Abstract: The intention of this paper is to explore the sources of public attitudes toward the European Union over the last two decades, using cumulative data available from the Eurobarometer series of publi...

Abstract: "Character" is today a key concept in conservative discourse and is virtually absent from the language of liberalism. I argue that liberals can, and perhaps ought to, reclaim the concept of character from its near-monopoly by conservatives. One way to do so is to look back to John Stuart Mill's proposed "science" of character-formation, which in his System of Logic (1843) he called "ethology." Although he never wrote a treatise on ethology, his major works can be read as case studies in applied ethology. His Autobiography shows how a single individual, viz. himself, was able to reform a partially deformed character. The Subjection of Women is about the deformation and possible reformation of the characters of half the human race, viz. women. Considerations on Representative Government is concerned with the formation of civic character. And not least, On Liberty is concerned with the conditions conducive to the formation of vital and vigorous individual characters. I conclude by contrasting Mill's concepti...

Abstract: Since contending methodological perspectives and different types of research products are founded on irreconcilable philosophical assumptions, the sharp, recurrent debates over social science research methods are likely to be fruitless and counterproductive. This article begins by exposing some of the philosophical assumptions underlying the most recent calls for a unified social science methodology and seeks to help develop a common appreciation of how different kinds of methods and research products advance our understanding of different aspects of social life at different levels of abstraction. Such commonly posited dichotomies as deductivist/inductivist logic, quantitative/qualitative analysis, and nomothetic/idiographic research products are shown to obscure significant differences along a continuum of strategies through which context-bound information and analytic constructs are combined to produce interpretations of varying degrees of complexity or generality. Durkheim's conception of "organic soli...

Abstract: This essay addresses some of the ways in which women's citizenship was reconceived after the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment. It uses the concept of ordered citizenship to understand the role of citizenship in American politics. The paper considers what suffrage meant for women's political standing during the 1920s in three areas: electoral politics, jury service, and married women's rights. In the nineteenth century, women were regarded as politically different from men and the main marker of that difference was the absence of the vote. Once women won the right to vote, the distinction between men's and women's citizenship necessarily changed. Women moved toward a political identity as liberal individual citizens. Yet this change was partial and uneven, as their citizenship remained somewhat grounded in their status in the domestic realm. Further, counterbalancing the tendency towards political inclusion was the movement to reorder the hierarchy of social groups within the imagined political communit...

Abstract: While liberal and democratic theories have dealt with the question of cultural demands on liberal society, few essays focus on how a modernized and theoretically demanding New Right has turned the idea of racist exclusionism into a libertarian concept of differentialism, cultural pride, and radical multiculturalism. Indeed, the idea of challenging the concept of a liberal republican tradition of citizenship by means of a pluralist, anti-liberal view of "difference" rooted in the tradition of counter-revolutionary political thought appears to be one of the most distinctive innovations emanating from the French New Right. This essay, following the pathbreaking studies of Pierre Taguieff, attempts to introduce these ideas within the confines of the American debate on liberal citizenship, communitarianism and multiculturalism. The basic claim is that a radical support of multiculturalism and cultural rights of ethnic groups is not only a feature of democratic theory but also of neo-fascist right-wing politica...

Abstract: Can a society embrace authenticity without becoming more unjust? It seems not, but Charles Taylor has argued that, once the dialogical nature of human subjectivity is recognized, it follows that these two, seemingly opposed, ideals can be reconciled in an ethics of authenticity and a difference-accommodating liberal politics. This essay examines Taylor's claims in light of Rousseau's Reveries of the Solitary Walker, in which Jean-Jacques claims to repudiate the dialogicality that Taylor sees as constitutive of human identity. Although the Solitary Walker's experiences largely confirm Taylor's claims about human subjectivity, they do so in a way that suggests the need for a correction to his moral and political conclusions: J Jacques's melancholy reveries epitomize the failure of the radical authenticity Taylor rejects, but they also show that justice and authenticity cannot be reconciled in any soul-and therefore in any society-lacking the quality Rousseau called virtue.

Abstract: The theme of the 1999 APSA Annual Meeting-the role of political science in the world of politics and policy-poses an interesting challenge to scholars across the discipline. Nowhere is this more true than in the section devoted to the study of politics and history. We are backward-looking as a matter of intellectual principle. What can we contribute, then, to contemporary political life, with its fixation on the present and the future? I refer not to our role as individual political actors, for many of us intervene in politics as advisors to officials and agencies, commentators in the media, and political activists at all levels. Rather, I propose to consider what the study of political history might offer political actors, what we have already learned that might be of value, and what kind of historical scholarship might prove of use in the future.

