This paper describes how the contributions that different groups make to a party's total strength can be specified by breaking down each contribution into its three components—size, turnout, and loyalty. Through the use of survey data on reported vote rather than party identification, the voting coalitions of the Democrats and Republicans are analyzed. By means of examples of selected groups, the actual magnitude of these contributions and their components are presented for each of the last five presidential elections. Major attention is given to a group-by-group evaluation of the generally accepted view that the Democrats are a coalition of diverse overlapping minorities including the poor, Blacks, union members, Catholics and Jews, Southerners, city dwellers and perhaps the young; and the view that the Republicans have appeal for the corresponding non-minorities. The empirical results show which aspects of these views are valid and which are not. Some implications for the party system as well as the strategic considerations inherent in this approach are also discussed.

The system of multiple advocacy attempts to convert intraorganizational conflicts over policy into a balanced system of policy analysis and debate. This requires the executive to (1) structure and manage the policy-making system to ensure that there are advocates to cover the range of interesting policy options on a given issue; (2) equalize or compensate for disparities among the actors in the resources needed for effective advocacy; (3) identify and correct possible “malfunctions” in the policy-making process before they can have a harmful effect on the executive's choice of policy. Nine types of malfunctions are identified in this paper via critical diagnosis of U.S. foreign policy making in cases in which the executive had to decide questions of commitment, intervention, or escalation. Responsibility for identifying and correcting such malfunctions and for managing multiple advocacy effectively should be clearly fixed with the Special Assistant for National Security Affairs. However, the Special Assistant should not combine the role of “custodian-manager” of the policy-making system with the additional tasks of (a) policy adviser to the President; (b) public spokesman for existing policies; (c) “watch-dog” of the President's personal power stakes; or (d) implementer of policy decisions already taken. The attempt to do so invites serious role conflicts that can undermine the Special Assistant's performance of the all-important task of custodian.

Analysis of national election surveys from 1956 to 1968 reveals significant changes in the voters' perceptions of issues and the major parties. There has been a considerable increase in the correlation of party identification and opinion on six major issues, relating to social welfare, racial integration, and foreign aid. Voters are more prone to see a difference between the parties on these issues and are increasingly likely to identify the Democratic party as favorable to federal governmental action. These findings contrast with those of The American Voter and similar studies. The reasons for the changes cannot be found in demographic factors, as tested by controls for age cohorts, education, region, and race. More probably the explanation lies in strictly political factors. A particularly important event was the presidential campaign of 1964, in which ideological differences between the parties were deliberately emphasized. The electorate responded to this campaign by becoming more ideologically aware, and its learning appears to have persisted through the 1968 election. This finding suggests that past conclusions about the low ideological awareness of the electorate were specific to the Eisenhower era, and that the issue content of the vote will vary with the stimuli provided by the general political environment.

The importance of issues in deciding elections changes from one election to the next. As Key has shown, the issues of the role of the federal government in social life helped create the New Deal Democratic majority. In contrast, issues had only a marginal impact on the apolitical elections of the 1950s. Converse's technique of normal vote analysis reveals that issues were again highly related to the vote in 1968. This was particularly true of attitudes toward Vietnam, urban unrest and race, social welfare, and Johnson's performance as president.

Yet, even in an election in which issues appear important, some can have very different consequences for popular control of policy than others. On some issues, the electorate exercises no effective constraints on leaders' policy choices. On others (e.g., the escalation in Vietnam), the electorate permits leaders a wide array of options when a policy is adopted and passes a retrospective judgment on such choices in subsequent elections. Finally, on still other issues, the public may limit the options of leaders at the time a policy is adopted. The paper suggests the stringent conditions necessary for this type of popular control to exist.

Sino-Soviet border fighting in early 1969 had many causes. The two Damansky Island incidents, moreover, were quite different in level of conflict and outcome. Only an investigation of the details of the incidents, together with a composite analysis of domestic, foreign policy, and international political variables suffices to determine what actually happened and why. Fitting the pieces together reveals that the Chinese caused the March 2 incident, while the Russians initiated fighting on March-14. The first incident involved only local forces; the second included regular army forces of several thousand and heavy equipment.

The history of the border conflict since 1954 is traced and found to have entered a critical stage in 1966, with the outbreak of the Cultural Revolution and increased Soviet military readiness. The 1964 border negotiations aborted because the Chinese wished no agreement then; but no insurmountable obstacles stand in the way of a definitive border agreement. A combination of local excesses, regional power struggle, and national-level policy changes motivated the Chinese to initiate action on March 2. The Soviets caused the March 14 incident primarily for revenge and as the opening move in forcing the Chinese into new border talks.

This paper provides a partial test of the widely-held assumption that preference primaries are the most representative element of the presidential nominating system. It notes that the average voting turnout in presidential primaries is only 39 per cent, compared with 69 per cent in the same states' ensuing general elections. The representative quality of these electorates is examined with data from sample surveys of the 1968 New Hampshire and Wisconsin primaries. A comparison of the primary participants with non-participants among each party's identifiers shows, first, that presidential primary electorates are demographically unrepresentative of their nonvoting fellow partisans in age, education, income, and social status. Second, primary participants have no more intense party identifications than do non-participants. Third, participants hold issue positions more strongly than nonparticipants do, and on some issues they even hold positions contrary to those of nonparticipants. Finally, both of the Democratic primaries overrepresented Johnson sentiment and underrepresented McCarthy and Kennedy sentiment. The author concludes that the preference primaries' claim to be the most representative element of the presidential nominating system may not be warranted, especially if and when the national conventions are reformed along lines such as those laid down by the McGovern-Fraser Commission. In any case, 1972 offers a unique opportunity to study the comparative representativeness of local, state, and national party conventions and the preference primaries.

