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First Edition

Britannica Educational Publishing

J.E. Luebering: Director, Core Reference Group
Anthony L. Green: Editor, Compton’s by Britannica

Rosen Publishing
Ann Hosein: Editor
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Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Political science / edited by Ann Hosein.

pages cm — (The Britannica guide to the social sciences)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-6227-5547-9 (eBook)
1. Political science—Juvenile literature. I. Hosein, Ann.
JA70.P65 2016
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2015017695

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CONTENTS
Introduction
Fields and Subfields

Chapter One
Development of Political Science from Ancient Times to the Early
20th Century
Ancient Influences

Early Modern Developments

19th-Century Roots of Contemporary Political Science
The Early 20th Century: Developments in the United States
The Early 20th Century: Developments Outside the United States
Other Political Science Scholars
Chapter Two
Post-World War II Trends in Political Science

Behavioralism
The Eurobarometer
Political Culture
Systems Analysis
Theory of Rational Choice
Democratic Theory

Chapter Three
International Relations
Historical Development
 Between the Two World Wars
NATO
The Postwar Ascendancy of Realism

The Behavioral Approach and the Task of Integration

The Later 20th Century
Foreign Policy and International Systems
 The General-System Perspective
Structures, Institutions, and Levels of Analysis
Constructivism
International Political Economy

Chapter Four
Domestic Politics: Public Opinion
Theoretical and Practical Conceptions
The Formation and Change of Public Opinion
Components of Public Opinion: Attitudes and Values
Factors Influencing Public Opinion
Environmental Factors
Mass Media
Interest Groups
Opinion Leaders
Complex Influences
Al Gore and Public Opinion
Public Opinion and Government
 Political Polls
Public Opinion Polling

Chapter Five
Domestic Politics: Elections
Types of Elections

Systems of Vote Counting

Legislative Elections
Executive Elections
Constituencies: Districting and Apportionment
Voting Practices
Secret Voting
Balloting
Compulsory Voting
Electoral Abuses
Participation in Elections
Voter ID Laws
Influences on Voting Behaviour
Chapter Six
Domestic Politics: Government
Agricultural Society
The Spread of Civilization

The City-State of Greece

Rome and the Republic
The Middle Ages
Dissolution and Instability
Feudalism
The Rise of Law and the Nation-State
The Rise and Fall of Absolute Monarchy
Representation and Constitutional Monarchy
The American and French Revolutions
Nationalism and Imperialism
 Communism and Fascism
Liberal Democracy
Prospects in the 21st Century

Chapter Seven
Public Administration
Early Systems of Administration
The Song/Sung Dynasty
Modern Developments
Prussia
France
The British Empire
 The United States
The Soviet Union
China
Japan
Developing Nations

Chapter Eight
Constitutional Government
Features of Constitutional Government
 Procedural Stability
Accountability
Representation
Division of Power
Openness and Disclosure
Constitutionality
Constitutional Change
Constitutional Stability
The Practice of Constitutional Government
Great Britain
United States
Europe
British Decolonization and Emerging National Constitutions
 Latin America, Africa, and Asia

Chapter Nine
Influential Figures in Political Science
Confucius

Plato
Aristotle
Kautilya
Ibn Khaldun
Niccolò Machiavelli
Thomas Hobbes
John Locke
Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Montesquieu
Adam Smith
Edmund Burke
Henri de Saint-Simon
Auguste Comte
Karl Marx
Friedrich Engels
Arthur F. Bentley
Harold Dwight Lasswell
V.O. Key, Jr.
William Riker
Robert A. Dahl
Conclusion
Glossary
Bibliography
Index
 INTRODUCTION

I n 2015, Indiana Governor Mike Pence caught the attention of the country
with a “religious freedom” law that stirred up a firestorm in the press and
social media. Newspapers, news stations, and media pundits from around the
world weighed in on the subject and the new law’s legality and implications.
What had been a promising political career quickly became radioactive with
a future that was murky at best.
Political scientists are racing to determine and quantify the circumstances
that have led to a national furor over the law. How did a state’s law become
the focal point for a larger issue? What role did the media play in Governor
Pence’s freefall? Finding the answers to these questions can define the
success or failure of a politician’s career, determine popular public opinion,
and ultimately shape the laws that govern a nation.
 Indiana governor Mike Pence speaks about the Religious Freedom Restoration Act in March
2015.

