, at the 1992 general election.

Perceptions of leadership quality depend upon personality traits. With John Major as a case study, we demonstrate that the most important personality attributes are those which contribute to the belief that a leader can govern in a business-like fashion. Changes in personality traits affect the rating of a leader and ratings affect a party's electoral support. Using this approach, perceptions of John Major's personality are changed continuously to illustrate the impact on voters. A Monte Carlo simulation is introduced to allow for the likelihood that not everyone would perceive a personality change. This approach is preferable to alternatives and can explain why, on occasion, there has been dispute over the importance of party leadership in British general elections.

The representation of public preferences in public policy is fundamental to most conceptions of democracy. If representation is effectively undertaken, we would expect to find a correspondence between public preferences for policy and policy itself. If representation is dynamic, policy makers should respond to changes in preferences over time. The integrity of the representational connection, however, rests fundamentally on the expectation that the public actually notices and responds to policy decisions. Such a public would adjust its preferences for ‘more’ or ‘less’ policy in response to what policy makers actually do, much like a thermostat. Despite its apparent importance, there is little research that systematically addresses this feedback of policy on preferences over time. Quite simply, we do not know whether the public adjusts its preferences for policy in response to what policy makers do. By implication, we do not fully understand the dynamics of representation. This research begins to address these issues and focuses on the relationships between public preferences and policy in a single, salient domain.

A number of scholars have argued that historical analogizing plays an important role in foreign-policy decision making; the extent of that importance, however, remains largely a mystery to us. This article proposes that analogical reasoning is probably even more commonplace than previously thought, since it may play a crucial role even in ‘novel foreign policy situations’ (scenarios which appear largely unprecedented to the decision makers confronting them).

One notable example of a novel foreign-policy situation is provided by the Iranian hostage crisis. Examining the Carter administration's decision-making processes during that crisis, the article concludes that even though many saw the hostage crisis as a unique occurrence, the participants drew upon a wide range of historical analogies in order to make sense of what was occuring and to propose suggested ‘solutions’ to the crisis.

What aspects of national trade-union movements systematically affect national policy making and economic performance? While there is general agreement that union density, the proportion of the workforce organized in unions, is an important element of union strength, social scientists are only beginning to identify the other critical elements. That union density is not the whole story can quickly be appreciated by comparing the influence of unions in Britain and Germany. For much of the post-war period, union density has been higher in Britain than Germany, although German unions have sustained at least as important a political and economic role as British unions. An influential theory of group-government relations directed our attention to the degree of hierarchy and monopoly present in an interest structure and to the degree of institutionalized access to policy-making circles, wrapping these characteristics together in the concept of corporatism. Yet there is a developing interest, particularly in the analysis of labour movements, in disaggregating corporatism as part of an effort to understand the specific characteristics that produce political and economic influence.

Once dominant and unchallenged throughout the USSR, the Communist Party of the Soviet Union rapidly lost authority in the last two years of Soviet rule. Banned by Russian presidential decree after the failure of the attempted coup of August 1991, it was re-established in February 1993 and soon became the largest of the postcommunist parties. A 1992 survey of current and former party members as well as other Russians found that members were characterized by a relatively high degree of activism. They were disproportionately male, more affluent than non-members, and better provided with consumer goods. Younger respondents and religious believers were more likely to have left the party than their older colleagues. Those who still regarded themselves as party members were the most likely to oppose economic reform and support the collectivist principles of the communist era, particularly if they were activists; but the differences between members and non-members were not substantial, and both were found to hold generally pessimistic views on the postcommunist system. These findings suggest that, although former members will continue to be influential, CPSU membership is by itself likely to play a limited part in shaping the political direction of postcommunist Russia.

We argue that voters' assessments of party leaders are comparative and prospective rather than individual and retrospective. Therefore, a prospective leadership-comparison evaluation should outperform a leader-approval, retrospective indicator as a determinant of government and party popularity. Using data from 1984–92, a popularity function that includes a variety of economic and political components, and several dependent variables, we test this hypothesis by comparing the performance of a ‘best prime minister’ question and the more usual ‘approval’ questions about party leaders. We find that the former gives consistently better results than the latter.