How are decisions made in Soviet cities? Who are the municipal decision makers? What kinds of decisions do they make? Is there a Soviet urban political system? This article attempts to answer these questions by focusing on four aspects of decision making in Soviet cities: budget formulation, the planning process, housing construction and allocation, and the staffing of key municipal posts.

Urban autonomy has increased in the past decade, but Soviet municipalities are very much restricted in their decision making. Superior Party and governmental authorities continue to dominate the decision-making process and any decision made by municipal authorities can be vetoed by superior Party and governmental organs.

Soviet municipal decision making is now being influenced by three tendencies: municipal administrators are acquiring more influence in municipal government and administration; the educational qualifications and professional expertise of city Party members are rising; ad hoc citizen and group interest articulation may be developing. Comparisons between Soviet and North American urban decision-making models are useful and valid, although they require an improved methodology and much more Soviet data.

The stability of voting for subsets of the Weimar population distinguished by sex, religion, and urban-rural residence is estimated: (1) by means of ecological regression, for the period 1924–1928; (2) by an examination of net changes, for the period 1928–1933.

The major conclusion is that party identification was not an important factor in the Weimar Republic. Instead, voting seems to have been channeled largely by social and economic structures. Subsidiary conclusions are that uneven distribution of information affected the stability of voting and that most of the Nazi gains from 1928 to 1933 apparently did not come disproportionately from among previous nonvoters.

This article analyzes the influence of interest groups in the formation of British policy toward participation in European unity From the important theoretical literature bearing on the subject, it derives and tests two hypotheses relating group behavior to the political integration process. The hypothesis imputed to the group politics approach holds that if interest groups influence policy formation, then progress toward integration is likely to be impeded. The hypothesis suggested by an extension of the functionalist approach implies that if interest groups influence policy formation, then progress toward integration is likely to be facilitated. The data indicate a confirmation of the first hypothesis and a rejection of the second. Groups were unfavorable toward European unity for both organizational and economic reasons. They restrained Britain's movement toward participation in integrated European ventures until the onset of effective politicization. Then the introduction of broadly conceived national interest considerations displaced cost-benefit calculations as the criteria for judgment and diminished the groups' influence. At least in the task of enlarging a geographic area of integration, if not in expanding that integration once a grouping already exists, a conscious political decision was found to be essential.

The present controversy between “behavioral” and “postbehavioral” views of political inquiry reflects a larger dispute between two opposing theories of knowledge. Whereas the behavioral movement has its epistemological roots in positivism and, ultimately, in classical British empiricism, the most recent protest against behavioralism draws upon the theory of knowledge that has been the principal foe of empiricism over the past century. This theory of knowledge, which received the name “historicism” shortly after its emergence, had become the dominant epistemological position by the mid-twentieth century. This essay considers the general nature of historicism and its influence on the recent revolt against positivism in the philosophy of science. Finally, it examines the use that political scientists have made of historicist principles in opposing positivistic models of political inquiry. It argues that an epistemological relativism becomes unavoidable once certain premises of historicism are embraced.

Substantive due process is the classic, if temporary, achievement of judicial activism. The Roosevelt Court destroyed it out of respect for the democratic processes. Mr. Justice Black's “incorporation” ploy was calculated to forestall backsliding by equating the Fourteenth Amendment with the Bill of Rights. But the Bill of Rights, after all, is quite old fashioned. It does not cover many matters deemed crucial in our day, e.g., poverty. To fill this “gap” the Warren Court used “equal protection” as “actively” as the pre-Roosevelt Court had used “due process.” Obviously inspired by the Black incorporation principle, the early Burger Court is doing to substantive equal protection what the Roosevelt Court did to substantive due process. A generation ago we called it a “return to the Constitution,” now it is called strict construction. If in time the full Nixon Court succumbs to the magic of power and imposes its ideals upon the nation, some of us may find embarrassment in our quondam efforts to convince ourselves that judicial activism (it used to be called judicial supremacy) is a proper handmaiden of democracy.

The concept of political clientelism is one if the few genuinely crosscultural concepts available to political scientists for the comparative study of transitional systems. As a descriptive concept, political clientelism helps us uncover patterns of relationships which deviate markedly from those ordinarily associated with class or ethnicity. As an analytic concept political clientelism provides crucial insights into the internal dynamics of social and political change. Moreover, if, as some contend, patterns of resource allocation are more meaningful indicators of political development than their conceptual opposites, political clientelism may well supply the critical “missing link” between micro- and macro-sociological or system-centered theories of political development.

This paper explores the relationship between the partisan division of the northern vote in U.S. House elections and the partisan division of northern House seats. From at least 1952 through 1964, there was a noticeable pro-Republican bias to northern districting, in the sense that the Republicans consistently won about ten per cent more of the seats than the Democrats could obtain from the same percentage of the vote. Following the 1964 election, this partisan inequity has disappeared, but the evidence suggests that this change is only temporary. The normal pattern of a Republican advantage in northern House elections is produced by a Republican gerrymander of accidental origins: the tendency of Democratic voters to cluster in heavily Democratic areas where their votes for Congress go “wasted.” Neither malapportionment nor deliberate partisan gerrymandering appears to have played a major role in distorting the outcomes of House elections.