Political science is the systematic study of governance by the application

of empirical and generally scientific methods of analysis. As traditionally
defined and studied, political science examines the state and its organs and
institutions. The contemporary discipline, however, is considerably broader
than this, encompassing studies of all the societal, cultural, and psychological
factors that mutually influence the operation of government and the body
politic.
Although political science borrows heavily from the other social
sciences, it is distinguished from them by its focus on power—defined as the
ability of one political actor to get another actor to do what he or she wants
—at the international, national, and local levels. Political science is
generally used in the singular, but in French and Spanish the plural (sciences
politiques and ciencias políticas, respectively) is used, perhaps a reflection
of the discipline’s eclectic nature. Although political science overlaps
considerably with political philosophy, the two fields are distinct. Political
philosophy is concerned primarily with political ideas and values, such as
rights, justice, freedom, and political obligation (whether people should or
should not obey political authority); it is normative in its approach (i.e., it is
concerned with what ought to be rather than with what is) and rationalistic in
its method. In contrast, political science studies institutions and behaviour,
favours the descriptive over the normative, and develops theories or draws
conclusions based on empirical observations, which are expressed in
quantitative terms where possible.
So how does this play into what happened in Indiana? The controversial
legislation, officially called the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (SEA
101), was meant to “ensure religious liberty is fully protected under
[Indiana] law,” according to Pence. The heart of the law was found in the
following clause: “A [state] governmental entity may not substantially burden
a person’s [defined as an individual, business, religious institution or
association] exercise of religion, even if the burden results from a rule of
general applicability.”
The criticism of the law, and main thrust of critics’ arguments, is that the
law allows business owners to deny service to groups typically targeted with
discrimination. Previous lawsuits in other parts of the country have seen the
state side with the customer. Indiana’s reaction was to legally support
businesses’ religious objections. Taken to the logical extreme, say critics,
businesses can deny service to people of any religion, sexual orientation, or
any other group they choose. Although discrimination could theoretically
apply to any group, the debate focused on the gay and lesbian community who
traditionally had been targeted by groups based on their moral or religious
convictions.
A number of groups mobilized to protest the legislation. This includes
other state governors such as Democratic Connecticut governor Dan Malloy
who announced an executive order that barred state-funded travel to Indiana.
“We are sending a message,” said Malloy over social media, “that
discrimination won’t be tolerated.” Seattle’s openly gay mayor Ed Murray
followed suit with a similar executive order. Local businesses and
organizations also expressed concern over the law. The NCAA is
headquartered in Indianapolis, and the association’s president Mark Emmert
said, “we intend to closely examine the implications of this bill and how it
might affect future events as well as our workforce.”
 Businesses that exert a large influence beyond their respective industries
joined in the debate as well. Apple CEO Tim Cook wrote in a Washington
Post op-ed that “America’s business community recognized a long time ago
that discrimination, in all its forms, is bad for business.” Business-rating site
Angie’s List put a halt to its plan to expand into Indiana, and software
company Salesforce canceled all Indiana-based events and travel
responsibilities.
The full text of the law went on to define “substantially burden,” but it
still left real-world implementation of the law up to a court’s interpretation.
While not explicitly addressing questions about whether the law would
permit discrimination, Governor Pence has denied accusations that the law
allows the practice.
While Pence may have foreseen that businesses and politicians would
react negatively to his predictably controversial law, the media frenzy that
followed was probably a surprise to him, his supporters, and political
scientists. Almost immediately after the legislation was signed into law, it
was condemned on the social media platform Twitter. Media icon, Star Trek
actor, and gay rights activist George Takei tweeted on March 27, 2015, “Join
me to #BoycottIndiana. Show Gov. #Pence we won’t stand for bigotry in the
name of religion.” A fury of similar sentiments burst forth on Twitter,
Facebook, and other social media platforms, all labelling Indiana and its
governor as bigoted. Indiana author John Green tweeted, “As a Hoosier, I’m
deeply saddened and embarrassed. A government exists to protect its
citizens; instead, it is legalizing their oppression.” Ironically, even religious
groups, such as the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) which had a
convention scheduled to take place in Indianapolis in 2017, decried the law.
Former NBA star and current sports analyst Charles Barkley added that,
“Discrimination in any form is unacceptable to me. As long as anti-gay
legislation exists in any state, I strongly believe big events such as the Final
Four and Super Bowl should not be held in those states’ cities.”
The overwhelming response on social media perfectly illustrates the
pluralist and interest-group approach to political science that Arthur F.
Bentley, a political scientist in the 1930s and 1950s, was a part of. Bentley
credited “group participation” with brining about social movement. What
made this one go “viral,” was that it was fueled by fast Internet connections
and a connected populous.
 However, Indiana is not the first state with this type of law, yet none of
those states experienced the type of media attention paid to Governor Pence’s
legislation. He made that very point in a televised interview, but it was too
late for Pence. The state’s religious freedom law launched a national debate
over the law’s perceived acquiescence to discrimination against gays and
lesbians.
Over time politicians and officials have become aware of the media’s
role in shaping and swaying a public debate over many policy issues. But
why these issues are thrust into the media spotlight in the first place is still a
subject debated by political scientists. President Obama’s healthcare law
was a major topic for news outlets, while other legislative issues are met
with collective yawns in favor of news coverage of various non-political
stories such as celebrity or sports news.
A political scientist at the University of California, Davis, Amber
Boydstun, laid out a theory that may explain why the Indiana story caught fire
in the media. If so, politicians may be able to better mitigate potential
disasters. Political scientists have strived to understand and quantify how the
press operates. Boydstun’s ideas are laid out in her book, Making the News:
Politics, the Media, and Agenda Setting. She attempts to show how the daily
decisions made in newsrooms produce patterns of operations that can affect
national politics in both negative and positive ways.
She observed that the media operates in two distinct modes, one she calls
the alarm mode and the other the patrol mode. The latter has been around for
years and likens reporters to policemen patrolling their areas, observing
what transpires on their streets and alerts the public to anything that would
affect them. Boydstun stated that, “It’s the idea that the press is a watchdog
and has a duty and capacity to pay attention to things and let the public know
what’s going on.” However, political scientists have largely moved on from
this model since it does not account for the large streams of information that
newsrooms do not have the resources to cover.
Alarm mode is an idea that has developed over time in political science
literature studying congressional oversight. The mode is a reflection of
Congress’s, and the media’s, lack of resources and time to cover every issue
and topic occurring in the world. Instead, when disaster strikes or an “alarm”
is set off, the media brings the story to the public. However, this model does
not completely describe how the media works. It suggests that newsrooms
only respond to sensational stories and never dedicate time and resources to
provide in-depth coverage and reporting. The model does not account for the
investigative reporting that does exist, nor the daily coverage of news that
never makes the front page.
According to Boydstun, combining the two modes, patrol and alarm,
defines how the media shapes politics in a way either mode could never
achieve on its own. Whatever shortcomings one model has the other
addresses. The entire process is cyclical and becomes predictable. In the
world of politics that can rise and fall in sometimes maddening ways,
predictability is invaluable.
The resulting pattern proceeds in the following way. The media dutifully
covers the day-to-day stories while operating in patrol mode. Suddenly, a
story breaks that requires a newsroom’s full attention. Boydstun said in an
interview, “Every reporter on a beat is doing patrol-based coverage. But you
also get instances where the shock of an alarm draws coverage to a certain
area: New Orleans after Katrina, Florida after Trayvon Martin’s shooting,
healthcare after Obamacare. Now, religious freedom laws in Indiana.” These
issues all share a common point; they demanded the attention of the public
rapidly. The media is then operating in alarm mode. Feedback from the
public and politicians heightens the situation and coverage of the event
spreads. More resources are poured into reporting on every possible related
story and the mode slowly returns to patrol mode as the media keeps a
constant watch on new developments. These unique stories caught fire
quickly and sustained the public’s attention over time.
Boydstun’s term for this phenomenon is sustained media explosion.”To
political scientists, this theory can be put to use by anyone involved with
public service. Governor Pence could have predicted the sustainability of
Indiana’s new legislation to reduce the time devoted to it in the media.
Perhaps he could have crafted defending arguments for when the issue did
catch fire.
What happened in Indiana is an example of political science in action and
in a world where technology can reshape the discussion of politics. When
political science got its start with Plato’s Republic, politics was a discussion
reserved for a small group of learned people. Now, anyone with access to
the internet and a social media platform has the ability to help shape a
debate. Politicians now actively engage with constituents on social media,
and people watching political debates are encouraged to comment online
with their questions and reactions, shown in a running stream beneath a
politician’s face in real time.
Though the field of political science remains unchanged at its core, the
ability of social media to facilitate the participation of so many people so
quickly is changing the way policy is made and makes participation a social
event. This is quite a change for a field that was reserved for the erudite as it
was in Plato’s day.
Over time, political science has evolved naturally. Boydstun’s recent
work is an extension of the foundation laid by great philosophers of the past.
The first elaborate work of European political philosophy is the Republic of
Plato, a masterpiece of insight and feeling, superbly expressed in dialogue
form and probably meant for recitation. Plato’s work gave way to many other
political scientists and philosophers over time. As the science evolves, it is
important to understand the origins and development of political science.
This text is broken up into political science’s respective fields, and also
highlights biographies of some people important to the history of this field.

FIELDS AND SUBFIELDS

Modern university departments of political science (alternatively called
government or politics at some institutions) are often divided into several
fields, each of which contains various subfields.
• Domestic politics is generally the most common field of study; its
subfields include public opinion, elections, national government, and
state, local, or regional government.
• Comparative politics focuses on politics within countries (often grouped
into world regions) and analyzes similarities and differences between
countries.
• International relations considers the political relationships and
interactions between countries, including the causes of war, the formation
of foreign policy, international political economy, and the structures that
increase or decrease the policy options available to governments.
International relations is organized as a separate department in some
universities.
• Political theory includes classical political philosophy and
contemporary theoretical perspectives (e.g., constructivism, critical
theory, and postmodernism).
• Public administration studies the role of the bureaucracy. It is the field
most oriented toward practical applications within political science and
is often organized as a separate department that prepares students for
careers in the civil service.
• Public law studies constitutions, legal systems, civil rights, and criminal
justice (now increasingly its own discipline).
• Public policy examines the passage and implementation of all types of
government policies, particularly those related to civil rights, defense,
health, education, economic growth, urban renewal, regional
development, and environmental protection.
 CHAPTER ONE

DEVELOPMENT OF
POLITICAL SCIENCE FROM
ANCIENT TIMES TO THE
EARLY 20TH CENTURY

A lthough political science is a relatively young academic discipline, it

has many ancient and early-modern influences.

ANCIENT INFLUENCES
Analyses of politics appeared in ancient cultures in works by various
thinkers, including Confucius (551–479 BC) in China and Kautilya
(flourished 300 BC) in India. Writings by the historian Ibn Khaldun (1332–
1406) in North Africa have greatly influenced the study of politics in the
Arabic-speaking world. But the fullest explication of politics has been in the
West. Some have identified Plato (428/427–348/347 BC), whose ideal of a
stable republic still yields insights and metaphors, as the first political
scientist, though most consider Aristotle (384–322 BC), who introduced
empirical observation into the study of politics, to be the discipline’s true
founder.
Aristotle distinguished political systems by the number of persons ruling
(one, few, or many) and by whether the form was legitimate (rulers governing
in the interests of all) or corrupt (rulers governing in their own interests).
Legitimate systems included monarchy (rule by one), aristocracy (rule by the
few), and polity (rule by the many), while corresponding corrupt forms were
tyranny, oligarchy, and democracy. Aristotle considered democracy to be the
worst form of government, though in his classification it meant mob rule. The
best form of government, a polity, was, in contemporary terms, akin to an
efficient, stable democracy. Aristotle’s classification endured for centuries
and is still helpful in understanding political systems.
 Bust of Aristotle, Greek philosopher and scientist.