Abstract: David Hume's political thought is shaped by an expansively conceived skepticism. For Hume, "mitigated skepticism" is a way of life rather than a mere philosophical conclusion. It entails not only philosophical doubt, but also a variety of practical, methodological, ethical, and political commitments. Skeptics acquire these commitments by living a life devoted to philosophy, reading, learned conversation, and ordinary business in a modern society. They in turn may profoundly influence political practice in their societies, though in severely restricted ways. Hume's mitigated skeptics may discover practical political maxims, but they will be loath to act on them. They will tell politicians what to do, but only in order to diminish political conflict. And they will prefer to live in liberal commercial republics, while only defending them obliquely. Despite these limitations, however, Hume thinks mitigated skepticism holds an important place in modern moral and political life.

Abstract: President Clinton's Initiative on Race (1997-1998) was widely dismissed as empty political grandstanding. This article argues that the initiative actually bore an historical significance which observers have overlooked: it dramatically reformulated the American race problem at the dawn of the new century. We can see this clearly if we compare the race initiative to the two most important "moments" in official race discourse earlier in the twentieth century: Myrdal's American Dilemma (1944) and the Kerner Commission report (1968). Myrdal's work defined a postwar liberal orthodoxy on race that, first, denied the existence of intrinsic racial/cultural differences between Blacks and Whites, and second, identified White racism or prejudice as the most important barrier to Black advancement in American society. A generation later, the Kerner Commission report sustained this orthodoxy while shifting attention from individual racism to institutionalized racism, in keeping with the times. Then, thirty years later,...

Abstract: With the rise of the democratic state came a strong emphasis on "the public" or "public opinion" in the study of politics. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, a number of important works examined the contours of public opinion within a democracy. The study of public opinion since this early period has only intensified. However, recent work on public opinion is problematic: the theoretical and normative concerns and the political / sociological focus of the early works on public opinion are largely missing. Most modern studies of public opinion are psychologically driven and often truncated from broad concerns of American politics and democratic theory. In this article, I explicate the history of public opinion research, paying particular attention to the "early" works and how their concerns and emphases have been neglected by many "later" studies of public opinion. Through this history I aim to highlight the differences between the early and later phases and to suggest that much was lost...

Abstract: The conditional spending power, or the ability of Congress and the executive to attach conditions to grants in aid and entitlement programs, has become a vital source of authority to monitor and regulate the activites of both the states and individual citizens. If there were meaningful political or legal limits upon the conditional spending power, it would be no more problematic than any of the other policy mechanisms available for achieving Federal ends, but such limits presently do not exist. As a consequence, conditional aid may function to promote state sovereignty and the rights of citizenship, but it also may serve to undermine them. Contrary to recent developments ostensibly limiting the reach of Federal regulatory authority, arguably coercive and even unconstitutional applications of conditional aid are supported and encouraged by both the federal judiciary and contemporary politics. This article explains how and why this is the case, and assesses prospects for reform.

Abstract: The speakership of Henry Clay marks an important period in the early development of American politics and political institutions. The "leadership survival" explanation of the Clay speakership, first proposed in James Sterling Young's, The Washington Community, 1800-1828, has enjoyed wide currency and more recently has been incorporated in work by scholars associated with the "new institutionalism" in rational choice theory. In this article we revisit Young's account of the Clay speakership, focusing on the period after the War of 1812. Using evidence from committee assignment and roll call records, we show that Speaker Clay's leadership strategy was more complex than Young and the new institutionalist accounts propose, and that it advanced Clay's public policy goals as well as his political ambition. A new survey of historical evidence also shows that Young significantly understated Clay's importance as a leader on matters of national policy. We propose a "strategic majority" explanation, which provides a...

Abstract: This study examined interpersonal communication patterns among 70 of 149 members in the New York State Assembly. The average member spoke frequently with about 22% of his or her colleagues, less frequently to another 44%, and virtually never to the remaining third of the membership. Shared membership in political party had the strongest relationship to communication patterns (which colleagues a member communicated with) followed by regional delegation. Seat proximity and shared committee membership showed weaker relationships, and office proximity and gender were of little influence. In general, homophilous attributes were more important than proximity factors in influencing frequency of communication. Moreover, homophily creates proximity, through meetings of party conferences, regional delegations, and groups such as the Women's Caucus. Paul H. Ferber is Associate Professor of Political Science at Rochester Institute

Abstract: Michael Sandel and others have faulted liberal constitutionalism for its "proceduralism," its "bracketing" of divisive moral issues, and its pursuit of the "unencumbered self." As a contemporary diagnosis, there is much to be said on behalf of these criticisms. Yet in recounting the story of liberalism's development as the deliberate and inevitable pursuit of moral individuality, these accounts fail to consider the anticipated benefits-as well as the costs-of modern constitutionalism that were evident to eighteenth-century thinkers like David Hume and Adam Smith. We will see that classical liberals like Hume and Smith did not defend liberal constitutionalism in the name of the "unencumbered self." Instead they saw liberal neutrality, the separation between public and private, and the relegation of religion to a private matter of civil society as the best way to accommodate sectarianism, ethical pluralism and the religious conflicts of the post-Reformation world. Only by challenging contemporary presumptio...

