Political science is two realms, the intellectual and the organizational, and the task is to consider how the organizational realm might be adapted to the highest improvement of the intellectual realm. Political science has a certain competence (domain) in the study of politics as the organization of power. It also seeks to expand competence as capability. Charles Merriam provides a point of departure Merriam's most successful idea has been that of enhancing competence through improvements in “the field of method.” Competence, however, now demands methodological flexibility, so as to probe more into the exercise of power. Four fields are strategic: public administration, political interests, urbanization, and the interpenetration of politics and economics. Competence also leads into unorthodox subjects, such as force and foolish, irrational, and pathological decision making (or “the Oxenstierna-Mullins Effect”). Finally, competence demands (and is enhanced by) the reach of political science into serious practical problems of human affairs.

We address a well-known but infrequently discussed problem in the quantitative study of international conflict: Despite immense data collections, prestigious journals, and sophisticated analyses, empirical findings in the literature on international conflict are often unsatisfying. Many statistical results change from article to article and specification to specification. Accurate forecasts are nonexistent. In this article we offer a conjecture about one source of this problem: The causes of conflict, theorized to be important but often found to be small or ephemeral, are indeed tiny for the vast majority of dyads, but they are large, stable, and replicable wherever the ex ante probability of conflict is large. This simple idea has an unexpectedly rich array of observable implications, all consistent with the literature. We directly test our conjecture by formulating a statistical model that includes its critical features. Our approach, a version of a “neural network” model, uncovers some interesting structural features of international conflict and, as one evaluative measure, forecasts substantially better than any previous effort. Moreover, this improvement comes at little cost, and it is easy to evaluate whether the model is a statistical improvement over the simpler models commonly used.

Voters have been coordinating their choices for president and House of Representatives in recent presidential election years, with each voter using a strategy that features policy moderation. Coordination is defined as a noncooperative rational expectations equilibrium among voters, in which each voter has both common knowledge and private information about the election outcome. Stochastic choice models estimated using individual-level NES data from 1976–96 support coordination versus a model in which voters act nonstrategically to moderate policy. The empirical coordinating model satisfies the fixed-point condition that defines the common knowledge expectation voters have about the outcome in the theoretical equilibrium. The proportion of voters who split their ticket in order to balance the House with the president has been small but large enough to affect election outcomes. Moderation has usually been based on voters' expectations that the president will be at least an equal of the House in determining postelection policy.

The Senate's equal representation of states shapes coalition building in distributive politics. The great variation in state population means that some states have far greater need for federal funds than others, but all senators have equal voting weight. As a result, even though all senators' votes are of equal value to the coalition builder, they are not of equal “price.” Coalition builders can include benefits for small states at considerably less expense to program budgets than comparable benefits for more populous states. Building on formal models of coalition building, two hypotheses are developed and tested. First, coalition builders will seek out less costly members to build supportive coalitions efficiently. Second, the final outcomes of distributive policy will more closely reflect the preferences of small-state senators than large-state senators. The hypotheses are tested by examining the 1991 and 1997–98 reauthorizations of federal surface transportation programs. The findings support both hypotheses.

We provide a general theory of collective decision making, one that relates social choices to the strategic incentives of individuals, by generalizing the Baron-Ferejohn (1989) model of bargaining to the multidimensional spatial model. We prove existence of stationary equilibria, upper hemicontinuity of equilibrium outcomes in structural and preference parameters, and equivalence of equilibrium outcomes and the core in certain environments, including the one-dimensional case. The model generates equilibrium predictions even when the core is empty, and it yields a “continuous” generalization of the core in some familiar environments in which the core is nonempty. As the description of institutional detail in the model is sparse, it applies to collective choice in relatively unstructured settings and provides a benchmark for the general analysis of legislative and parliamentary politics.

Most research suggests that the mass public knows very little about the Supreme Court and, consequently, that decisions do not affect attitudes toward the Court. I argue that where there is sufficient access to information about Court cases and when the issues are perceived as important, people pay attention and use this information in their evaluation of the Court. The research is based on a series of two-wave panel studies that examine the effect of Supreme Court cases in the local communities where the controversies began. The results show that a substantial number of residents heard about the Court's decision and subsequently changed their evaluation of the Supreme Court, especially those who live in the immediate community. The results suggest that we need to consider other circumstances in which people hear about and care about Supreme Court decisions.

We examine how the Supreme Court uses signals and indices from lower courts to determine which cases to review. In our game theoretic model, a higher court cues from publicly observable case facts, the known preferences of a lower court, and its decision. The lower court attempts to enforce its own preferences, exploiting ambiguity in cases' fact patterns. In equilibrium, a conservative higher court declines to review conservative decisions from lower courts regardless of the facts of the case or the relative ideology of the judges. But a conservative higher court probabilistically reviews liberal decisions, with the “audit rate” tied, to observable facts and the ideology of the lower court judge. We derive comparative static results and test them with a random sample of search-and-seizure cases appealed to the Burger Court between 1972 and 1986. The evidence broadly supports the model.

It is often argued that executive powers such as the veto serve to reduce particularistic spending by the legislature. I argue that the effect of the executive veto depends strongly on assumptions about both the nature of executive preferences and the institutional structure of executive-legislative bargaining. To support these claims, I develop a model of distributive policymaking subject to an executive veto. This framework incorporates variation in presidential objectives and formal powers into a dynamic bargaining model. In equilibrium, stronger veto power leads to a lower level of distributive spending, but the effects are mitigated to the extent that the president prefers spending in some districts over others. The model also generates new insights and predictions about fiscal policy under the separation of powers, including the effects of divided government, electoral rules, and term limitations for the executive.

We offer a model of multiparty elections that combines voters' retrospective economic evaluations with consideration of parties' issue positions and the issue preferences of voters. We show that both policy issues and the state of the economy matter in British elections. In 1987 voters made a largely retrospective evaluation of the Conservatives based on economic performance; those who rejected the Conservative Party chose between Labour and Alliance based on issue positions. Through simulations we move the parties in the issue space and reestimate vote shares as well as hypothesize an alternative distribution of views on the economy, and we show that Labour had virtually no chance to win with a centrist party as a viable alternative. The predictions from our 1987 simulations are supported in an analysis of the 1992 British election. We argue for multinomial probit in studying three-party elections because it allows for a richer formulation of politics than do competing methods.

The influence of partisan politics on public policy is a much debated issue of political science. With respect to foreign policy, often considered as above parties, the question appears even more problematic. This comparison of foreign aid policies in 16 OECD countries develops a structural equation model and uses LISREL analysis to demonstrate that parties do matter, even in international affairs. Social-democratic parties have an effect on a country's level of development assistance. This effect, however, is neither immediate nor direct. First, it appears only in the long run. Second, the relationship between leftist partisan strength and foreign aid works through welfare state institutions and social spending. Our findings indicate how domestic politics shapes foreign conduct. We confirm the empirical relevance of cumulative partisan scores and show how the influence of parties is mediated by other political determinants.