Plato and Aristotle focused on perfecting the polis (city-state), a tiny

political entity, which for the Greeks meant both society and political system.
The conquest of the Mediterranean world and beyond by Aristotle’s pupil
Alexander the Great (336–323 BC) and, after his death, the division of his
empire among his generals brought large new political forms, in which
society and political system came to be seen as separate entities. This shift
required a new understanding of politics. Hellenistic thinkers asserted the
existence of a natural law that applied to all human beings equally; this idea
became the foundation of Roman legalism and Christian notions of equality.
Early Christian thinkers, such as St. Augustine (354–430), emphasized
the dual loyalty of Christians to both God and temporal rulers, with the clear
implication that the “heavenly city” is more important and durable than the
earthly one. With this came an otherworldly disdain for politics. For eight
centuries knowledge of Aristotle was lost to Europe but preserved by Arab
philosophers such as al-Farabi (c. 878–c. 950) and Averroës (1126–1198).
Translations of Aristotle in Spain under the Moors revitalized European
thought after about 1200. St. Thomas Aquinas (1224/25–1274) Christianized
Aristotle’s Politics to lend it moral purpose. Aquinas favoured monarchy but
despised tyranny, arguing that kingly authority should be limited by law and
used for the common good. The Italian poet and philosopher Dante (1265–
1321) argued in De monarchia (c. 1313; On Monarchy) for a single world
government. At the same time, the philosopher Marsilius of Padua (c. 1280–
c. 1343), in Defensor Pacis (1324; “Defender of the Peace”), introduced
secularization by elevating the state over the church as the originator of laws.
For this, as well as for proposing that legislators be elected, Marsilius ranks
as an important modernizer.

EARLY MODERN DEVELOPMENTS

The first modern political scientist was the Italian writer Niccolò
Machiavelli (1469–1527). His infamous work The Prince (1531) presented
amoral advice to actual and would-be princes on the best means of acquiring
and holding on to political power. Machiavelli’s political philosophy was
based on reason rather than religion. Machiavelli believed that Italy could be
unified and its foreign occupiers expelled only by ruthless and single-minded
princes who rejected any moral constraints on their power. Machiavelli
introduced the modern idea of power—how to get it and how to use it—as
the crux of politics, a viewpoint shared by today’s international relations
“realists,” rational choice theorists, and others.
The English philosopher Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679) also placed
power at the centre of his political analysis. In Leviathan; or, The Matter,
Form, and Power of a Commonwealth, Ecclesiastical and Civil (1651),
completed near the end of the English Civil Wars (1642–51), Hobbes
outlined, without reference to an all-powerful God, how humans, endowed
with a natural right to self-preservation but living in an anarchic state of
nature, would be driven by fear of violent death to form a civil society and
submit to a single sovereign authority (a monarch) to ensure their peace and
security through a social contract—an actual or hypothetical agreement
between citizens and their rulers that defines the rights and duties of each.
English philosopher John Locke (1632–1704), who also witnessed the
turmoil of an English civil war—the Glorious Revolution (1688–89)—
argued in his influential Two Treatises on Civil Government (1690) that
people form governments through a social contract to preserve their
inalienable natural rights to “life, liberty, and property.” He further
maintained that any government that fails to secure the natural rights of its
citizens may properly be overthrown. Locke’s views were a powerful force
in the intellectual life of 18th-century colonial America and constituted the
philosophical basis of the American Declaration of Independence (1776),
many of whose drafters, particularly Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826), were
well acquainted with Locke’s writings.
If Hobbes was the conservative of the “contractualists” and Locke the
liberal, then the French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–78) was
the radical. Rousseau’s The Social Contract (1762) constructs a civil
society in which the separate wills of individuals are combined to govern as
the “general will” (volonté générale) of the collective that overrides
individual wills, “forcing a man to be free.” Rousseau’s radical vision was
embraced by French revolutionaries and later by totalitarians, who distorted
many of his philosophical lessons.
 Montesquieu (1689–1755), a more pragmatic French philosopher,
contributed to modern comparative politics with his The Spirit of Laws
(1748). Montesquieu’s sojourn in England convinced him that English
liberties were based on the separation and balance of power between
Parliament and the monarchy, a principle later embraced by the framers of
the Constitution of the United States. Montesquieu also produced an
innovative analysis of governance that assigned to each form of government
an animating principle—for example, republics are based on virtue,
monarchies on honour, and despotisms on fear. Montesquieu’s analysis
concluded that a country’s form of government is determined not by the locus
of political power but by how the government enacts public policy.
The Scottish economist and philosopher Adam Smith (1723–90) is
considered the founder of classical economic liberalism. In An Inquiry into
the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (1776), he argued that the
role of the state should be restricted primarily to enforcing contracts in a free
market. In contrast, the classical conservatism of the English parliamentarian
Edmund Burke (1729–97) maintained that established values and institutions
were essential elements of all societies and that revolutions that sought to
destroy such values (e.g., the French Revolution) delivered people to
irrational impulses and to tyranny. Burke thus introduced an important
psychological or cultural insight: that political systems are living organisms
that grow over centuries and that depend on a sense of legitimacy that is
gradually built up among their subjects.
The early development of political science was also influenced by law.
The French political philosopher Jean Bodin (1530–96) articulated a theory
of sovereignty that viewed the state as the ultimate source of law in a given
territory. Bodin’s work, which was undertaken as the modern state was first
developing, provided a justification of the legitimacy of national
governments, one fiercely defended to this day. Many political scientists,
especially in international relations, find Bodin’s notion of sovereignty useful
for expressing the legitimacy and equality of states.

19TH-CENTURY ROOTS OF
CONTEMPORARY POLITICAL
SCIENCE
Contemporary political science traces its roots primarily to the 19th century,
when the rapid growth of the natural sciences stimulated enthusiasm for the
creation of a new social science. Capturing this fervour of scientific
optimism was Antoine-Louis-Claude, Comte Destutt de Tracy (1754–1836),
who in the 1790s coined the term idéologie (“ideology”) for his “science of
ideas,” which, he believed, could perfect society. Also pivotal to the
empirical movement was the French utopian socialist Henri de Saint-Simon
(1760–1825), a founder of Christian socialism, who in 1813 suggested that
morals and politics could become “positive” sciences—that is, disciplines
whose authority would rest not upon subjective preconceptions but upon
objective evidence. Saint-Simon collaborated with the French mathematician
and philosopher Auguste Comte (1798–1857), considered by many to be the
founder of sociology, on the publication of the Plan of the Scientific
Operations Necessary for the Reorganization of Society (1822), which
claimed that politics would become a social physics and discover scientific
laws of social progress. Although “Comtean positivism,” with its enthusiasm
for the scientific study of society and its emphasis on using the results of such
studies for social improvement, is still very much alive in psychology,
contemporary political science shows only traces of Comte’s optimism.
The scientific approach to politics developed during the 19th century
along two distinct lines that still divide the discipline. In the 1830s the
French historian and politician Alexis de Tocqueville (1805–59) brilliantly
analyzed democracy in America, concluding that it worked because
Americans had developed “the art of association” and were egalitarian group
formers. Tocqueville’s emphasis on cultural values contrasted sharply with
the views of the German socialist theorists Karl Marx (1818–83) and
Friedrich Engels (1820–95), who advanced a materialistic and economic
theory of the state as an instrument of domination by the classes that own the
means of production. According to Marx and Engels, prevailing values and
culture simply reflect the tastes and needs of ruling elites; the state, they
charged, is merely “the steering committee of the bourgeoisie.” Asserting
what they considered to be an immutable scientific law of history, they
argued that the state would soon be overthrown by the industrial working
class (the proletariat), who would institute socialism, a just and egalitarian
form of governance.
 A detail of a painting by T. Chassériau showing Alexis de Tocqueville.

The first separate school of political science was established in 1872 in

France as the École Libre des Sciences Politiques (now the Institut d’Études
Politiques). In 1895 the London School of Economics and Political Science
was founded in England, and the first chair of politics was established at the
University of Oxford in 1912.