Abstract: Many political scientists have turned to historical research as means of clarifying the constraints shaping contemporary political action. Polsky's self-identified pessimism in this forum captures this view of political history elegantly when he identifies notions of "path dependence" and "policy legacies" as key contributions of historical research. The focus for many historically oriented political scientists has been on identifying the ways in which political institutions and policies have provided a distinctive set of incentives and constraints that have, in turn, structured subsequent political choice.' Although I agree with much in this line of argument, my own interest in history, and in historically grounded political research, stems from a quite different impulse. I turn to history precisely to gain a sense of political agency by expanding the set of political possibilities available in contemporary political debate. History, from this perspective, serves as an agent for, rather than a constraint on, political change. If political actors and activists were to read "our" work, I hope they would leave it with an extended sense of political possibilities as the very best political history, as I see it, ought to broaden the cultural and political horizons we use to frame contemporary political debate. There are at least three ways in which history acts as a source of agency and change; first history denaturalizes the present; second it is a source of alternative visions and practices; and finally, it helps to specify contemporary political topography. All three dimensions of agency can be found in most political histories. Unfortunately there is no room here to survey the field, thus a few instances of each will have to suffice. Let me briefly outline and illustrate each of these mechanisms for expanding our sense of agency and political change through historical research and conclude with some remarks on questions of presentism in political history. One of the most important impulses and effects of political history has been to denaturalize the present. That is to unmask the taken for granted, or common sense, nature of our current political institutions and practices.2 Historical research

Abstract: This article develops a framework for understanding the contrasting legislative fortunes of Presidents Nixon and Bush under divided government by focusing on electoral contexts and policy areas. The theoretical premise of this research is that the electoral context of divided government sets the basic contours of presidential-congressional relations and is thereby critical in shaping presidents' ability to influence supporting coalitions in Congress in the domestic and foreign policy spheres. The analysis uses ordinary least squares regression of presidential support scores to identify how electoral, institutional, and constituency factors variably bounded the ability of Nixon and Bush to gain support from Democrats for their policy stands, in turn contributing to their contrasting legislative success rates.

Abstract: David M. Hart, Forged Consensus: Science, Technology, and Economic Policy in the United States, 1921-1953, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998. Daniel Lee Kleinman, Politics on the Endless Frontier: Postwar Research Policy in the United States, Durham: Duke University Press, 1995. Bruce L. R. Smith, American Science Policy Since World War II, Washington, DC: The Brookings Institution, 1990.

Abstract: The purpose of this paper is to explain the differences between women's and men's evaluations of President Clinton in 1996. By testing the impact of a wide array of potential influences-social characteristics, core beliefs and values, partisan and ideological orientations, assessment of the country's current conditions and specific policy preferences-this analysis attempts to provide a comprehensive account of the largest gender gap in approval levels ever recorded among voters surveyed by the National Election Studies (NES). The results indicate that beliefs about the proper role of the federal government make, by far, the most powerful contribution toward the explanation of the gender gap, accounting for at least half of its observed size. Attitudes toward gay rights emerge as the second most important influence on gender differences in Clinton's evaluations. On the other hand, attitudes toward defense spending, the key factor underlying the approval gap during the early Reagan years, and women's issues...

Abstract: This article offers a critical assessment of some recent liberal perfectionist arguments for the value of cultural identity and cultural membership, in particular the arguments of Joseph Raz and Will Kymlicka. Because these writers ask how cultural membership and identity may contribute to good lives-and think this a proper question for political philosophy to address-it seems possible that they may more readily contribute to strategies for securing respect and recognition for cultural minorities than other liberals. But although their acknowledgement of the value of cultural identity and membership represents an advance over neutral or political liberal approaches, liberal perfectionists are mistaken in viewing these features as important primarily insofar as they furnish agents with the capacities and contexts necessary for personal autonomy. While this argument may supply reasons for protecting vulnerable cultures that are liberal in character, it precludes the prospect of accommodating non-liberal cul...

