Showing papers in "American Political Science Review in 1969"

The Diffusion of Innovations among the American States

Abstract: We are now in the midst of a notable revival of interest in the politics of the American states. During the last decade many studies have been conducted of the social, political and economic determinants of state policy outcomes. Several of these writers have argued that the relative wealth of a state, its degree of industrialization, and other measures of social and economic development are more important in explaining its level of expenditures than such political factors as the form of legislative apportionment, the amount of party competition, or the degree of voter participation. It has been claimed that such factors as the level of personal income or the size of the urban population are responsible both for the degree of participation and party competition in a state, and the nature of the system's policy outputs. By making this argument these writers have called into question the concepts of representation and theories of party and group conflict which, in one form or another, are the foundations for much of American political science.There is a growing awareness, however, that levels of expenditure alone are not an adequate measure of public policy outcomes. Sharkansky has shown, for example, that levels of expenditure and levels of actual service are seldom correlated; presumably, some states are able to reach given service levels with much less expenditure than others. Besides establishing the appropriate level of expenditure for a program, policy makers must also decide about the program's relative scope, provisions for appeal from administrative orders, eligibility requirements, the composition of regulatory boards and commissions, and many other matters which have little to do with money.

Determinants of Innovation in Organizations

Abstract: The present study is an attempt to identify the determinants of innovation in public agencies, i.e., the degree to which they adopt and emphasize programs that depart from traditional concerns. Innovation is suggested to be the function of an interaction among the motivation to innovate, the strength of obstacles against innovation, and the availability of resources for overcoming such obstacles.The significance of the research can be viewed in terms of Hyneman's observation nearly twenty years ago that bureaucratic agencies “… may fail to take the initiative and supply the leadership that is required of them in view of their relation to particular sectors of public affairs. …” His concern was the responsiveness of the public sector not only to expressed wants but to public wants that may go unexpressed, or be only weakly expressed, and whose utility is much more easily recognized by the informed bureaucratic official than by the ordinary citizen.While the results and conclusions to be reported appear to be largely valid for organizations in general, the empirical focus will be local departments of public health which, as a class, have had a rather dramatic succession of opportunities to respond to new public problems over the past twenty-five years. A brief introductory paragraph will orient the reader to the applied setting.

Corruption, Machine Politics, and Political Change

Abstract: The study of political influence in the West has for the most part focused on the process by which interest groups affect the content of legislation; hence, the input process has occupied the center of attention.Students of politics in the new states of Africa and Asia who have adopted this perspective, however, have been struck by the relative weakness both of interest structures to organize demands and of institutionalized channels through which such demands, once organized, might be communicated to decisionmakers. The open clash of organized interests is often conspicuously absent during the formulation of legislation in these nations. To conclude from this, however, that the public has little or no effect on the eventual “output” of government would be completely unwarranted. Between the passage of legislation and its actual implementation lies an entirely different political arena that, in spite of its informality and particularism, has a great effect on the execution of policy.Much of the expression of political interests in the new states has been disregarded because Western scholars, accustomed to their own politics, have been looking in the wrong place. A large portion of individual demands, and even group demands, in developing nations reach the political system, not before laws are passed, but rather at the enforcement stage.

Decision-Rules and Individual Values in Constitutional Choice

Abstract: Once a political community has decided which of its members are to participate directly in the making of collective policy, an important question remains: “How many of them must agree before a policy is imposed on the community?” Only if participation is limited to one man does this question become trivial. And this choice of decision-rules may seem only a little less important than the choice of rules in a world so largely governed by committees, councils, conventions, and legislatures. This paper is about the consequences of these rules for individual values.Both the oral and written traditions of political theory have generally confined the search for optimal (or “best”) decision-rules to three alternatives. The rule of consensus tells us that all direct participants must agree on a policy which is to be imposed. Majority-rule tells us that more than half must concur in a policy if it is to be imposed. And the rule of individual initiative (as we may call it), holds that a policy is imposed when any single participant approves of it. These three decision-rules—“everyone,” “most of us,” and “anyone”—are terribly important, but they cannot be said to exhaust the available alternatives.The list of alternatives is just as long as a committee's roster. Only for a committee of three would ‘consensus,’ ‘majority’ and ‘individual initiative’ exhaust the possibilities. In a committee of n members, we have n possible rules. Let the decision-rule be a minimum number of individuals (k) required to impose a policy.