THE EARLY 20TH CENTURY:

DEVELOPMENTS IN THE UNITED
STATES
Some of the most important developments in political science since it
became a distinct academic discipline have occurred in the United States.
Politics had long been studied in American universities, but usually as part of
the curricula of law, philosophy, or economics. Political science as a
separate discipline in universities in the United States dates from 1880, when
John W. Burgess, after studying at the École Libre in Paris, established a
school of political science at Columbia University in New York City.
Political science in the United States in the last quarter of the 19th
century was influenced by the experience of numerous scholars who had
done graduate work at German universities, where the discipline was taught
as Staatswissenschaft (“science of the state”) in an ordered, structured, and
analytic organization of concepts, definitions, comparisons, and inferences.
This highly formalistic and institutional approach, which focused on
constitutions, dominated American political science until World War II. The
work of American political scientists represented an effort to establish an
autonomous discipline, separate from history, moral philosophy, and political
economy. Among the new scholars were Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924),
who would be elected president of the United States in 1912, and Frank
Goodnow, a Columbia University professor of administrative law and, later,
president of Johns Hopkins University. Inspired by the work of Charles
Darwin (1809–82), Wilson and others led a transformation of American
political science from the study of static institutions to the study of social
facts, more truly in the positivist temper, less in the analytic tradition, and
more oriented toward realism.
Arthur F. Bentley’s The Process of Government, little noticed at the time
of its publication in 1908, greatly influenced the development of political
science from the 1930s to the 1950s. Bentley rejected statist abstractions in
favour of observable facts and identified groups and their interactions as the
basis of political life. Group activity, he argued, determined legislation,
administration, and adjudication. In emphasizing behaviour and process,
Bentley sounded themes that later became central to political science. In
particular, his insistence that “all social movements are brought about by
group interaction” is the defining feature of contemporary pluralist and
interest-group approaches.
Although Bentley’s effort to develop an objective, value-free analysis of
politics had no initial consequence, other movements toward this goal
enjoyed more immediate success. The principal impetus came from the
University of Chicago, where what became known as the Chicago school
developed in the mid-1920s and thereafter. The leading figure in this
movement was Charles E. Merriam, whose New Aspects of Politics (1925)
argued for a reconstruction of method in political analysis, urged the greater
use of statistics in the aid of empirical observation and measurement, and
postulated that “intelligent social control”—a concept reminiscent of the old
Comtean positivism—might emerge from the converging interests of politics,
medicine, psychiatry, and psychology. An important empirical work of the
Chicago school was Merriam and Harold F. Gosnell’s Non-voting, Causes
and Methods of Control (1924), which used sampling methods and survey
data and is illustrative of the type of research that came to dominate political
science after World War II. Merriam’s approach was not entirely new; in
1908 the British political scientist Graham Wallas (1858–1932) had argued
in Human Nature in Politics that a new political science should favour the
quantification of psychological elements (human nature), including
nonrational and subconscious inferences, a view similarly expressed in
Public Opinion (1922) by the American journalist and political scientist
Walter Lippmann (1889–1974).
Harold Lasswell (1902–78), a member of the Chicago group, carried the
psychological approach to Yale University, where he had a commanding
influence. His Psychopathology and Politics (1930) and Power and
Personality (1948) fused categories of Freudian psychology with
considerations of power. Many political scientists attempted to use Freudian
psychology to analyze politics, but none succeeded in establishing it as a firm
basis of political science, because it depended too much on subjective
insights and often could not be verified empirically.
Merriam’s Political Power (1934) and Lasswell’s classic Politics: Who
Gets What, When, How (1936)—the title of which articulated the basic
definition of politics—gave a central place to the phenomenon of power in
the empirical study of politics. Merriam discussed how power comes into
being, how it becomes “authority” (which he equated with power), the
techniques of power holders, the defenses of those over whom power is
wielded, and the dissipation of power. Lasswell focused on “influence and
the influential,” laying the basis for subsequent “elite” theories of politics.
Although the various members of the Chicago school ostensibly sought to
develop political science as a value-free discipline, it had two central
predilections: it accepted democratic values, and it attempted to improve the
operation of democratic systems. Power approaches also became central in
the burgeoning field of international relations, particularly after World War
II. Hans Morgenthau (1904–80), a German refugee and analyst of world
politics, argued succinctly in Politics Among Nations (1948) that “all
politics is a struggle for power.”
The totalitarian dictatorships that developed in Europe and Asia in the
1920s and ‘30s and the onset of World War II turned political science,
particularly in the United States, away from its focus on institutions, law, and
procedures. The constitution of Germany’s post-World War I Weimar
Republic had been an excellent model, but it failed in practice because too
few Germans were then committed supporters of democracy. Likewise, the
Soviet Union’s 1936 constitution appeared democratic but in reality was
merely an attempt to mask the brutal dictatorship of Joseph Stalin. Works of
this period focused on the role of elites, political parties, and interest groups,
on legislative and bureaucratic processes, and especially on how voters in
democracies make their electoral choices. This new interest in actual
political behaviour became known as “behavioralism.” The result was that
much of political science became political sociology.
THE EARLY 20TH CENTURY:
DEVELOPMENTS OUTSIDE THE
UNITED STATES
Since the time of Marx and Engels, political scientists have continued to
debate the relative importance of culture and economic structures in
determining human behaviour and the organization of society. In the late 19th
and early 20th centuries, the Italian economists Gaetano Mosca (1858–1941)
and Vilfredo Pareto (1848–1923) echoed Marx’s analysis that society was
ruled by elites, but they considered this both permanent and natural. They
were joined by the German-born Italian political sociologist and economist
Robert Michels (1876–1936), whose “iron law of oligarchy” declared rule
by the few to be inevitable. Mosca, Pareto, and Michels all agreed that the
overthrow of the existing “political class” would simply result in its
replacement by another, a view that was supported in the mid-20th century by
Yugoslav dissident Milovan Djilas (1911–95) in his The New Class (1957).
Pareto also contributed the idea (which he borrowed from economics) that
society is a system tending toward equilibrium: like an economic system, a
society that becomes out of balance will tend to correct itself by developing
new institutions and laws or by redistributing power. This approach was
adopted by much of academic political science after World War II and was
later developed by “systems” theory.
In the early 20th century, the Swedish political scientist Rudolf Kjellén
(1864–1922) treated the state as a fusion of organic and cultural elements
determined by geography. Kjellén is credited with coining the term
geopolitics (geopolitik), which acquired a sinister connotation in the years
after World War I, when German expansionists appealed to geopolitical
arguments in support of the Nazi regime of Adolf Hitler. Although geopolitics
still exerts a considerable influence on political science, particularly in the
areas of international relations and foreign policy, the discipline of political
geography developed into a distinct subfield of geography rather than of
political science.
 The German sociologist Max Weber (1864–1920), who rejected Marx
and embraced Tocqueville’s emphasis on culture and values, was perhaps
the most influential figure in political science in the late 19th and early 20th
centuries. Weber claimed that Protestantism triggered capitalism: the
Calvinist idea of predestination led individuals to try to prove, by amassing
capital, that they were predestined for heaven. Weber’s theory of the
Protestant ethic is still disputed, but not the fact that religion and culture
powerfully influence economic and political development.

OTHER POLITICAL SCIENCE

SCHOLARS
In The English Constitution (1867), the English economist and
political analyst Walter Bagehot (1826–77), who was also an editor
of The Economist, famously distinguished between Britain’s
“dignified” offices (e.g., the monarch) and its “efficient” offices (e.g.,
the prime minister). James Bryce (1838–1922), who taught civil law
at the University of Oxford, produced one of the earliest and most
influential studies of the U.S. political system in The American
Commonwealth (1888). The Belorussian political scientist Moisey
Ostrogorsky (1854–1919), who was educated at the École Libre des
Sciences Politiques in Paris, pioneered the study of parties, elections,
and public opinion in Democracy and the Organization of Political
Parties (originally written in French; 1902), which focused on the
United States and Britain. In Paris, André Siegfried, teaching at the
École Libre des Sciences Politiques and the Collège de France,
introduced the use of maps to demonstrate the influence of geography
on politics. At first few Britons turned to behavioralism and
quantification, instead continuing in their inclination toward political
philosophy. In contrast, the Swedish scholar Herbert Tingsten (1896–
1973), in his seminal Political Behaviour: Studies in Election
Statistics (1937), developed the connections between social groups
and their voting tendencies. Before World War II the large areas of the
world that were colonies or dictatorships made few important
contributions to the growth of political science.
 Early 20th century German political economist and social scientist Max Weber (1864–1920).