Abstract: Despite the fact that franked mail is considered one of the most valuable resources that members of the House of Representatives have to advertise their names and accomplishments to constituents, House mail expenditures fell dramatically in the 1990s after almost two decades of growth. This research indicates that public disclosure of individual members' spending in concert with more restrictive expenditure rules is the principal reason for this reversal. This contrasts with campaign spending, which has continued to grow in the face of disclosure. The note concludes with suggestions about why disclosure of House members' spending on mail has been so much more effective in reducing franking expenditures than disclosure of campaign contributions and expenditures has been in controlling campaign finance.

Abstract: This essay examines a familiar but still perplexing problem in U.S. political history: how a group of fiercely separatist, diverse British colonies successfully formed a separate national union. Tracing patterns in colonial and revolutionary-era political speech, I demonstrate that the origins of American political union were in important part rhetorical. A combination of religious doctrines and anti- British sentiment elevated union into one of the most important, if contested, political concepts in the founding era. This study is carried out via a combination of close reading and data analysis, the latter based on a representative set of period American newspapers. A lesser puzzle is addressed along the way: why "union" virtually disappeared as a referent for intercolonial contact during the critical years leading to independence, following 1763. The answer: British officials insisted on a very different understanding of the term.

Abstract: From the early 1980s to the early 1990s, many political theorists despaired about the capacity of liberal political thought to engage and develop the ethical sensibilities of citizens in economically developed Western republics (a.k.a. \"liberal democracies\"). Alasdair Maclntyre, William Galston, Michael Sandel, and Mary Ann Glendon, to name a few, blasted the primacy of \"rights talk\" in politics for fostering a civically damaging individualism that bankrupted our intellectual capital for conceptualizing or realizing \"the common good.\"' The intellectual focus for their ire was primarily the liberal political theories of Harvard philosophers John Rawls and Robert Nozick. The political focus was indirect and fuzzy, but also motivating this enterprise was probably discontent with liberals in the Democratic and Republican parties who shied away from talk of individual or collective morality in either their stump speeches or policy agendas. This \"critique\" came to be known as the \"communitarian\" critique, and its enemy was said to be \"liberalism.\" The \"liberals-communitarians\" debate was always misnamed, however, because every one of the communitarians believed in the sacred character of the American Bill of Rights--a liberal document if there ever was one--and none of the liberals savored immorality or despised the sweet harmony promised by \"community.\" In addition, the debate had a somewhat airy, academic quality to it since the political stakes of the debate always remained blurred: liberals and communitarians could find themselves on the same sides of debates regarding a woman's right to an abortion or various affirmative action programs.2

Abstract: The two volumes reviewed here explain why the question of transnational democracy now occupies a central place on the agenda of those devoted to pursuing timely and politically significant research in democratic theory. For nearly a decade now, a diverse group of European scholars-working with financial support from the European Commission-has stubbornly ignored traditional disciplinary boundaries along with the commonplace academic tendency to pursue narrow questions and equally narrow research. Pursuing a wide-ranging research program whose basic outlines were initially inspired by the political theorists Daniele Archibugi and David Held,' scholars from Britain, France, Germany, and Italy have managed not only to underscore the profound challenges posed by globalization for traditional democratic theory, but also to propose an ambitious vision of \"cosmopolitan democracy\" as an answer to those challenges. For U.S. readers, the most refreshing facet of the work of the European scholars-the recent results of which have now been conveniently collected in Re-imagining Political Community: Studies in Cosmopolitan Democracy (RPC)-is their evident disinterest in respecting strict divides between normative political theory, empirical political science, international law, and legal theory. This ambitious project on \"cosmopolitan democracy\" has not only initiated a lively debate among political scientists and jurists in Europe, but it seems to have penetrated the protective walls of North American academia as well. Re-imagining Political Community: Studies in Cosmopolitan Democracy offers a useful sample of the ongoing debate initiated by the proponents of \"cosmopolitan democracy,\" whereas Democracy's Edges (DE)-a collection of essays based on a recent conference at Yaleshows that some of the leading lights