Political Theory as a Vocation

Abstract: The purpose of this paper is to sketch some of the implications, prospective and retrospective, of the primacy of method in the present study of politics and to do it by way of a contrast, which is deliberately heightened, but hopefully not caricatured, between the vocation of the “methodist” and the vocation of the theorist. My discussion will be centered around the kinds of activity involved in the two vocations. During the course of the discussion various questions will be raised, primarily the following: What is the idea which underlies method and how does it compare with the older understanding of theory? What is involved in choosing one rather than the other as the way to political knowledge? What are the human or educational consequences of the choice, that is, what is demanded of the person who commits himself to one or the other? What is the typical stance towards the political world of the methodist and how does it compare to the theorist's?The discussion which follows will seek, first, to locate the idea of method in the context of the “behavioral revolution,” and, second, to examine the idea itself in terms of some historical and analytical considerations. Then, proceeding on the assumption that the idea of method, like all important intellectual choices, carries a price, the discussion will concentrate on some of the personal, educational, vocational, and political consequences of this particular choice. Finally, I shall attempt to relate the idea of the vocation of political theory to these same matters.

The New Revolution in Political Science

Abstract: A new revolution is under way in American political science. The last revolution—behavioralism—has scarcely been completed before it has been overtaken by the increasing social and political crises of our time. The weight of these crises is being felt within our discipline in the form of a new conflict in the throes of which we now find ourselves. This new and latest challenge is directed against a developing behavioral orthodoxy. This challenge I shall call the post-behavioral revolution.The initial impulse of this revolution is just being felt. Its battle cries are relevance and action. Its objects of criticism are the disciplines, the professions, and the universities. It is still too young to be described definitively. Yet we cannot treat it as a passing phenomenon, as a kind of accident of history that will somehow fade away and leave us very much as we were before. Rather it appears to be a specific and important episode in the history of our discipline, if not in all of the social sciences. It behooves us to examine this revolution closely for its possible place in the continuing evolution of political science. Does it represent a threat to the discipline, one that will divert us from our long history in the search for reliable understanding of politics? Or is it just one more change that will enhance our capacity to find such knowledge?

Social Structure and Political Participation: Developmental Relationships, Part I

Abstract: Economic development has consequences for many aspects of social life. Some of these social consequences, in turn, have an impact on a nation's political life. Studies of social mobilization, for example, have demonstrated that economic development is associated with sharp increases in the general level of political participation. These studies report strong relationships between aggregate socio-economic measures such as per capita income, median level of education, and percentage of the population in urban areas, on one hand, and aggregate measures of political participation, such as voting turnout, on the other. Simultaneously, scholars conducting surveys of individual political participation consistently have reported that an individual's social status, education, and organizational memberships strongly affect the likelihood of his engaging in various types of political activities.In spite of the consistency of both sets of findings across many studies and although the findings appear frequently in analysis of political stability, democracy, and even strategies of political growth, we know little about the connections between social structure and political participation. With few exceptions the literature on individual participation is notable for low level generalizations (the better educated citizen talks about politics more regularly), and the absence of systematic and comprehensive theory. While the literature on the growth of national political participation has been more elaborate theoretically, the dependence on aggregate measures has made it difficult to determine empirically how these macro social changes structure individuals' life experiences in ways which alter their political behavior.

