A common characteristic of dependent industrializing countries is a substantial direct entrepreneurial role for the state. One explanation for this is that in dependent industrializing countries the system of allocation and production has been captured by a key group, the techno-bureaucratic elite. The argument is that this elite lends its political support to the state, in return for the state substituting as entrepreneur in the industrialization process.

In this article we analyze the theoretical implications of this explanation of the entrepreneurial state. A formal model is constructed of the relationship between state entrepreneurship, material consequences for the techno-bureaucratic elite, and important domestic and international constraints. We then use deductive methods to analyze the logic of state entrepreneurship. Among other things, we show how cyclical fluctuations in the global economy are reflected in constantly changing levels of state entrepreneurship, and we investigate the consequences of alternative kinds of dependency syndromes for histories of entrepreneurial substitution and for streams of benefits to the techno-bureaucratic elite. It is demonstrated that there is an inverse relationship between the tendencies to reach stable levels of state entrepreneurship and the long-term potential for economic growth.

Conventional comparisons of national industrialization strategies place a strong emphasis on the cultural development of a modern ethic of work performance as an important component of effectively attaining industrial growth. In the case of Czarist and Soviet Russia, most studies maintain that Russian workers are exceptional inasmuch as they have always lacked a modern work ethic and therefore remain necessarily less productive than the more ethically disciplined work forces of Europe, Japan, and North America. However, such studies fail to deal with the problems of Soviet industrialization and distort the actual historical processes of Western capitalist industrialization. This analysis argues that a modern work ethic has developed within the Soviet workplace since 1917. it maintains that the social origins of this cultural code of disciplined labor are to be found, in large part, in the cultural values and group practices of the radical Russian intelligentsia before 1914, a group that provided the concrete class bases of the Bolshevik reconstitution of Marxism as a culture-transforming ideology for industrializing Russia.

This article analyzes pervasive political corruption in the People's Republic of China today, based on a collection of 275 media reports from 1977 to 1980. First, a description of the types of corruption, the characteristics of corruptors, and the urban-rural concentration of corruption is presented. Then, an analysis of the regional variation in corruption is made, taking into account political, strategic, social, and economic factors. Third, Chinese “theorizing” about the causes of corruption is described, and its correspondence with some outstanding Western theories on corruption is discussed. Finally, Chinese authorities' strategy of weakening the “system of corruption” in China is evaluated, especially the strengthening of social control.

In this article I argue a thesis about Hegel's views on war different from most previous interpreters, e.g., Popper and Hook on the one side and Avineri and Pelczynski on the other. In particular I argue that his reflections on war are an attempt to answer the problem of political obligation or the question of why should anyone willingly die for the state. Accordingly, I examine briefly Hegel's critique of Kantian morality for its inability to account for political obligation proper and although ultimately I conclude that Hegel never completely extricated himself from Kant's belief in a providentialist historicism leading to a condition of “perpetual peace,” I still want to suggest that war remains for Hegel an essential moment in the “ethical” life of the state and perhaps the chief means whereby the dignity and autonomy of the state can be exerted over the network of private interests that constitutes civil society.

The Social Contract is reinterpreted by emphasizing its relation to Rousseau's other writings and doctrines. In the spirit of Hobbesian realism, Rousseau regards natural law and other forms of “private morality” as ineffectual, invalid, and in practice dangerous tools of oppression and subversion. But, still more realistic than Hobbes, Rousseau thinks it impossible to build a nonoppressive state on men's selfish interests alone and embraces the classical view that morality or virtue is politically necessary (as well as intrinsically good). Rousseau's doctrine of the natural goodness of man, however, which traces all vice to the effects of oppression, leads him to conclude that the non-oppression more or less guaranteed by the absolute rule of general laws is also sufficient to make men virtuous. Thus Rousseau can declare law as such (General Will) infallible and “sovereign”—and he must do so in order to protect rule of law from its greatest danger, the subversive appeal to “natural law.”

This article offers a measure of judicial legitimation of marginal religious groups in litigation involving the free exercise of religion clause of the First Amendment. Throughout the greater part of history, marginal religious faiths have found the path to acceptance filled with legal obstacles. Pfeffer (1974) noted that legitimation of marginal groups occurs either when the secular norms change or when such groups change their religious doctrines. The Pfeffer thesis is generally consistent with the sect-church continuum defined by sociologists of religion. In the research reported below, we examined an alternative thesis, namely that official legitimation by the judiciary of marginal religions is a function of their marginality. We compared the results of the universe of all reported state and federal judicial opinions from 1946 through 1956 and 1970 through 1980. We found substantial increases in the percentage of successfully litigated free exercise claims, and furthermore, that success in litigating these claims is closely associated with those factors that distinguish these groups as marginal.

Both liberal theorists and their critics have been unable to reconcile successfully respect for individual freedom and autonomy with a system of legitimate political authority. Liberal theory fails because its system of rights and representative institutions is particularistic, favoring the interests of restricted individuals and groups. Nonliberal theory threatens individuals' freedom by having political authority exercised in the name of a dubious, real will. Present liberal and nonliberal theory continues to reflect these problems.

