This article examines alternative visions of “strong” party systems by analyzing relationships between party systems and several dimensions of performance of the political process in 28 democracies of the 1967-1976 decade. Party system theorists agree that voting support for extremist parties manifests a weakness in the party system. They disagree, however, about the virtues or vices of party majorities and close linkages between social groups and parties. The evidence, including multivariate analysis of party system types and characteristics, with controls for environmental conditions, indicates that during this period extremist party support was associated with executive instability and mass rioting. Scholarly concern about other aspects of party system strength or weakness should focus on the desired feature of political performance. The representational, multiparty systems were most successful in limiting rioting. Aggregative majorities, responsible majorities, and representational party systems all had good executive stability in the short run, although the first two types seemed somewhat more stable over the decade. Aggregative majority party systems were associated with low citizen voting participation.

This article tests the hypothesis that postwar affluence led to an intergenerational shift from Materialist to Post-Materialist values among Western publics, and analyzes the consequences of the economic uncertainty prevailing since 1973. The young emphasize Post-Materialist values more than the old. Time-series data indicate that this reflects generational change far more than aging effects, but that the recession of the mid-1970s also produced significant period effects. As Post-Materialists aged, they moved out of the student ghetto and became a predominant influence among young technocrats, contributing to the rise of a “New Class.” They furnish the ideologues and core support for the environmental, zero-growth and antinuclear movements; and their opposition to those who give top priority to reindustrialization and rearmament constitutes a distinctive and persisting dimension of political cleavage.

The central argument of this paper is developed as a criticism of a widely accepted interpretation of collective violence in new states. It is shown that instead of indicating political decay, violence in these states is an integral part of the process of accumulation of power by the national state. To the degree that this power accumulation is necessary for the imposition or maintenance of order, collective violence also indicates movement towards political order on a new scale. Admittedly, our evidence is far from definitive. Nevertheless, it consistently contradicts the interpretation of violence as political decay and supports our interpretation of violence as a usual feature of the process of primitive accumulation of power.

This article (1) sketches a general explanation for the growth of coordinative machinery and of irregular personnel in modern governments; (2) identifies both general and specific reasons for this phenomenon in the United States with special reference to foreign policy making; (3) identifies within the American foreign policy-making context the modal characteristics of irregular and regular syndromes of policy making, and the conjunction between personnel and institutional base; (4) traces the implications arising from these different policy syndromes; and (5) evaluates some proposals for improving the coherence and knowledge base of American foreign policy making. The problems of defining foreign policy authority, assuring an integrated perspective, and effectively using specialized expertise are best seen in terms of the larger problem of governance in Washington against which all proposals for reform must be abraded.

The phrasing of the title telegraphs the thesis of this essay: study of the history of political theory ought to be understood and approached as a branch of political studies. Prior to the postwar success of empirical political science, the view would have seemed unexceptional. But the need for a defense against the empiricist attack impelled many theorists to turn to theories of interpretation in search of a philosophical and methodological identity. A preoccupation with issues of interpretation now threatens the customary, political study of the tradition. This essay, written in defense of a political understanding of the field, identifies fundamental propositions distinguishing “political commentary” and suggests critical standards appropriate to the enterprise. It also criticizes two currently fashionable applications of interpretative theory to the study of politics, historicist commentary and hermeneutical political science.

This article examines attitudes towards the two major political parties in the United States from 1952 to 1980, using national election study data from open-ended likes/dislikes questions. The major trend which is found is a shift toward neutral evaluations of the parties. A reinterpretation of party decline in the electorate is offered, in which the much-discussed alienation from parties is largely rejected as an explanation. Rather, it is argued that the link between parties and candidates has been substantially weakened over the years and hence that political parties have become increasingly meaningless to the electorate.

An unresolved question concerning the New Deal realignment is the extent to which the Democratic surge in the vote resulted from either the conversion of former Republicans or the mobilization of newly active voters. Analyzing survey data from the Literary Digest straw polls and from early Gallup polls, we find evidence supporting the conversion hypothesis. New voters in 1928, 1932 and 1936 were only slightly more Democratic in their voting behavior than were established voters. Between 1924 and 1936, the vote among established voters was extremely volatile, largely accounting for the Democratic gains. After 1936, however, vote shifts became minimal and party identification had become highly consistent with presidential voting, suggesting a crystallization of the New Deal realignment by the late 1930s rather than a gradual evolution due to generational replacement.

Numerous explanations of the tax revolt have been offered since California's adoption of Proposition 13 in 1978. Unfortunately, many of these explanations remain untested or have been tested inappropriately, and the explanations are often jumbled together in a fashion that precludes theoretical clarity. We extract eight explanations from the literature, each of which assumes that the tax revolt is a systematic national phenomenon that is a function of individual-level social, economic, and political factors. Having tested these explanations by means of a discriminant analysis of data from the 1978 American National Election Study, we find little empirical corroboration for any of them. This leads us to consider two alternative research programs, one of which interprets the tax revolt within a symbolic politics framework.

Social scientists have given increasing attention to the diffusion of policy innovations among the American states, focusing on the legislative and administrative sectors. This study is an effort to expand our understanding of policy diffusion by analyzing the diffusion of 23 innovative tort doctrines among state court systems between 1876 and 1975. This analysis examines the innovativeness of state judicial systems, the correlates of innovativeness, and the pattern of diffusion. The findings suggest that the diffusion of judicial doctrines is a very different process from the diffusion of legislation. A major reason for the difference appears to be the courts' dependence on litigants to provide opportunities for innovation.

This article assesses the status of diachronic research on the United States Congress. A literature review reveals a lack of truly diachronic studies, but a wealth of insightful and useful historical and contemporary studies. Drawing on organization theory, a research approach designed to facilitate and improve diachronic analysis is put forward. A major focus of the approach is on the ways in which environmental factors—both fixed and variable—shape the operations and performance of Congress. In addition, problems and strategies in analyzing the impacts of Congress on the wider political system are examined. The concluding section presents a research agenda for political scientists interested in applying diachronic analysis to the study of Congress.