Dimensions of State Politics, Economics, and Public Policy*

Abstract: A question often posed by students of American state politics is: “Do state political systems leave a distinctive imprint on patterns of public policy?” Prior to recent years the nearly automatic response of political scientists was an unqualified “yes.” More recent research has led to a qualified but increasingly confident “no.”Several recent publications have explored relationships between various indices of state politics, socio-economic characteristics, and public policy. The general conclusion has been that central features of the political system such as electoral and institutional circumstances do not explain much of the variation in policy. There are occasionally high correlations between individual measures of voter turnout, party competitiveness, or the character of state legislatures and some aspects of governmental spending. But these political-policy correlations seem to disappear when the effect of socioeconomic development is controlled.These are disturbing findings. They have not gone unchallenged. But the challenges, rather than reassuring those who have asserted the relevance of parties, voting patterns, and government structures, have demonstrated that the burden of proof now rests on those who hypothesize a politics-policy relationship. The problem has not been resolved.Part of the problem may rest on the conceptualization and measurement of the central variables. Electoral balance or alternation in office is not “inter-party competition,” except in the most mechanical sense. Compare Massachusetts' loose-knit party structure to the centralization of Connecticut's. “Party competition” is not the same as “party organization.” And party competition, voting habits, and patterns of apportionment fall far short of being equivalents of “political systems.”

Politics, Ideology, and Belief Systems*

Abstract: The word ideology points to a black box. As a philosopher puts it, ideology “signifies at the same time truth and error, universality and particularity, wisdom and ignorance.” Likewise, for the political scientist the term ideology points to a cluster concept, i.e., belongs to the concepts that bracket a variety of complex phenomena about which one tries to generalize; and the growing popularity of the term has been matched, if anything, by its growing obscurity. All in all, one is entitled to wonder whether there is any point in using “ideology” for scholarly purposes. And my specific question will be whether there is a technical meaning, or meanings, of “ideology” which constitute a necessary tool of enquiry for a science of politics.Discussions about ideology generally fall into two broad domains, namely, ideology in knowledge and/or ideology in politics. With respect to the first area of inquiry the question is whether, and to what extent, man's knowledge is ideologically conditioned or distorted. With respect to the second area of enquiry the question is whether ideology is an essential feature of politics and, if so, what does it explain. In the first case “ideology” is contrasted with “truth,” science and valid knowledge in general; whereas in the second case we are not concerned with the truth-value but with the functional value, so to speak, of ideology. In the first sense by saying ideology we actually mean ideological doctrine (and equivalents), whereas in the second sense we ultimately point to an ideological mentality (also called, hereinafter, ideologism).

The Growth of the Seniority System in the U.S. House of Representatives

Abstract: Popular discussions of the internal management of the U.S. House of Representatives in the present era generally give great weight to the ubiquity and arbitrariness of the seniority system as a significant determinant of outcomes there. Careful attention to the scholarly literature, however, should long since have modified this view. For it appears that except for relatively unimportant matters such as the allocation of office space on Capitol Hill, the criterion of seniority is generally intermingled in House decision-making with a great many other crite ria of choice, and the business of choosing is not automatic, but remains in the hands of persons having some considerable discretion. This, apparently, is the case with respect to such decisions as the allocation of Capitol Hill patronage, the initial assignment of Representatives to committees, the distribution of responsibilities within committees, and the choice of party leaders. The one important area in which seniority seems to play a role of overwhelming significance is in the matter of succession to the chairmanship of committees; this is in turn governed by the custom (not a formal rule) of seniority that guarantees members reappointment to committees at the opening of each new Congress, in rank order of committee service. It is the growth of this method of selecting committee chairmen in the House that is the subject of this paper.

Continuity and Change in American Politics: Parties and Issues in the 1968 Election

Abstract: Without much question, the third-party movement of George C. Wallace constituted the most unusual feature of the 1968 presidential election. While this movement failed by a substantial margin in its audacious attempt to throw the presidential contest into the House of Representatives, in any other terms it was a striking success. It represented the first noteworthy intrusion on a two-party election in twenty years. The Wallace ticket drew a larger proportion of the popular vote than any third presidential slate since 1924, and a greater proportion of electoral votes than any such movement for more than a century, back to the curiously divided election of 1860. Indeed, the spectre of an electoral college stalemate loomed sufficiently large that serious efforts at reform have since taken root.At the same time, the Wallace candidacy was but one more dramatic addition to an unusually crowded rostrum of contenders, who throughout the spring season of primary elections were entering and leaving the lists under circumstances that ranged from the comic through the astonishing to the starkly tragic. Six months before the nominating conventions, Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon had been the expected 1968 protagonists, with some greater degree of uncertainty, as usual, within the ranks of the party out of power. The nominating process for the Republicans followed the most-probable script rather closely, with the only excitement being provided by the spectacle of Governors Romney and Rockefeller proceeding as through revolving doors in an ineffectual set of moves aimed at providing a Republican alternative to the Nixon candidacy. Where things were supposed to be most routine on the Democratic side, however, surprises were legion, including the early enthusiasm for Eugene McCarthy, President Johnson's shocking announcement that he would not run, the assassination of Robert Kennedy in the flush of his first electoral successes, and the dark turmoil in and around the Chicago nominating convention, with new figures like Senators George McGovern and Edward Kennedy coming into focus as challengers to the heir apparent, Vice President Hubert Humphrey.