Weber understood that the social sciences could not simply mimic the
natural sciences, because humans attach widely varying meanings and
loyalties to their leaders and institutions. It is not simply facts that matter but
how people perceive, interpret, and react to these facts; this makes causality
in the social sciences far more complex than in the natural sciences. To be
objective, therefore, the social scientist must take into account human
subjectivity.
Weber discerned three types of authority: traditional (as in monarchies),
charismatic (a concept he developed to refer to the personal drawing power
of revolutionary leaders), and rational-legal (characteristic of modern
societies). Weber coined the term bureaucracy, and he was the first to study
bureaucracies systematically. His theories, which focused on culture as a
chief source of economic growth and democracy, still find support among
contemporary political scientists, and he must be ranked equally as one of the
founders of both modern sociology and modern political science.
 CHAPTER TWO

POST-WORLD WAR II TRENDS

IN POLITICAL SCIENCE

P erhaps the most important irreversible change in political science after

World War II was that the scope of the discipline was expanded to
include the study of politics in Asia, Africa, and Latin America—areas that
had been largely ignored in favour of Europe and North America. This trend
was encouraged by the Cold War competition between the United States and
the Soviet Union for influence over the political development of newly
independent countries. The scholarship produced in these countries,
however, remained largely derivative of developments in Europe and the
United States. Researchers in Asia, Africa, and Latin America, often in
partnership with European and American colleagues, produced significant
studies on decolonization, ideology, federalism, corruption, and political
instability. In Latin America a Marxist-oriented view called dependency
theory was popular from the 1960s to the ‘80s. Greatly influencing the study
of international relations in the United States and Europe as well as in
developing countries, dependency theorists argued that Latin America’s
problems were rooted in its subservient economic and political relationship
to the United States and Western Europe. More recently, Latin American
political scientists, influenced by methods developed in American
universities, undertook empirical studies of the sources of democracy and
instability, such as Arturo Valenzuela’s The Breakdown of Democratic
Regimes (1978). African, Asian, and Latin American political scientists also
made important contributions as teachers on the faculties of American and
European universities.
 Che Guevera (above) was a leading theoretician and tactician of guerrilla warfare and a
prominent figure in Fidel Castro's Communist revolution in Cuba (1956–59).

Outside the United States, where political science initially was less
quantitative, there were several outstanding works. Like Lasswell, the
German philosopher Theodor Adorno (1903–69) and others adopted
Freudian insights in their pioneering study The Authoritarian Personality
(1950), which used a 29-item questionnaire to detect the susceptibility of
individuals to fascist beliefs. The French political scientist Maurice
Duverger’s Political Parties (1951) is still highly regarded, not only for its
classification of parties but also for its linking of party systems with
electoral systems. Duverger argued that single-member-district electoral
systems that require only a plurality to win election tend to produce two-
party systems, whereas proportional-representation systems tend to produce
multiparty systems; this generalization was later called “Duverger’s law.”
The French sociologist Michel Crozier’s The Bureaucratic Phenomenon
(1964) found that Weber’s idealized bureaucracy is quite messy, political,
and varied. Each bureaucracy is a political subculture; what is rational and
routine in one bureau may be quite different in another. Crozier thus
influenced the subsequent “bureaucratic politics” approach of the 1970s.

BEHAVIORALISM
Behavioralism, which was one of the dominant approaches in the 1950s and
‘60s, is the view that the subject matter of political science should be limited
to phenomena that are independently observable and quantifiable. It assumes
that political institutions largely reflect underlying social forces and that the
study of politics should begin with society, culture, and public opinion. To
this end, behavioralists utilize the methodology of the social sciences—
primarily psychology—to establish statistical relationships between
independent variables (presumed causes) and dependent variables
(presumed effects). For example, a behavioralist might use detailed election
data to argue that voters in rural areas tend to vote for candidates who are
more conservative, while voters in cities generally favour candidates who
are more liberal. The prominence of behavioralists in the post-World War II
period helped to lead political science in a much more scientific direction.
For many behavioralists, only such quantified studies can be considered
political science in the strict sense; they often contrasted their studies with
those of the so-called traditionalists, who attempted to explain politics by
using unquantified descriptions, anecdotes, historical analogies, ideologies,
and philosophy. Like behaviourism in psychology, behavioralism in political
science attempted to discard intuition, or at least to support it with empirical
observation. A traditionalist, in contrast, might attempt to support intuition
with reason alone.
Perhaps the most important behavioral contributions to political science
were election studies. In 1955 American political scientist V.O. Key, Jr.
(1908–63), identified as “critical,” or “realigning,” several elections in
which American voters shifted their long-term party affiliation massively
from one political party to another, giving rise to the dominance of the
Republican Party from 1860 to 1932 and of the Democratic Party after 1932.
Pioneering statistical electoral analyses were conducted by the University of
Michigan’s Survey Research Center (SRC), which was developed in the
1940s. In The American Voter (1960), Angus Campbell, Philip Converse,
William Miller, and Donald Stokes used the results of studies by the SRC to
develop the concept of party identification—the long-term psychological
attachment of a voter to a political party. The long-recognized influences of
religion, social class, region, and ethnicity, they argued, contribute to voting
behaviour only insofar as the voter has been socialized, primarily by parents,
to adopt a particular party identification.
Behavioral approaches were soon adopted outside the United States,
often by scholars with connections to American universities. The University
of Oxford initiated election studies in the 1960s, and David Butler and
Donald Stokes—one of the authors of The American Voter—adapted much of
the American study in Political Change in Britain: Forces Shaping
Electoral Choice (1969). They found that political generation (the era in
which one was born) and “duration of partisanship” also predict party
identification—that is, the length of time one has been a partisan heavily
predicts one’s vote. They also found that party identification, initially
transmitted by one’s parents, may change under the impact of historic events.
The influential Norwegian scholar Stein Rokkan pioneered the use of cross-
national quantitative data to examine the interaction of party systems and
social divisions based on class, religion, and region, which in combination
explain much voting behaviour. Rokkan identified the importance of “centre-
periphery” tensions, finding that outlying regions of a country tend to vote
differently from the area where political and economic activities are centred.
The extensive Eurobarometer series—public-opinion surveys carried out in
European Union countries since 1973 on behalf of the European Commission
—have given European behavioralists a solid statistical base on a range of
political, social, economic, and cultural issues; the surveys have provided
valuable data for examining trends over time, and they have shown, among
other things, that modern European ideological opinion clusters around the
political centre, suggesting that stable democratic systems have taken root.
More recently, Transparency International, founded in 1993 in Berlin, has
conducted worldwide surveys that attempt to quantify corruption. In Latin
America, Guillermo O’Donnell and Arturo Valenzuela used public-opinion
surveys and voting, economic, and demographic data to examine the forces
that have destabilized democracy there.
Though behavioral research yielded important insights into the political
behaviour of individuals, it often explained little about actual governance.
Voting studies, for example, rarely provided an understanding of public
policy. Because behavioral research tended to be limited to topics that were
amenable to quantitative study, it was often dismissed as narrow and
irrelevant to major political issues. Indeed, intense methodological debates
among behavioralists (and within the discipline more broadly) often seemed
arcane, filled with esoteric jargon and addressed to issues of little concern to
most citizens. Because behavioralists needed quantitative survey and
electoral data, which were often unavailable in dictatorships or less-affluent
countries, their approach was useless in many parts of the world. In addition,
the reliability of behavioral research was called into question by its
dependence in large part on verbal responses to questionnaires. Analyses of
survey results have shown that respondents often give socially desirable
answers and are likely to conceal their true feelings on controversial topics;
moreover, the wording of questions, as well as the ordering of possible
answers, can affect the results, making concrete conclusions difficult. Finally,
many behavioral findings revealed nothing new but simply restated well-
established or obvious conclusions, such as the observation that wealthy
people tend to vote conservative and poor and working-class people tend to
vote liberal or left-of-centre. For all of these reasons, behavioralism did not
become the sole methodology in political science, and many behavioralists
eventually acknowledged the need for the unquantified insights of
traditionalists; by the late 1960s political scientists called this the
“postbehavioral synthesis.”

Arturo Valenzuela, author of The Breakdown of Democratic Regimes.

THE EUROBAROMETER
This is a series of surveys initiated by the European Commission, the
executive arm of what is now the European Union (EU), to measure
 public opinion in its member states. The Eurobarometer was created
in 1973, when the European Parliament released a report requesting
the establishment of a permanent research institute that would study
European public opinion. After pilot studies were completed, the first
official Eurobarometer survey was conducted in 1974, and its results
were released later that year.
The first study was designed by the first Eurobarometer director,
Jacques-René Rabier, and was conducted in the nine countries—
France, West Germany, the United Kingdom, Italy, the Netherlands,
Belgium, Denmark, Ireland, and Luxembourg—that were then the
members of the European Economic Community (EEC), a precursor to
the EU. Over time the Eurobarometer grew from surveying the nine
original countries to include new members of the EEC and its
successors, the European Community and EU.
Eurobarometer surveys allow for monitoring the evolution of
public opinion in the EU member states, which helps the European
Commission with decision making and in the evaluation of its work.
Eurobarometer data are also often cited by mass media and are used
by research scholars in communication, public opinion, and political
science.