This article is an effort to present a view of political authority that respects individual freedom and is legitimate, supporting the interests of all citizens. The failure of liberal and nonliberal theory to achieve this reconciliation is believed to result from their excessively ambiguous, incomplete views of central issues—freedom, authority, and normative reasoning—and a related tendency to examine these problems in isolation. The analysis presented here proposes a more complete view of their meaning and integrates this understanding into a conception of legitimate political authority. The conclusion seriously challenges the view of political legitimacy presented by liberal theory and suggests that a different set of problems must be addressed if political authority is to be legitimate and support individuals' freedom.

Scholarship on electoral turnout has long emphasized two main themes: explanations of nonvoting in terms of individual characteristics and in terms of contextual variables. These investigations have deeply enriched our understanding of electoral participation, but their limitations have also sensitized us to the remaining problems of explanation. Perusal of the work on American politics exposes a rather striking tendency in studies of participation to ignore, or soft pedal, the effects of active political mobilization. In this article we formulate two models of electoral turnout—socioeconomic and political mobilization—and apply them to aggregate data on voting in gubernatorial elections of 1978 and 1980. The socioeconomic model of turnout includes such influences as income, age, and educational attainment. To assess the effects of political mobilization, we have considered campaign spending, partisan competition, electoral margin, and the presence or absence of a simultaneous race for the United States Senate. Both of the models perform quite well individually, producing significant and meaningful coefficients and adequate fits. Yet in the final analysis we demonstrate that quite apart from major sources of variation in gubernatorial turnout—such as region and presidential versus nonpresidential years—the mobilizing influences of campaign activism and competitiveness have a strong impact on electoral participation; electoral law, i.e., closing date of registration, retains a small but significant effect on voting for governor; and socioeconomic characteristics, included in a fully specified model, have little to contribute independently to an explanation of electoral turnout. These findings are very much in the same vein as related cross-national investigations, which emphasize the crucial role of electoral law and political parties and downplay individual characteristics as determinants of electoral participation. On the basis of the research reported here, we argue that scholars need to pay more attention to political mobilization as an explanation of electoral turnout.

This article argues thai the role of the law in the political system has been construed much too narrowly. A review of the political science literature demonstrates an interest in the law that is largely confined to the making of new laws, social change, and social control. That view implies an acceptance of the legal profession's distinction between public and private law as a reasonable guide for political scientists in the study of law.

A more interactive view of the law is presented, characterizing legal mobilization (invoking legal norms) as a form of political activity by which the citizenry uses public authority on its own behalf. Further, the legal system, structured to consider cases and controversies on an individual basis, provides access to government authority unencumbered by the limits of collective action. This form of public power, although contingent, is widely dispersed.

Consideration of the factors that influence legal mobilization is important not only to understanding who uses the law, but also as predictors to the implementation of public policy; with very few exceptions, the enforcement of the laws depends upon individual citizens to initiate the legal process. By virtue of this dependence, an aggregation of individual citizens acting largely in their own interests strongly influences the form and extent of the implementation of public policy and thereby the allocation of power and authority.

To whom is the bureaucracy responsive? A study of public utility regulation in 12 states helps to answer that question. To assess potential responsiveness in the bureaucracy, we examine indicators of attitudinal concurrence. Whether we look at issue priorities or value priorities, public utility commissioners are more responsive to staff members and utility company executives than to governmental consumer advocates. However, bureaucratic responsiveness to citizens varies unexpectedly across stages of the policymaking process. Concurrence between commissioners and citizen activists is relatively high on issue priorities, relatively low on value priorities. Success at the agenda-setting stage does not guarantee success in policy formulation. In practice, agenda responsiveness may be little more than an exercise in symbolic politics.

The development of social choice theory over the past three decades has brought many new insights into democratic theory. Surprisingly, the theory of representation has gone almost untouched by social choice theorists. This article redresses this neglect and provides an axiomatic study of one means of implementing proportional representation.

The distinguishing feature of proportional representation is its concern for the representativeness of deliberations as well as decisions. We define a representative in a way that is particularly attentive to this feature and then define a method of selecting representatives (a variant of the Borda rule) which selects a maximally representative body. We also prove that this method of selection meets four social choice axioms that are met by a number of other important social choice functions (including pairwise majority decision and the Borda rule).

Pluralist political theory identifies certain patterns of political preferences as promoting the “stability” of democratic political systems and others as threatening to such stability. Social choice theory likewise identifies certain patterns of political preferences as leading to “stability” in social choice under majority rule and related collective decision rules, and other patterns as leading to “unstable” social choice. But the preference patterns identified by pluralist theory as promoting stability are essentially those identified by social choice theory as entailing instability. Thus the notions of stability and the implicit normative criteria associated with the two theories are very close to being logically incompatible. This incompatibility suggests that the social choice ideal of collective rationality may not be one that we should endorse. Indeed, the generic instability of the pluralist political process and its consequent collective irrationality may contribute to the stability of pluralist political systems.