Party Competition and Welfare Policies in the American States

Abstract: Recent comparative, quantitative studies of state politics conclude that party competition and other political variables have little or no impact on important state policies such as per pupil expenditure, old age assistance, unemployment compensation, and aid to dependent children. These are rather unexpected and disturbing conclusions for they disconfirm relationships predicted by some of the most important theoretical formulations concerning democratic politics. Before re-examining the bases for these conclusions, a review of theory is in order. V. O. Key, Jr., set the context for examining the effects of political variables on state policies. He stressed the importance of two-party competition, or bi-factionalism in one-party states, as a determinant of policy. Key sees the degree of party competition as crucial because it reflects the extent to which politics is organized or unorganized. Party competition by producing some semblance of an organized politics lessens the difficulty of lower status groups in sorting out political actors and issues, thereby enabling them to promote their own interests more effectively. Since state social welfare policies are undoubtedly relevant to the interests of “have-nots,†we can utilize state expenditures in this area as a measure of the success that these groups have enjoyed. Key's formulation, then, would lead to a simple two variable model: P = e1 S = k1P + ez Where P is inter-party competition, S is expenditure on social welfare, and e1 and ez represent error or variables left out of the system, and k1 is a constant.

Participant Citizenship in Six Developing Countries

Abstract: In this paper I will endeavor to do the following: (1) test how far certain concepts dealing with individual orientations to politics, previously used in studies of relatively advanced European societies, are appropriate to populations in developing countries; (2) ascertain how far these separate dimensions of individual political orientation cohere as a syndrome, indicating the existence of a general underlying dimension of “participant citizenship;” (3) identify elements among common orientations to politics which cannot be incorporated in this general syndrome; and (4) assess the importance of certain social experiences or forces in inculcating the qualities of participant citizenship in individuals exposed to these influences.These objectives will be better understood if they are seen in the context of the larger research program of which this report is a part, namely the Harvard Project on the Social and Cultural Aspects of Economic Development. The project is an investigation of the forms and sources of modernization in individuals. Its focus is on the person rather than the society or the institution, and its emphasis is socio-psychological rather than purely sociological or structural. Six countries are represented: Argentina and Chile, East Pakistan and India, Nigeria and Israel. This report will not, however, emphasize national differences, but rather treat each sample as another replication of the basic design. We assume that if something holds true for six such different countries, it must be a powerful connection indeed.

Majority Decision-Making with Partial Unidimensionality *

Abstract: A major dilemma for majority decision-making occurs when the summation of transitive individual preference orderings results in an intransitive social ordering. The problems posed by this phenomenon, which is known as the paradox of voting, can be seen in the following standard example. Suppose there are three individuals, one with each of the following preference orders of three alternatives: ABC, BCA, CAB . Under majority rule, A would defeat B, B would defeat C , and C would defeat A , so there is no majority winner. Most voting procedures, of course, yield a unique result whether or not the paradox occurs. But from this example it is apparent that when the paradox does occur, a majority of the voters prefer an alternative other than the one which is selected. Moreover, if a typical voting procedure is used, which of the alternatives is selected depends on the order in which the alternatives are voted on. Clearly these results have important implications, whether one is concerned with normative questions about majority rule or with the practical politics of legislative decision-making. In the burgeoning literature on the voting paradox, surely one of the most impressive and well-known findings is Black's and Arrow's demonstration that the paradox cannot occur if the set of individual preference orderings is single-peaked. Since single-peakedness implies that the individuals and alternatives can be arrayed on a single dimension, their finding has a meaningful substantive interpretation. Namely, complete agreement on a dimension for judging the alternatives ensures that majority voting will yield a transitive social ordering of the alternatives.