POLITICAL CULTURE
Political culture may be defined as the political psychology of a country or
nation (or subgroup thereof). Political culture studies attempt to uncover
deep-seated, long-held values characteristic of a society or group rather than
ephemeral attitudes toward specific issues that might be gathered through
public-opinion surveys. Several major studies using a political culture
approach appeared simultaneously with the behavioral studies of the late
1950s, adding psychological and anthropological insights to statistical
covariance. The study of political culture was hardly new; since at least the
time of Plato, virtually all political thinkers have acknowledged the
importance of what Tocqueville called “habits of the heart” in making the
political system work as it does. Modern political culture approaches were
motivated in part by a desire to understand the rise of totalitarian regimes in
the 20th century in Russia, Germany, and Italy, and many early studies
focused on Nazi Germany; one early political culture study, Edward
Banfield’s The Moral Basis of a Backward Society (1958), argued that
poverty in southern Italy grew out of a psychological inability to trust or to
form associations beyond the immediate family, a finding that was long
controversial but is now accepted by many.
Perhaps the most important work of political culture was Gabriel
Almond and Sidney Verba’s The Civic Culture: Political Attitudes and
Democracy in Five Nations (1963), which surveyed 1,000-person samples
in the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, Italy, and Mexico.
Almond and Verba identified three types of political culture: (1) participant,
in which citizens understand and take part in politics and voluntary
associations, (2) subject, in which citizens largely obey but participate little,
and (3) parochial, in which citizens have neither knowledge of nor interest in
politics. The authors found that democratic stability arises from a balance or
mixture of these cultures, a conclusion similar to that drawn by Aristotle. In
Almond and Verba’s edited volume The Civic Culture Revisited (1980),
several authors demonstrated that political culture in each of their subject
countries was undergoing major change, little of which was predictable from
the original study, suggesting that political culture, while more durable than
mere public opinion, is never static. Critics of The Civic Culture also
pointed out that political structures can affect culture. The effective
governance and economic policies of West Germany’s government made that
country’s citizens embrace democracy, whereas Britain’s economic decline
made Britons more cynical about politics. The problem, again, is determining
causality.
Over the decades Seymour Lipset, who served as president of both the
American Sociological Association and the American Political Science
Association, turned from explanations of political values based on social
class to those based on history and culture, which, he argued, displayed
consistency throughout history. American political scientist Robert Putnam
followed in this Tocquevillian tradition in Making Democracy Work: Civic
Traditions in Modern Italy (1993), which demonstrated that the historical
cultures of Italy’s regions explain their current political situations. In
Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community (2000),
Putnam claimed that the American tendency to form citizen groups, a
characteristic that Tocqueville praised, was weakening. Americans were
less often joining groups and participating in politics, Putnam argued, leading
to a loss of “social capital” (the collective value of social networks) and
potentially undermining democracy, a worry shared by other political
observers in the United States.
Adopting what became known as the “path-dependent development”
approach, advocates of the historical-cultural school maintained that
contemporary society is a reflection of society in ages past. The political
culture approach declined in the 1970s but was later revived as political
scientists incorporated it into explanations of why some countries
experienced economic growth and established democratic political systems
while others did not. Some suggested that the rapid economic growth and
democratization that took place in some East Asian countries in the second
half of the 20th century was facilitated by a political culture based on
Confucianism. In Africa and Latin America, they argued, the absence of a
culture that valued hard work and capital accumulation led to the stagnation
of much of those regions.

SYSTEMS ANALYSIS
Systems analysis, which was influenced by the Austrian Canadian biologist
Ludwig von Bertalanffy and the American sociologist Talcott Parsons
(1902–79), is a broad descriptive theory of how the various parts and levels
of a political system interact with each other. The central idea of systems
analysis is based on an analogy with biology: just as the heart, lungs, and
blood function as a whole, so do the components of social and political
systems. When one component changes or comes under stress, the other
components will adjust to compensate.
Systems analysis studies first appeared alongside behavioral and
political culture studies in the 1950s. A groundbreaking work employing the
approach, David Easton’s The Political System (1953), conceived the
political system as integrating all activities through which social policy is
formulated and executed—that is, the political system is the policy-making
process. Easton defined political behaviour as the “authoritative allocation
of values,” or the distribution of rewards in wealth, power, and status that the
system may provide. In doing so, he distinguished his sense of the subject
matter of political science from that of Lasswell, who had argued that
political science is concerned with the distribution and content of patterns of
value throughout society. Easton’s conception of system emphasizes linkages
between the system and its environment. Inputs (demands) flow into the
system and are converted into outputs (decisions and actions) that constitute
the authoritative allocation of values. Drawing on cybernetics, the Czech-
born American political scientist Karl Deutsch used a systems perspective to
view the political system as a communications network. Following Deutsch,
some political scientists tried briefly to establish communications as the
basis of politics.
Systems analysis was applied to international relations to explain how
the forces of the international system affect the behaviour of states. The
American political scientist Morton Kaplan delineated types of international
systems and their logical consequences in System and Process in
International Politics (1957). According to Kaplan, for example, the Cold
War rivalry between the United States and the Soviet Union brought about a
bipolar international system that governed much of the two countries’ foreign
and security policies.
By the 1970s, systems approaches to domestic politics were criticized
and generally abandoned as unverifiable abstractions of little explanatory or
predictive power. (In international politics, however, systems approaches
remained important.) On closer examination, the “conversion process” of
systems theory—i.e., the transformation of inputs into outputs—struck many
as simply plain old “politics.” Another problem was that much of systems
theory took as its norm and model an idealized version of American politics
that did not apply universally to the domestic politics of all societies.
Systems analysis also was unable to explain certain policy decisions that
were made despite the absence of predominating favourable inputs, such as
the decision by U.S. Pres. Lyndon B. Johnson to deepen U.S. involvement in
the war in Vietnam. Finally, systems theorists unrealistically reified the
systems of the countries they studied, portraying them as durable and stable
because they were supposed to correct and reform themselves. They were
thus unable to explain defective systems or systemic upheavals, such as the
collapse of communist regimes in eastern and central Europe in 1989–91.
There was no consensus among political scientists concerning the system
that developed after the end of the Cold War. Some scholars believed that
there was a return to a 19th-century balance-of-power system, in which
multiple states make and remake alliances. Others argued for the existence of
a multipolar system consisting of trade blocs that were neither mutually
hostile nor totally cooperative with each other. Some argued that the
international system became unipolar, the United States being the single
dominant world power. The American political scientist Samuel Huntington,
in a controversial article published in 1993 and a book, The Clash of
Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order, published in 1996, used
cultural theory to propose that the emerging international system constituted a
“clash of civilizations.” Several civilizations, each based mostly on religion,
variously clashed and cooperated. The worst clashes, he argued, took place
between Islamic and other civilizations. Many scholars rejected Huntington’s
analysis as simplistic and ill-informed, but others found it persuasive,
especially after the September 11 attacks of 2001 and subsequent U.S.
military attacks.

