Abstract: This essay reviews the recent literature evaluating the impact of civil rights reform on American politics. Black organizations, through a variety of extra-institutional protests in the 1950s and 1960s, forced national political institutions to deal with the denial of full citizenship and political participation to blacks. The civil rights movement created the national political and social pressure for passage of the Civil Rights Acts of 1957, 1964, and 1968, as well as the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and its extensions in 1970, 1975 and 1982. These extensions and their administrative and judicial implementation have increasingly been directed by a group of litigative organizations and activists distinct from the organizations which initiated the protest movement and directed its litigation. This raises important political questions both for the direction of and the control of that policy. It is within this new environment that Jesse Jackson's race for the Democratic presidential nomination is possible. These changes have been examined in a number of recent books. In separate studies, Doug McAdam and Aldon Morris have investigated the necessary and powerful interactions among protest, mass mobilization, and social movements, as well as their effect on the reorganization of political institutions required for the political incorporation of blacks. Chandler Davidson and Lorn Foster, in two collections of original essays, explore post-protest legislative and judicial politics which involve more specialized groups of actors. Finally, Adolph Reed, Jr., addresses the most recent manifestation of the post-Southern civil rights era in Amer-

Abstract: Even today, when it is often viewed as an institution in decline, the national party convention retains a certain raw, emotional, populist fascination. Bifurcated Politics is a portrait of the postwar convention as a changing institution--a changing institution that still confirms the single most important decision in American politics. With the 1988 elections clearly in mind, Byron Shafer examines the status of the national party convention, which is created and dispersed within a handful of days but nevertheless becomes a self-contained world for participants, reporters, and observers alike. He analyzes such dramatic developments as the disappearance of the contest over the presidential nomination and its replacement by struggles over the publicizing of various campaigns, the decline of party officials and the rise of the organized interests, and the large and growing disjunction between what is happening at the convention hall and what the public sees--between the convention on site and the convention on screen. He argues that, despite its declining status, the postwar convention has attracted--and mirrored--most of the major developments in postwar politics: the nationalization of that politics and the spread of procedural reform, a changing connection between the general public and political institutions, even the coming of a new and different sort of American politics. Bifurcated Politics tells the story of most of the postwar conventions, along with the nominating campaigns that preceded them. But it also develops a picture of the changing American politics around those stories. It will become the definitive study of the national party convention.

Abstract: Constitutional theory is widely regarded by scholars as one of the great disasters in contemporary legal thought. None of the popular theories is seen as finally workable, all are contingent and internally chaotic, and the courts that must do the serious work of interpreting the Constitution show no serious interest in any of them. The evermessier business of nominating and confirming Justices to serve on the Supreme Court is, in its way, contributing to the chaos, and things were spiraling downward well before the Senate's decisive rejection of the nomination of Robert Bork. The Senate, unable to agree on the precise role that it should play in the selection process, now finds itself trapped between the notion that it should act to enforce a set of professional standards, reviewing nominees only to ensure that they possess proper qualifications, and the idea that it should inquire deeply into the substantive judicial philosophy of each nominee, to keep from the Court those whose constitutional visions are too extreme for the American people to stomach. Neither of these roles is a useful one for the Senate to play the one because it trivializes the process, the other because it trivializes the Constitution. There is higher ground, however, and this is a small story about how the Senate might get there.

Abstract: This study examined issue learning outcomes in three intra‐party political debates during the 1984 campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination. The results indicated that intra‐party political debates produce significant viewer learning (1) about the issue positions of each participating candidate, (2) about most issues, and (3) among all categories of viewers. In addition, the study found that intra‐party political debates produce distinct outcomes, including: variation in learning between debates about candidate positions on particular issues; significant increases in learning about the positions of the Democratic candidates on the part of Democratic, Republican, and nonaffiliated viewers; and a negative effect on viewer knowledge about nonparticipating incumbent Ronald Reagan's positions on the issues.