Abstract: The intellectual vigor of political history informed by social science is obvious in journals such as Studies in American Political Development and the Journal of Policy History, in award-winning books produced by both university and commercial presses, in the Politics and History section of the American Political Science Association (currently the seventh largest organized section in the APSA), and in many specialized panels, workshops and conferences dedicated to specific topics in political history. What can this vigorous application of social science to political history teach leaders and citizens today? The best political history' teaches that the past is relevant, politics is ubiquitous, and broad political perspective is essential for political wisdom. These lessons of political history, though, can teach nothing if leaders and citizens will not learn from them. To influence leaders and citizens, political historians must provide them with information they value. Expanding the audience for political history depends as much on the strategy of gaining influence as it does on the quality of the lessons themselves. Put bluntly, political historians must be highly political to influence leaders and citizens (and political historians should be the first to recognize this fact). Lucid reflection will cause many political historians to doubt that it is worth the intellectual compromises necessary to maximize popular interest in political history. Political historians, however, can influence specific premises of political discourse, explain the way that historical evidence is used in politics, and provide leaders with the hope that historical development teaches as much about new possibilities as foreclosed options. Political history informed by social science is beneficial for public action in just the way that good psychology is beneficial for private action. Psychology is valuable because it blends rich, textured case studies of individuals' psychological histories with general propositions about types of psychological temperament, motivations, processes, and problems. We know intuitively that understanding another person requires knowledge of that person's past experiences. Psychology shows the value of applying systematic analysis to the events that shape a person's life. It offers a model for the constructive marriage of the historical and social science approaches to political history.

Abstract: Answering the question posed by the organizers of this symposium, whether those of us who study history and politics have any wisdom to offer to contemporary political actors, strikes me as a very risky business. If we answer, "Political actors should understand the lessons of my work and the work of my friends," we seem conceited and self-serving. If we answer, "we actually have very little to offer political actors, our work is not able to provide concrete advice of that sort," we seem rather useless. And if we answer, "the question is inappropriate, it is not and should not be our goal to provide advice to politicians and policy-makers," we seem conceited, self-serving, and useless. But what other sort of answer might we possibly give? I can think of none, and so here I'll give versions of all three unhappy responses. My core answer is, however, more cheerful. It is that if we do our work well, then to some modest degree we make the conditions under which politicians, policymakers, and citizens choose a bit more propitious to good choices. Whether they make such choices is, however, up to them. Let me work toward that conclusion by developing my version of the three unhappy answers just listed, taking them in reverse order. It would indeed be a bad thing, I believe, if people who study politics and history, or any other political scientists, took their primary task to be the generation of knowledge that directly assisted politicians and policymakers. Our fundamental task has to be to understand as fully and honestly as possible how politics has worked and can work. To be sure, if we do that well, our results ought in principle to be valuable for both political leaders and citizens. Our research should help them to understand better the range of constraints and opportunities their political circumstances present to them. But if we conduct our studies as courtier scholars, seeking to whisper words of wisdom into the ears of candidates and governing officials, we are likely to go astray. We may well produce research that does not really aim to provide an honest account of our subject matter as far as we can grasp it. Rather, we may at least implicitly be providing credible stories that will please and assist our favorites among those who are in power or seeking power. I am not naive enough to deny that, at some level, we all do that to some degree already. I also know that many would disdain the notion that there is any "truth" to be found that is not in the end simply the version of reality that best serves the interests of those who endorse it (often quite sincerely). That epistemological claim may or may not be correct. Yet either way, I believe our duty as scholars still is to be as honest as possible with ourselves and our audiences in several ways. We must expose as fully as we can the assumptions, the evidence, and the arguments on which our contentions rely, we must indicate how far we really think them to be

Abstract: Past research on welfare politics is mostly about why the liberal welfare reform proposals of the 1960s and 1970s were defeated. The politics of the more conservative 1980s and 1990s, less studied, include several messy compromises between the parties and a clear-cut conservative backlash-the 1996 federal welfare reform. Wisconsin, home of the nation's most radical reform, suggests a more promising pattern-bipartisan concordat. The state imposed severe work requirements on welfare adults while, at the same time, providing unprecedented subsidies for the working poor. The political basis was unusual agreement among the parties coupled with the weakness of outside veto groups. Background factors included Wisconsin's conservative society and a masterful government, the heir of Progressivism. In Wisconsin, liberals accepted the end of entitlement, while conservatives accepted an expanded antipoverty policy. If other states, or the nation, did likewise, the welfare state would be more strongly founded.

Abstract: It is now well known that there has been a remarkable decline in the number of Americans who believe that the government can be trusted to do the right thing "most of the time." In this paper, we try to identify those experiences and factors that might best account for varying levels of trust and mistrust among citizens. Using a panel study, we learn that early political socialization experiences in school and participation as an adult in community associations only account for modest differences among citizens who do or do not trust the government. More significant is their reaction to major political events such as the Vietnam War or the Watergate scandal. Earlier levels of personal and political trust are the single best predictor to later levels of trust. But trust, once lost, is difficult for a government to regain. The generation of trust has itself become a more highly politicized process, one that calls into question the civil society thesis which imagines governments as the direct beneficiaries o...