THEORY OF RATIONAL CHOICE

The dominant school of thought in political science in the late 20th century
was rational choice theory. For rational choice theorists, history and culture
are irrelevant to understanding political behaviour; instead, it is sufficient to
know the actors’ interests and to assume that they pursue them rationally.
Whereas the earlier decision-making approach sought to explain the
decisions of elite groups (mostly in matters of foreign policy), rational
choice theorists attempted to apply their far more formal theory (which
sometimes involved the use of mathematical notation) to all facets of
political life. Many believed they had found the key that would at last make
political science truly scientific. In An Economic Theory of Democracy
(1957), an early work in rational choice theory, Anthony Downs claimed that
significant elements of political life could be explained in terms of voter
self-interest. Downs showed that in democracies the aggregate distribution of
political opinion forms a bell-shaped curve, with most voters possessing
moderate opinions; he argued that this fact forces political parties in
democracies to adopt centrist positions. The founder of rational choice
theory was William Riker, who applied economic and game-theoretic
approaches to develop increasingly complex mathematical models of
politics. In The Theory of Political Coalitions (1962), Riker demonstrated
by mathematical reasoning why and how politicians form alliances. Riker
and his followers applied this version of rational choice theory—which they
variously called rational choice, public choice, social choice, formal
modeling, or positive political theory—to explain almost everything,
including voting, legislation, wars, and bureaucracy. Some researchers used
games to reproduce key decisions in small-group experiments.
Rational choice theory identified—or rediscovered—at least two major
explanatory factors that some political scientists had neglected: (1) that
politicians are endlessly opportunistic and (2) that all decisions take place in
some type of institutional setting. Rational choice theorists argued that
political institutions structure the opportunities available to politicians and
thus help to explain their actions.
By the early 21st century, rational choice theory was being stiffly
challenged. Critics alleged that it simply mathematized the obvious and, in
searching for universal patterns, ignored important cultural contexts, which
thus rendered it unable to predict much of importance; another charge was
that the choices the theory sought to explain appeared “rational” only in
retrospect. Reacting to such criticisms, some rational choice theorists began
calling themselves “new institutionalists” or “structuralists” to emphasize
their view that all political choices take place within specific institutional
structures. U.S. congressmen, for example, typically calculate how their
votes on bills will help or hurt their chances for reelection. In this way,
rational choice theory led political science back to its traditional concern
with political institutions, such as parliaments and laws. In more recent
years, increasing numbers of rational choice theorists have backed away
from claims that their approach is capable of explaining every political
phenomenon.

DEMOCRATIC THEORY
Late in the 20th century, some political scientists returned to the question of
how to achieve the good, just, and stable polity—that is, by returning to the
study of democracy. Although the approaches taken were highly diverse,
most researchers attempted to identify the factors by which democracies are
established and sustained. Democratic theory was revived in earnest in the
late 1980s, when communist regimes were collapsing throughout Eastern
Europe, and was accompanied by the founding of the influential Journal of
Democracy in 1990.
The American political theorist Robert Dahl, who had long been a
scholar of the topic, viewed democracy as the pluralist interplay of groups in
what he called a “polyarchy.” Historical-cultural thinkers such as Lipset
traced the origins of democracy to the values that democratic societies
developed long ago. Samuel Huntington, perhaps the most influential post-
World War II American political scientist, worried about a “democratic
distemper” in which citizens demand more than the system can deliver.
Huntington also viewed democracy as coming in waves—the most recent
having started in 1974 in Greece and Portugal and having subsequently
washed over Spain and Latin America—but warned of a potential reverse
wave toward authoritarianism. The Spanish American political scientist Juan
Linz explored how democracies can decline, and the Dutch-born American
scholar Arend Lijphart considered the institutional arrangements (political
parties and electoral systems, executives and parliaments) that were most
likely to produce stable political systems.
Modernization theorists noted the connection between democracy and
economic development but were unable to determine whether economic
development typically precedes democracy or vice versa. Few of them
regarded democracy as inevitable, and many noted its philosophical,
psychological, and social prerequisites, suggesting that democracy may be a
largely Western phenomenon that is not easily transplanted to non-Western
cultures. Others, however, argued that democracy is a universal value that
transcends culture. Some worried that the legitimacy of established
democracies was eroding in the late 20th and early 21st centuries, as citizens
became disenchanted with the political process and many moved away from
political participation in favour of private pursuits. Voter turnout fell in most
countries, in part because citizens saw little difference between the major
political parties, believing them to be essentially power-seeking and self-
serving. Some blamed the media for focusing on political scandals instead of
issues of substance. Nevertheless, some scholars argued that citizens were
generally better-educated and more critical than they were given credit for.
 CHAPTER THREE

INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS

T he branch of political science that studies the relations of nation states

with each other and with international organizations is called
international relations.

HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT
The field of international relations emerged at the beginning of the 20th
century largely in the West and in particular in the United States as that
country grew in power and influence. Whereas the study of international
relations in the newly founded Soviet Union and later in communist China
was stultified by officially imposed Marxist ideology, in the West the field
flourished as the result of a number of factors: a growing demand to find
less-dangerous and more-effective means of conducting relations between
peoples, societies, governments, and economies; a surge of writing and
research inspired by the belief that systematic observation and inquiry could
dispel ignorance and serve human betterment; and the popularization of
political affairs, including foreign affairs. This increasing popularization of
international relations reinforced the idea that general education should
include instruction in foreign affairs and that knowledge should be advanced
in the interests of greater public control and oversight of foreign and military
policy.
This new perspective was articulated by U.S. Pres. Woodrow Wilson in
his program for relations between the Great Powers following a settlement of
World War I. The first of his Fourteen Points, as his program came to be
known, was a call for “open covenants of peace, openly arrived at” in place
of the secret treaties that were believed to have contributed to the outbreak of
the war. The extreme devastation caused by the war strengthened the
conviction among political leaders that not enough was known about
international relations and that universities should promote research and
teaching on issues related to international cooperation and war and peace.

British troops during World War I in a trench along the Western Front.

International relations scholarship prior to World War I was conducted

primarily in two loosely organized branches of learning: diplomatic history
and international law. Involving meticulous archival and other primary-
source research, diplomatic history emphasized the uniqueness of
international events and the methods of diplomacy as it was actually
conducted. International law—especially the law of war—had a long history
in international relations and was viewed as the source of fundamental
normative standards of international conduct. The emergence of international
relations was to broaden the scope of international law beyond this
traditional focal point.
BETWEEN THE TWO WORLD WARS
During the 1920s new centres, institutes, schools, and university departments
devoted to teaching and research in international relations were created in
Europe and North America. In addition, private organizations promoting the
study of international relations were formed, and substantial philanthropic
grants were made to support scholarly journals, to sponsor training institutes,
conferences, and seminars, and to stimulate university research.
Three subject areas initially commanded the most attention, each having
its roots in World War I. During the revolutionary upheavals at the end of the
war, major portions of the government archives of imperial Russia and
imperial Germany were opened, making possible some impressive scholarly
work in diplomatic history that pieced together the unknown history of
prewar alliances, secret diplomacy, and military planning. These materials
were integrated to provide detailed explanations of the origins of World War
I.
The newly created League of Nations also captured significant attention.
Some of the international relations schools that were founded in the interwar
period were explicitly created to prepare civil servants for what was
expected to be the dawning age of international government. Accordingly,
intensive study was devoted to the genesis and organization of the league, the
history of earlier plans for international federations, and the analysis of the
problems and procedures of international organization and international law.
Henry Kissinger served as secretary of state under U.S. presidents Nixon and Ford.
 The third focal point of international relations scholarship was an
offshoot of the peace movement and was concerned primarily with
understanding the causes and costs of war, as well as its political,
sociological, economic, and psychological dimensions.
In the 1930s the breakdown of the League of Nations, the rise of
aggressive dictatorships in Italy, Germany, and Japan, and the onset of World
War II produced a strong reaction against international government and
against peace-inspired topics in the study of international relations. The
moral idealism inherent in these topics was criticized as unrealistic and
impractical, and the academic study of international relations came to be
regarded as the handiwork of starry-eyed peace visionaries who ignored the
hard facts of international politics. As the desired world of peaceful conflict
resolution and adherence to international law grew more distant from the
existing world of aggressive dictatorships, a new approach to the study of
international relations, known as realism, increasingly dominated the field.
Some topics of study in international relations that are still considered novel
or of recent origin were already being vigorously explored in the interwar
period. The scholarly contributions of some individuals in the 1930s were
particularly noteworthy because they foreshadowed the development of
international relations studies after World War II.
The broadened definition and scope of the study of international relations
were among the fundamental contributions of scholars of the interwar period.
Many of these innovators were enlisted by governments during World War II
for work in intelligence and propaganda, as well as other aspects of wartime
planning. In this respect the war stimulated systematic social-scientific
investigations of international phenomena. It also led to important
technological advances—notably the computer—that would later have a
major impact on the study of international relations.
In other ways World War II was a divide for academic international
relations. The war itself brought about a drastic change in the agenda of
world politics, and the postwar intellectual climate was characterized by a
marked shift away from many earlier interests, emphases, and problems.
New security issues emerged, including the issue of nuclear weapons, which
led to extensive writings on deterrence as a basis of strategic stability.
Bernard Brodie’s treatise on nuclear deterrence was highly influential, as
was the work of Herman Kahn, Glenn Snyder, Thomas C. Schelling, Henry
A. Kissinger, and Albert Wohlstetter. Other issues that were addressed in the
vast literature of international relations include international, and especially
European, integration; alliances and alignment, such as the North Atlantic
Treaty Organization (NATO); ideologies; foreign-policy decision making;
theories about conflict and war; the study of low-intensity conflict; crisis
management; international organizations; and the foreign policies of the
increasing number of states that became part of the international system in the
mid- to late 20th century.

