Assuming that the symbols demonstrated to be important to the understanding of art, literature and religion are likely to be equally useful in the study of politics leads the author to identify seven basic notations: the point, the circle, the square, the dividing line (either vertical or horizontal), and the directional line (either vertical or horizontal). The article speculates on the consequences of casting political thoughts in spatial frameworks developed out of these basic notations. Special attention is given to the Left-Right and Up-Down dimensions and to the problem of the congruence between political ideology and its underlying spatial archetype.

Inglehart's “Silent Revolution” thesis is examined critically through an analysis of an experimental British survey of subjective attitudes toward the “quality of life.” Inglehart's techniques were replicated to identify “Acquisitive” and “Post-bourgeois” types. It was found that whilst those holding to “postbourgeois” values possessed the demographic characteristics and the political dispositions predicted by Inglehart's thesis, on other highly relevant measures of values choices the postbourgeois group revealed attitudes similarly or even more “acquisitive” than the “Acquisitives.” Discussion is critical of the Maslovian assumptions of Inglehart's model and proposes instead an interpretation of the postbourgeois phenomenon based upon identity and status discrepancies.

Before 1945 Japan was the epitome of a nation whose political regime was based on the presence of a “benevolent leader,” the Emperor. The postwar democratic regime, however, was founded in explicit repudiation of this central role of the Emperor in the political life of the nation. This study, based on two surveys of Japanese children and adolescents, investigates their images of political authority figures and the consequences of those images on support for the institutions of the present regime. The first part of the paper focuses on younger children's images of possible contenders for the role of benevolent leader. The data reveal indifference toward the emperor and strong negative affect toward the prime minister. Comparison of the images of prime minister and local leader suggests that the leader's personality and leadership style, characteristics of the institutional structure of politics, and children's conceptions of the meaning of “politics” combine to the detriment of the prime minister's image. The second part of the paper centers around the question of whether there occurs in later years a spill-over of negative affect from the prime minister's image onto the other major institutions of the regime. The data indicate that a selective political cynicism emerges in adolescence, in which negative feelings toward the authoritative, output institutions of government are coupled with support for those institutions which mediate popular participation in politics. The paper concludes with a consideration of the significance that the historical origins of a political regime have for popular images of national leaders.

The effect of electoral mobilization upon the decay of political institutions is examined with reference to the stability of aggregate voting patterns in Western Europe. Historical time series are studied empirically to test predictions derived from a formal model. The conclusion is that demobilization of groups, rather than mobilization of new voters, threatens the stability of electoral institutions. It is argued that electoral mobilization is a process through which political institutions preserve stability of social relations.

The article examines four themes of Robert J. Lieber's article in the APSR of March 1972: “Interest Groups and Political Integration: British Entry into Europe,” bringing in new evidence from the Norwegian and Danish EEC decisions of 1972. The conclusions are that:—

(a) there is conflicting evidence regarding the applicability of functionalist theories of political integration to the geographical expansion of an existing union;

(b) the attempt to link theories of interest group activity and theories of political integration is based on a premature if not unwise generalization about decision-making processes within interest organizations;

(c) politicization (as Lieber defines it) is inherently neither favorable nor unfavorable to integration; and

(d) in discussing political integration, the distinction between “high” politics (Hoffman) and welfare considerations is best abandoned, provided the observer remembers that there are more dimensions to critical decisions than the economic.

The article concludes with the suggestion that there are slim prospects for developing a theory of political integration applicable to the creation or extension of a union, and that the appropriate “vocation” for such a theory is to elucidate the workings of political systems which have two or more “levels” of political authorities.

Though not above an occasional appeal to the “experience of fathers,” Hobbes was not a patriarchalist in his view of the family. Rather, he quite deliberately represented the family as a small Leviathan, and he used it to illustrate the principles of Hobbesian political science. In the family, as in the state, there is a mutual relationship between protection and obedience; sovereignty is undivided, based on necessity, and justified by performance; authority is absolute and derives from consent. In the state of nature, Hobbes views the family in structure and function as a small state. In commonwealth, the family sovereign relinquishes his absolute power over wife, servant, and child, but he is still entitled to obedience and honor for having raised and educated his children. The content of family education consists of the principles of Hobbesian political science, and the children thereby are properly receptive to sovereign power as they leave the family, whether for the university or for independence.

Hobbes's conception of the family is derived from the patria potestas of republican Rome, and not from common law. His use of the family is fully integrated with his political theory, and it is designed to reinforce both the theory and practice of Leviathan.