Who Pays for Defense

Abstract: Theories of the economic causes of war are at least as old as capitalism, and have in recent years appeared in myriad forms. Around the turn of the last century J. A. Hobson and Lenin developed their famous arguments about the economic driving forces behind imperialist expansion; American opponents of their country's entry into World War I blamed the lobbying of munitions makers; more recently we have had C. Wright Mills and the New Left. The assertions of these theorists are not always susceptible to scientific examination, but to supplement them there have in the past few years been a number of sound and well-documented studies locating in the national economy the groups that benefit most from military expenditures. Such studies show very effectively which industries, and which states, gain disproportionately from defense spending and hence develop some special interest in maintaining or increasing those expenditures. One need not accept Marxist or other extreme positions on the causes of war to find such information relevant to identifying political pressure groups that must be countered or compensated in any effort to reduce the level of military spending.A question closely related to “Who benefits from defense spending?” is, of course, “Who pays for it?”; but curiously this second problem has received very little attention. Nothing comes free, and defense is no exception. In this paper we shall examine some evidence about what segments of the economy and society sacrifice disproportionately when defense spending rises.

Alienation and Political Behavior

Abstract: Alienation is both one of the most popular and vague concepts used by contemporary social scientists. Scholars often cite Robert Nisbet's statement that alienation is basically a perspective. The current age is said to be one of alienation, or writers declare alienation to be the fundamental interpretive concept for explaining deviant behavior. One author has even gone so far as to say that definition is unnecessary because we can all feel what “it” is in our very bones. Indeed, if we don't understand it intuitively we are alienated by definition.Recently, there have been a series of attempts to clarify the meaning of the term. Daniel Bell, commenting on the uses of the concept alienation in the works of Marx, distinguishes estrangement (“a socio-psychological condition”) from reification (“a philosophical category with psychological overtones”). For research purposes, the fundamental difference between these meanings lies in the criteria which are applied in determining whether an individual is alienated. The existence of estrangement is determined by investigating the attitudes of individuals; reification is measured against “objective” standards about the quality of human life established by the investigator.The reification (objective) tradition has many strong exponents. It offers a potentially powerful concept to an analyst wishing to evaluate the human condition in terms of explicitly stated criteria of what man ought to be in his social and personal relationships. Most of the contemporary scholarly work, however, is concerned with estrangement, and my own interest also lies in the individual's perception of the situation he faces.

The Desired Political Entropy

Abstract: In an article published in the December 30, 1967 issue of the Dutch weekly magazine Vrij Nederland, Mr. Frans Grosfeld suggested the following modification of the procedure of parliamentary representation of political parties. Instead of the conventional method of allocating to each party a number of representatives proportional to the number of votes cast for the party, he proposed to allocate a number of representatives which is proportional to the square of the number of votes. Thus, when there are n parties and when p 1 ,…, p n are the proportions of the total number of votes obtained by these parties, the idea is to allocate a fraction q i of the representatives to the ith party determined by $$ {q_i} = p_i^2/\sum\limits_{{j = 1}}^n {p_j^2\;\;\;i = 1, \cdots, \;n} $$ (1.1)

The Development of Political Ideology: A Framework for the Analysis of Political Socialization

Abstract: “Myself, I get confused. The President tells ya that he don't want no war, it's peace. You pick up a paper, they're bombing children. And television, the guys being interviewed, talking about peace, and the picture shows where the women and children are being bombed and slaughtered and murdered. How long if I think that way and I have had a bad feeling, how long will other people that their mentality's not strong enough, to separate the cause of it? Fear. What's gonna happen to our kids, our grandchildren?“Lotta them are afraid of their jobs, losing their jobs. Because the government's maybe got some contract with some company. For example, we got one fellow here works with the government, with this here carbonic gas or whatever it is. If he opens his mouth up too much, he can lose his job. And the senators or congressmen, they personally don't take interest in their own country, right here, what's going on.“The colored. We had a tavern on 61st and State, three and a half years, Negro neighborhood. I tell you I never was insulted no place by not a Negro person over there. They respected me highly. It took a white fella to come in and insult me because I wouldn't serve him beer, he was too drunk. And if it wasn't for these poor Negro fellas, I'd a probably killed this man. (Laughs) Because he called me a dirty name.”

