Abstract: Overdetermination hinders the possibility of empirically arbitrating among competing theories. In situations of overdetermination, social factors are likely to gain influence as determinants of theory choice. Despite strategies to decrease the number of independent variables or increase the number of cases, overdetermination remains a predicament. This article argues that the problem may be solved by treating the dependent variable as a subtype of a more general phenomenon. But, the author concludes, the possibility of substantiating this kind of generalization in the social sciences is low.

Abstract: Over the years, there has been considerable interest in the empirical analysis of the electoral college.1 Many of these efforts have sought to assess the biases alleged, in conventional wisdom, to be contained in the electoral college. Among the structural features of the electoral college frequently cited as giving rise to biases are (1) the constant two constitutional allocation of two electoral votes to every state regardless of size (corresponding to its Senate representation) in addition to a variable number of electoral votes equal to its number of congressmen, (2) the winner-take-all extraconstitutional provision (sometimes termed the "unit rule" feature) that the candidate who receives a plurality of votes in a state wins all that state's electoral votes, (3) the assignment of electoral votes (other than the "constant two") to states on the basis of population rather than voter turnout, and (4) the assignment of electoral votes on the basis of census population figures, which reflect population shifts only at ten-year intervals.2 These features ensure that the electoral

Abstract: The debate between Habermas and Foucault has been seen as one between communicative reason and nihilism, but this article argues that it is more usefully understood as a debate between communicativ...

Abstract: The concept of state elaborated by Fichte in Science of Right represents a watershed in the history of liberal, romantic, and socialist thought. Fichte embraces a unique understanding of freedom, t...

Abstract: Organized religion has played an increasingly prominent role in American politics over the past two decades. An aspect of this, explored in this article, is the role of religious organizations as parties in church-state cases before the Supreme Court. While religious organizations have become more active in lobbying the Congress, the author argues that litigation remains an important weapon in their political arsenal.

Abstract: The Family Support Act of 1988 has been heralded by some policy makers as a major advance in public assistance. Whatever its merits, the legislation also represents yet another example of the contradictory symbolism of welfare undercutting substantive benefits. This article, using post-positivistic analysis, explores the contradictory character of recent revisions in welfare policy. The author concludes that these changes fulfill symbolic purposes, often at the expense of the people ostensibly served by the program.

Abstract: Presidential leadership is commonly associated with the term "charisma." Some Presidents have it; some do not. But what exactly is charisma? This article clarifies the concept by drawing upon a Biblical paradigm of leadership in which American political culture has been steeped. Presidents, the author contends, are called to be "charismatic heroes" who by their "prophetic" words "congregate" the people as a "covenanted" presence in "history." All of these words, in the Biblical tradition, are technical terms with stipulated meanings, and together they make explicit a role that is at once distinctive and creative of national solidarity, identity, and legitimacy. So conceived, the author concludes, the President's role as "tribune of the people" is the most important and powerful in American politics but also dangerously and inherently unstable.

Abstract: In significant military initiatives prior to the 1989 Panama invasion, presidential disregard for the War Powers Resolution drew congressional criticism. Panama was different. Despite the President's failure to comply with the law, Congress remained virtually silent about the War Powers Resolution. This article explores the reasons for and the implications of the congressional silence in the case of Panama.

Abstract: The 1980s and 1990s have been marked by a growing scholarly interest in public response to the siting of hazardous waste treatment facilities. This interest has been kindled, at least in part, by important changes in federal law. The original legislation, the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act of 1976, set regulatory standards for hazardous waste management, but these standards were widely viewed as inadequate, especially in that they permitted a variety of land-based technologies. Perhaps the most prominent provision of the Hazardous and Solid Waste Amendments of 1984 is the phased prohibition of virtually all of these technologies. This stipulation, along with the requirement (added by the Superfund Amendments and Reauthorization Act of 1986) that all states must demonstrate a twenty-year capacity for the safe treatment and disposal of hazardous waste, has brought the problem into sharp focus: What sort of public response do state and local governments face as they move toward siting decisions? The public policy dimensions of hazardous waste facilities demonstrate collective benefits with narrowly borne risks, similar to airports, prisons, landfills, and highways. The study of the facility siting process would seem to have a natural home in the rich literature on public resistance to concentrated costs, the so-called NIMBY problem: "OK, but not in my back yard."' Local citizens' perceptions of likely impacts on the economy, property values, environmental quality, traffic congestion,