This article demonstrates that, despite David Easton's assertions to the contrary, economic conceptions play a crucial role in his version of systems theory. A comparison between Easton's model of the political system and the classical economic model of Adam Smith reveals that they share the notions of system, scarcity, allocation, competition, maximization, self-regulation, homeostatic equilibrium, goal-seeking, and feedback. This comparison of Smith and Easton not only illuminates the logical and unacknowledged historical foundations of Easton's framework, it also clarifies some common misconceptions concerning systems analysis (e.g., the idea that it is static or that it is tautological) and underscores a number of important limitations on the utility of Easton's model as a tool for political analysis (i.e., the model requires a given pattern of behavior, a particular cultural environment and a specifiable institutional complex for its operation).

Traditional studies of voter turnout in the United States have identified three factors which are presumed to explain most of the differences between the states in voter turnout: socio-demographic differences, electoral competitiveness, and differences in the rules under which elections are conducted. These studies have not, however, clearly distinguished the three factors largely because of their exclusive reliance on aggregate data to analyze the differences. The purpose of this paper is to 1) distinguish between individual and systemic components of turnout and 2) to attempt to partition the variation in turnout between the components. Unlike previous research, this study used both survey and aggregate data to decompose the variation in turnout among the states into first two components—individual and systemic, and then the latter into political (electoral competitiveness) and legal.

Alfred Schutz created a systematic methodology for the social sciences by integrating sociological concepts derived from Max Weber with the philosophical foundation provided by Edmund Husserl's phenomenology. However, much of the rigor of Schutz's analysis of social life is vitiated by his failure to come to grips with the philosophical problem of “other minds.” Analysis and critique of Schutz's “general thesis of the alter ego” reveal the sterility of either pragmatic or dogmatic use of philosophic concepts in social science conceptualization, and the failure of his methodological system demonstrates the serious epistemological consequences of doing social scientific work without rigorous and radical philosophical foundation.

This essay addresses the question: Why does the Electoral College bias campaign resource allocations in favor of large states? Using data on candidate trips as well as estimates of the time candidates spend in states, we conclude, first, that much of the apparent empirical support for Brams and Davis's 3/2's hypothesis is an artifact of the candidates' consideration of each state's relative competitiveness and the statistical relationship between size and competitiveness. There is some evidence, however, for a residual bias. That is, after controlling for each state's competitiveness, campaign allocations still appear to favor larger states—at least for the two competitive elections of 1960 and 1968. We attribute that bias to corner solutions to the candidate's maximization problem and to the effects of sequential campaign planning. Thus, while we do not dispute the existence of bias over the course of the entire campaign, the data are consistent with a modified (albeit complex) proportional rule that each candidate applies sequentially during the campaign. Our conclusion is that the unit rule feature of the Electoral College, rather than weighted voting, is the predominant cause of bias.

In his political theory, William Godwin, the founder of philosophical anarchism, defends a form of decentralized democracy as a transition stage toward his ideal of a stateless society. Godwin sanctioned temporary alliance with liberal political factions, and was a staunch defender of freedom of thought and expression. Contrary to Isaac Kramnick's interpretation, he bitterly opposed authoritarian measures such as Grenville's and Pitt's bills, although he also rejected violence as a valid means toward reform. Kramnick's reduction of anarchist praxis to education and theater constitutes a serious distortion of historical fact, and ignores the significance of revolutionary struggle, syndicalist organization, intentional communities, and nonviolent resistance as anarchist tactics. His assertion that anarchism is elitist involves a misunderstanding of the anarchist principles of popular participation and self-management, and his position that anarchism serves to perpetuate the status quo exhibits a failure to deal with the issues presented by the anarchist analysis of the effects of government and the nature of social change.

The centenary of Merriam's birth provides the opportunity to reappraise the consequences of his prophetic advocacy of a more scientific expression and systematization of political knowledge. The vehicle for this appraisal is a comparison of Merriam's ’activist” epistemology wjth the more self-limiting methodology of Max Weber who, perhaps among all twentieth-century social scientists, stated most explicitly and experienced most poignantly the tensions among the requirements of acquiring objective knowledge about politics and exercising responsibility in political action. Notwithstanding their many points of difference, Merriam and Weber are interpreted as sharing common grounds of disbelief that the disjunction between science and politics will be removed by the development of a unifying, paradigmatic world-view, either within political science or between the several sciences of man, nature, and society. The political context and role of scientists are visualized by the author as consisting in: (1) mastering the personal temptations and obstacles to achieving their own peculiar brand of political competence, (2) securing public recognition and respect for the factual-scientific component of controversial situations involving their sphere of expertness, and (3) acting upon the assumption of joint skills and contributions, along with other scientists, philosophers, technicians (including politicians), and participating citizens in improving the utilization of scientific research in the formulation of public policy and reform of governing institutions.