Rational Political Man: A Synthesis of Economic and Social-Psychological Perspectives*

Abstract: In recent years the welter of data accumulated on American voting behavior has been continually reanalyzed by social scientists interested in building theories of electoral choice. Most of the original data-gathering enterprises were guided by general theoretical frameworks which, for the most part, were not developed to a point where the ensuing analyses addressed themselves unambiguously to the overall conceptions by which they were guided. As a result much of our knowledge about voting behavior is in the form of generalizations about what social and psychological variables account for voting choices while we lack conceptual frameworks which systematically interrelate these generalizations and provide comprehensive and parsimonious explanation. If any one unifying conception has emerged from the original large scale studies it is that the average voter is irrational. This inference has been derived from a variety of empirical relationships coupled with varying conceptions of rationality.The more recent reanalyses of these data sets have been characterized by a theoretical sophistication that was lacking heretofore. One of these, a theory of the calculus of voting, has applied some formal rigor to the question of the rationality of the decision to vote, selected empirical equivalents of theoretical entities from survey data on national elections, and conducted a successful test of the theory. Unlike traditional approaches to the rationality question which infer the degree of rationality from quantities of information possessed or from correlates of decisions (background, party affiliation, group memberships, etc.), this investigation conceived of rationality in terms of the kind of calculus employed by the individual in deciding among alternatives (in this case whether or not to vote).

“Ecological” Inference: The Use of Aggregate Data to Study Individuals*

Abstract: Because they are inexpensive and easy to obtain, because they may be available under circumstances in which survey data are unavailable, and because they eliminate many of the measurement problems of survey research, data on geographic units such as counties or census tracts are often used by political scientists to measure individual behavior. This has involved us in the long-standing problem of inferring individual-level relationships from aggregate data, which was first raised by W. S. Robinson in the early nineteen fifties.In this paper, I shall first discuss the problem raised by Robinson. I shall then review three partial solutions to the problem—the Duncan-Davis method of setting limits, Blalock's version of ecological regression, and Goodman's version of ecological regression. Finally, I shall propose some ways in which Goodman's method may be used so as to reduce the problem of bias in its estimates, and make it a more reasonable tool for reserch.Our difficulty, as Robinson showed, is that we cannot necessarily infer the correlation between variables, taking people as the unit of analysis, on the basis of correlations between the same variables based on groups of people as units. For example, the “ecological” correlation between per cent black and per cent illiterate is +0.946, whereas the correlation between color and illiteracy among individuals is only+0.203.

Voting on the Propositions: Ballot Patterns and Historical Trends in California

Abstract: Entering the polling booth on Tuesday, November 3, 1964, the typical California voter found himself confronted with an immense sheet of finely-printed green paper, a dirty black rubber stamp, a tiny ink pad, and thirty decisions to render. A few minutes later (the legal maximum is 10) he emerged and numbly surrendered to a clerk his ballot, now slightly embellished, like the fingers of his decision hand, with black ink stains.Most of his decisions were made on a lengthy array of propositions. In these, questions on an assortment of issues were posed, each couched in language tedious and obscure—as only minds trained in the finest law schools could devise.This study seeks to gain some knowledge about factors which influence the vote on these propositions. It employs a somewhat unorthodox method: an analysis of the voting patterns on actual ballots. The ballots furnish attractive data because they are, after all, completely accurate records of the results of those minutes of decision-rendering in the artificial privacy of that cramped polling booth.It would be impossible by this method to generate a comprehensive theory about proposition voting behavior—too much information about the individual voter is forever lost by the secrecy incorporated in the balloting procedure. Nevertheless a contribution can be made in several areas of relevant concern, areas currently dominated more by folklore and mythology than fact or theory.