Abstract: In West Germany, mass energy protests of the past two decades reopened the question of the citizen's proper role in technological decision making. This case study analyzes the politics of energy policy, where grassroots activists challenged not only policy decisions themselves but also the legitimacy of the bureaucratic institutions that produced them. The author finds that citizen activism raised the technical competence of the bureaucracy in the making of energy policy, but also eroded the legitimacy of the traditional policy-making institutions. She turns to the theories of Jurgen Habermas and Claus Offe to explore the legitimation aspects of the case.

Abstract: The relationship between the Savoyard Vicar's Profession of Faith and Rousseau's own religious views has been a matter of some controversy. This article examines several footnotes appended to the Profession that clarify Rousseau's appreciation and critique of the Vicar. The author concludes that Rousseau's theological-political teaching regarding religious doctrines and beliefs is based on political pragmatism rather than on an ultimate commitment to the truth of religious tenets.

Abstract: Both V. O. Key and E. E. Schattschneider saw the political transformations of American politics in the 1930s as part of a long-term erosion of sectionalism and a growing nationalization in presidential balloting. This article examines the Key and Schattschneider assertions by analyzing regional voting patterns from 1888 to 1988, focusing on regional deviations from the national vote and regional swings away from national trends. The author concludes that there has been an erosion of sectionalism in presidential voting, a decline in both the regional dispersion of the vote and the voting swings.

Abstract: Proponents of post-1968 reforms in the presidential nominating process commonly defend them by claiming that the old "mixed" system was undemocratic and closed to popular movements. Only a few years before, however, Senator Barry Goldwater of Arizona had led a conservative takeover of the Republican Party that showed the mixed system could accommodate the rise of a popular movement. This article examines whether the mixed system helped or hindered the Goldwater candidacy. The author concludes that the mixed system was more open to popular movements than has often been assumed and, ironically, that the reformed system, by distancing the party from the nominating process, may have made it more difficult for movements to win and consolidate their position.

Abstract: The debate over "bringing the state back in" to political analysis typically combines two distinct issues: state autonomy and state coherence. This article contends that pluralist and other mainstream political scientists are reluctant to speak of "the state," not, as their statist critics charge, because their explanations are society-centered, but rather because they doubt that governmental actors and institutions are coherent enough to warrant a locution that encourages us to treat the government as a unitary actor. Surveying the mainstream literature on American politics written during the 1960s, the author argues that these studies both assumed and demonstrated substantial autonomy on the part of governmental actors.

Abstract: Conflicts over employee drug testing programs involve competing claims about the appropriate organization of social control policy. These disputes are related to the coexistence of competing discourses of social control: (1) a juridical discourse of crime and punishment, which emphasizes citizen rights that limit state surveillance, and (2) a disciplinary orientation that strives to prevent and eliminate crime through sustained surveillance and control. The author reviews recent Supreme Court drug testing decisions and argues that the Court adopts the second perspective and supports social control techniques that are antithetical to key elements of liberal legal ideology.

Abstract: Over the past decade, the political science of American politics has been exposed to a sustained wave of Eisenhower revisionism. Conventional wisdom on almost all facets of the Eisenhower presidency has been turned on its head as the former President has undergone a major reevaluation which aims to correct the distortions and misconceptions of the past and rewrite his place in history. The once bumbling, inept, incompetent, weak, and politically inexperienced occupant of the White House has been transformed into an accomplished politician, a skillful leader, and a well-informed and activist President who completely dominated events and ran the show.1 Eisenhower, we are told, \"was a phenomenon in American politics, and there has never been anything quite like him.\"2 Moreover, according to Anthony Joes, \"Eisenhower revisionism has passed the stage of re-evaluation and today amounts to what might be termed a small-scale intellectual revolution.\"3 Eisenhower's place in the development of the American presidency is also being reassessed and re-evaluated. His contribution is now regarded as something far more significant than conventional wisdom said it was. Fred Greenstein, one of the leading Eisenhower revisionists, claims that the formative period of the modern presidency began with Franklin Roosevelt and ended with Eisenhower and he speaks of \"the post-Eisenhower presidency.\" What came after Eisenhower, he says, were \"rather drastic zigs and zags in patterns that had been established during the formative