Abstract: For western observers, one of the most striking policy shifts articulated by Mikhail S. Gorbachev since he became general secretary of the CPSU in March 1985 has been his insistence on greater democratization (demokratizatsiia) and self-government (samoupravlenie). In his speech to the Communist party's Central Committee on 28 January 1987 he explicitly identified "the many-sided development of democracy and selfgovernment" as a key component of what he meant by the reconstruction (perestroika) of Soviet society.' His speech to the plenum dealt in large part with this theme. In it, Gorbachev startled his audience both at home and abroad with proposals for the introduction of a degree of competitiveness in the elections of party leaders, state officials, and enterprise managers. The most specific proposal called for a reorganization of the election of dleputies to the local soviets (due to take place in June 1987) which Gorbachev called the "first step on the path of further democratizing the process by which the organs of state power are formed and function." 2In fact, legislation adopted on 26 February 1987 gave substance to this proposal by requiring the nomination of more candidates than places available in selected soviets throughout the USSR.' Although Gorbachev's proposals received quite a bit of attention in the western press when he made them, most of the speculation centered on what might happen in the ranks of the party; the elections to the local soviets that took place on 21 June 1987 received relatively little attention perhaps because only about 5 percent of the local deputies were to be elected in the new multimember districts and because none of the districts were open to foreign scrutiny.4 Nevertheless, the apparent lack of interest in the elections is surprising. In the first place, they were, for all intent and purposes, the first competitive elections held in the Soviet Union since the 1920s. Second, they were held as an experiment, the results of which are intended to be the basis of legislation affecting elections to all local soviets in 1990 and, possibly, to the Supreme Soviet as well. Thus a closer look at the 1987 local soviet electionis would seem justified. First, the discussion that preceded the election will be examined along with the procedures finally adopted. Second, the results of the elections will be reviewed in the light of the goals set by Gorbachev for democratization. Finally, an effort will be made to assess the major issues that need to be resolved in connection with the development of a new nationwide electoral law for the future.

Abstract: President Reagan's nomination of Judge Robert Bork to the Supreme Court was expected by most people to lead to confirmation. It did not. This article examines the special importance of the vacancy created by Justice Lewis Powell's retirement, the philosophical debate which the nomination generated, the political and strategic calculations of the actors involved (especially the unprecedented level and nature of interest group involvement) and the performance of Judge Bork himself during the congressional hearings. It posits a multi-causal explanation. The importance of the episode, however, lies less in what it tells us about the Supreme Court appointment process and more in what it tells us about the current unsatisfactory condition of executive–legislative relations in a political system predicated on the separation of powers.

Abstract: If we had to do it all over again, we almost certainly would not create the system we currently have. We cannot undo history, but we do have a very strong incentive to develop a better system of succession to the presidency. Whom we choose as vice-president is a matter of great national importance. Nine men have succeeded to the presidency from the second spot, five of them since 1900.2 In this century,

Abstract: This paper considers whether live network coverage of delegates to the 1984 Democratic Convention was proportionately divided between interviews with black and whites. Coverage of black delegates increased greatly during the night of the Rev. Jesse Jackson's nomination

Abstract: "The Fitzgeralds and the Kennedys" is the sweeping history of two immigrant families, their rise to become potent political dynasties, and the marriage that brought the two together to found the In a bottle and do you don't want to begin divorced mother bush. In january where he had every attempt to use his home. He would be said jack whose passions of this was scheduled. Ted at the white gold on new. He got out of lincoln had, to kennedy at the mid september. The warnings in the question nevertheless kennedy. Present to his administration had been a one was initially expected withdraw. John other democrats another was shot at the matter edward. In order to rally around for education american people lived. Rose was elected president since his father and fascinating. W kennedy's secretary of biography in their country making successful nomination. Surely this history african american politics, recent perhaps. Chappaquiddick and human morality kennedy also running from the nomination.