Abstract: Liberals have developed a defense of toleration that is value-neutral and rights-based. This article offers an alternative theory of toleration developed by the northern European humanists, one which rejects the liberals' assumptions. In contrast to the radical skepticism of liberals, the humanists adopt the mitigated skepticism of the Academic skeptics, in which some dogmatic and ethical truths could be ascertained, at least with probability. Instead of emphasizing the individual's assertion of rights against the commuity, the humanists looked to the community to determine the truth.

Abstract: Hannah Arendt argues that the socialist regimes that came into existence in this century should not be described as "authoritarian" because they have dispensed with "authority," i.e., moral authority, as a principle of political organization. She claims that these "totalitarian" regimes are the most radical manifestation of the disappearance of authority in the modern age. This article, however, contends that the early socialist movement was concerned about the modern crisis of authority and that the type of authority Arendt describes plays an important part in Lenin's theory. Far from disappearing, the author concludes, authority has in fact reemerged in precisely those regimes that Arendt calls "anti-authoritarian."

Abstract: At the time of his death in 1983, Raymond Aron had finally achieved a level of public recognition and even celebration that had eluded him during most of his adult and professional life. Aron, to be sure, was well known in France as a philosopher, political sociologist, and journalistic commentator on politics and international affairs but his humane and skeptical liberalism did not easily compete with the flashier \"creative\" currents of Parisian thought from existentialism and \"left bank\" Marxism to structuralism and deconstruction which successfully seized the public and academic imagination. The subtitle of Aron's Memoirs (published in France months before his death and recently excellently translated into English in a somewhat abridged version) gives us the clue to this long-time failure to recognize Aron's achievement: Aron had dedicated himself, with rare persistence and modesty, to \"fifty years of political reflection.\" He was, of course, open to philosophical analysis and reflection. He introduced Weber's and Dilthey's work into France, studied the works of Heidegger and Husserl, attended Kojeve's famous seminar on Hegel's Phenomenology, discussed and debated Marxism and existentialism with Sartre for decades (the discussion was unilateral), and contributed important philosophic work on the philosophy of history, the nature of the social sciences, and the history of ideas. But

Abstract: This article examines the problematic relationship between moral and intellectual virtue in the Nicomachean Ethics by exploring Aristotle's concern with two different audiences: those inclined toward an active political life and those who are potential philosophers. The author argues that attentiveness to the dual audience of the Ethics renders intelligible Aristotle's apparently inconsistent teaching on moral virtue as an end in itself in Books I-V and his final exaltation of theoretical virtue in Book X.

Abstract: For some time now, a growing number of women have been taking seats in state legislative assemblies that were previously male bastions. Drawing upon survey data from six northeastern states, this article explores the attitudes of male legislators toward their female counterparts and also the attitude of women legislators toward their still minority status in the several legislative bodies. The author finds a range of views and concludes that women are accepted largely to the extent that they become ungendered but equal.

Abstract: Since the publication of Charles Beard's An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution, conservative scholars have denounced it as "Marxist," while radical scholars have often embraced it as an exemplary piece of Marxist political theory. Yet Beard steadfastly denied that his Economic Interpretation was Marxist in its origin or import. Many scholars have dismissed Beard's disclaimers as a polemical maneuver, but this article asserts that they should be taken seriously. The author contends that Beard's historiography and political thought is rooted in the little known work of E. R. A. Seligman, whose The Economic Interpretation of History is the key to understanding how Beard's methodology differs from the historical materialism of Marx.

Abstract: Since the late 1960s, scholars have explored public opinion and the "ideology of individualism."1 This belief system rests on the notion that the individual, not society, is ultimately responsible for his success or failure.2 An individualistic belief system allows only limited government. Government should not intervene beyond that which is necessary to promote and encourage individual initiative and self-reliance.3 A political, legal, social and economic environment that advances individualism is, then, a system that reflects its polity's values.4

Abstract: L. Marvin Overby's "Apportionment, Politics, and Political Science" aspires to be an impressive effort to survey the literature of contemporary political science. Unfortunately, it does not engage the discussion invited by the historical, legal, and constitutional findings reported in our "Why 435?: A Question of Political Arithmetic."1 "Why 435?" is essentially about the recovery of a legislative process designed to link representation in the House of Representatives to the U.S. Census. The Framers devised this linkage to insure that the size of the House and the division of its Members among the states would remain attuned to the growth and changing composition of the American people. The Fourteenth Amendment, ratified in 1868, recommits every new decennial reapportionment of the House to the kind of legislative process outlined in Article I, Section 7 of the U.S. Constitution, further assuring decennial discussion over how best to attune representation in the House to the ever-changing constitution of the American polity. Since 1929, however, this legislative process has been repeatedly distorted by an administrative procedure that requires neither debate nor even consent by Congress and the President. This distortion and its constitutional and political implications have been altogether unexamined by constitutional lawyers and political scientists. "Why 435?" points out this distortion and argues for the necessity of returning to this legislative process. Indeed, Overby tacitly admits this distortion as well as the need for debate about the "proper size" of the House. Unfortunately, he fixates only on the final aspect of the paper: the proposal that there are several potential benefits of marginal but decennial increases in the House of Representatives. "Why 435?" examines a set of political experiences and constitutional mechanisms that are prior to the phenomena and propositions explored by the literature on the modern Congress. Overby thus compounds his

Abstract: Alasdair MacIntyre argues that the liberal tradition lacks standards of rational justification and relies instead on interminable debate. In critiquing MacIntyre's view, this article contends that liberalism is neither marked by more interminable debate than previous traditions nor is it more lacking in the resources for resolving such debate. Indeed, the author argues that liberalism meets MacIntyre's description of a tradition.

Abstract: In a recent issue of Polity, Charles and John Kromkowski argue for abandoning the "automatic" apportionment process for determining state delegation sizes in the House of Representatives and returning to a system of "marginal but decennial increases" in the size of the chamber.1 According to their analysis, regularly increasing the size of the institution would yield a plethora of advantages ranging from more active citizen participation in government to decreased opposition to Puerto Rican statehood, and from restoring the Congress's federal foundations to ensuring more competitive legislative elections. While the Kromkowskis cogently explain the history of automatic apportionment and reopen the debate regarding its wisdom, they seriously misinterpret the likely impact of decennial size increases on the electoral fortunes of Members and on the internal workings of the institution. In this essay, I examine a number of their claims concerning the dynamics of an enlarged House and argue that they comport with neither common sense nor the weight of the academic literature on the subject.

Abstract: A key feature of the politics of the "New Christian Right" has been its attempts to mobilize the evangelical clergy, and through them, the broader community of evangelical Protestants. By all accounts, Pat Robertson's 1988 presidential bid, the most visible expression of the Christian Right to date, counted on strong backing from the clergy,2 and the failure to mobilize this core constituency helps to account for Robertson's lack of success. Indeed, we find only modest support for the campaign among evangelical ministers, and this support was concentrated in a narrow segment of the community: those with lower levels of education, characterized by social issue conservatism, and from charismatic and Pentecostal churches. Support for Robertson, however, was most directly accounted for by the political judgments of ministers, such as the quality of the candidate and the viability of the campaign, rather than religious or demographic factors. Thus, if evangelical ministers were the core of Robertson's campaign, then the core was largely hollow.

Abstract: It must not be forgotten that the author who wishes to be understood is obliged to carry all his ideas to their utmost theoretical conclusions, and often to the verge of what is false or impracticable; for if it be necessary sometimes to depart in action from the rules of logic, such is not the case in discourse, and a man finds it almost as difficult to be inconsistent in his language as to be consistent in his conduct.

Abstract: The state has made a comeback in political science over the last twenty years. A synthesis of sorts of traditional and behavioral approaches to the study of politics, statist theory, in its methodology, is at once historical, institutional, and empirical. This study of the U.S. Forest Service both illustrates and critiques the statist approach, and also adds to the growing literature on the Progressive Movement's role in the building of an American state in the early years of this century.