NATO
This military alliance established by the North Atlantic Treaty (also
called the Washington Treaty) of April 4, 1949, sought to create a
counterweight to Soviet armies stationed in central and eastern
Europe after World War II. Its original members were Belgium,
Canada, Denmark, France, Iceland, Italy, Luxembourg, the
Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, the United Kingdom, and the United
States. Joining the original signatories were Greece and Turkey
(1952); West Germany (1955; from 1990 as Germany); Spain (1982);
the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland (1999); Bulgaria, Estonia,
Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia, and Slovenia (2004); and
Albania and Croatia (2009). France withdrew from the integrated
military command of NATO in 1966 but remained a member of the
organization; it resumed its position in NATO’s military command in
2009.
The heart of NATO is expressed in Article 5 of the North Atlantic
Treaty, in which the signatory members agree that "an armed attack
against one or more of them in Europe or North America shall be
considered an attack against them all; and consequently they agree
that, if such an armed attack occurs, each of them, in exercise of the
right of individual or collective self-defense recognized by Article 51
of the Charter of the United Nations, will assist the Party or Parties so
attacked by taking forthwith, individually and in concert with the other
 Parties, such action as it deems necessary, including the use of armed
force, to restore and maintain the security of the North Atlantic area."

THE POSTWAR ASCENDANCY OF

REALISM
Hans J. Morgenthau’s Politics Among Nations (1948) helped to meet the
need for a general theoretical framework. Not only did it become one of the
most extensively used textbooks in the United States and Britain—it
continued to be republished over the next half century—it also was an
essential exposition of the realist theory of international relations. Numerous
other contributors to realist theory emerged in the decade or so after World
War II, including Arnold Wolfers, George F. Kennan, Robert Strausz-Hupé,
Kissinger, and the theologian Reinhold Niebuhr.
Although there are many variations of realism, all of them make use of the
core concepts of national interest and the struggle for power. According to
realism, states exist within an anarchic international system in which they are
ultimately dependent on their own capabilities, or power, to further their
national interests. The most important national interest is the survival of the
state, including its people, political system, and territorial integrity. Other
major interests for realists include preservation of the culture and the
economy. Realists contend that, as long as the world is divided into nation-
states in an anarchic setting, national interest will remain the essence of
international politics. The struggle for power is part of human nature and
takes essentially two forms: collaboration and competition. Collaboration
occurs when parties find that their interests coincide (e.g., when they form
alliances or coalitions designed to maximize their collective power, usually
against an adversary). Rivalry, competition, and conflict result from the clash
of national interests that is characteristic of the anarchic system.
Accommodation between states is possible through skillful political
leadership, which includes the prioritizing of national goals in order to limit
conflicts with other states.
 In an international system composed of sovereign states, the survival of
both the states and the system depends on the intelligent pursuit of national
interests and the accurate calculation of national power. Realists caution that
messianic religious and ideological crusades can obscure core national
interests and threaten the survival of individual states and the international
system itself. Such crusades included, for Morgenthau, the pursuit of global
communism or global democracy, each of which would inevitably clash with
the other or with other competing ideologies. The attempt to reform countries
toward the ideal of universal trust and cooperation, according to realists,
runs counter to human nature, which is inclined toward competition, conflict,
and war.
 American political sociologist Seymour Martin Lipset (1922–2006.)

THE BEHAVIORAL APPROACH AND

THE TASK OF INTEGRATION
The 1950s marked the emergence of behavioral theory, which emphasized
narrowly focused quantitative studies designed to obtain precise results.
Because of the great number of new topics investigated at the time, much of
the intellectual effort of the mid-1950s to mid-1960s—the so-called
“behavioral decade”—went into the task of comparing, interpreting, and
integrating various concepts from new areas of study. The scholarly goal of
the period was to link theories, or to connect so-called “islands of theory,”
into a greater, more comprehensive theory of international relations.
The general attitude of the behavioral decade was that the facts of
international relations are multidimensional and therefore have multiple
causes. This conclusion supported, and in turn was supported by, the related
view that an adequate account of these facts could not be provided in a single
integrated theory and that multiple separate theories were required instead.
By the 1960s, for example, studies of international conflict had come to
encompass a number of different perspectives, including the realist theory of
the struggle for power between states and the Marxist notion of global class
conflict, as well as other explanations. At the same time, conflict theory
coexisted with economic and political integration theory and game theory,
each of which approached the phenomena of international conflict from a
distinct perspective.
By the end of the behavioral decade there was a growing consensus that
the study of international relations should encompass both quantitative and
qualitative analyses. Whereas quantitative methodologies were recognized as
useful for measuring and comparing international phenomena and identifying
common features and patterns of behaviour, qualitative analyses, by focusing
on one case or a comparison of cases involving specific research questions,
hypotheses, or categories, were thought to provide a deeper understanding of
what is unique about political leaders, nations, and important international
events such as World War II and the Cold War.

THE LATER 20TH CENTURY

The influence of behaviourism helped to organize the various theories of
international relations and the discipline into essentially two principal parts,
or perspectives: the foreign-policy perspective and the international-system-
analysis perspective.
FOREIGN POLICY AND
INTERNATIONAL SYSTEMS
Within each of these perspectives there developed various theories. The
foreign-policy perspective, for example, encompasses theories about the
behaviour of individual states or categories of states such as democracies or
totalitarian dictatorships, and the international-system-analysis perspective
encompasses theories of the interactions between states and how the number
of states and their respective capabilities affect their relations with each
other. The foreign-policy perspective also includes studies of the traits,
structures, or processes within a national society or polity that determine or
influence how that society or polity participates in international relations.
One such study, known as the decision-making approach, analyzes the
information that decision makers use, their perceptions and motivations, the
influence on their behaviour of public opinion, the organizational settings in
which they operate, and their intellectual, cultural, and societal backgrounds.
Studies that analyze the relations between the wealth, power, or
technological level of a state and its international status and role provide
other illustrations of the foreign-policy perspective.
Comparative foreign-policy analysis first appeared during the mid-
1960s. By comparing the domestic sources of external conduct in different
countries, using standard criteria of data selection and analysis, this
approach seeks to develop generalized accounts of foreign-policy
performance, including theories that explore the relationship between the
type of domestic-external linkage a country displays and its political and
economic system and level of social development. Some research also has
explored the extent to which certain patterns of behaviour, such as violent
demonstrations or protests, may spread from one state to another.
Whereas foreign-policy analysis concentrates on the units of the
international system, international-system analysis is concerned with the
structure of the system, the interactions between its units, and the
implications for peace and war, or cooperation and conflict, of the existence
of different types of states. The term interactions suggests challenge and
response, give and take, move and countermove, or inputs and outputs.
Diplomatic histories feature narratives of action and response in
international situations and attempt to interpret the meanings of the
exchanges. Balance-of-power theory, which asserts that states act to protect
themselves by forming alliances against powerful states or coalitions of
states, is another example of the international-system perspective. Still other
examples include explanations and descriptions of bargaining in international
negotiations and studies of arms races and other escalating action-reaction
processes.

THE GENERAL-SYSTEM PERSPECTIVE

The so-called general-system perspective on international relations, which
attempts to develop a comprehensive understanding of the dynamics of the
relations between states, may be compared to the map of a little-explored
continent. Outlines, broad features, and a continental delineation are not in
question, but everything else remains in doubt, is subject to controversy, and
awaits exploration. The Russian-born mathematician and biologist Anatol
Rapoport once remarked that general-system theory is not really a theory but
instead “a program or a direction in the contemporary philosophy of
science.”
The concept of a system can be used to study patterns of interaction
within and between units of foreign-policy decision making; by exploring
such patterns, one can determine how foreign policies are formulated and
how states or other units interact with or are related to each other, as
opposed to how they interact with outside units. The members of a family, for
example, interact with each other in ways that clearly differ from the ways in
which they interact with other persons, such as colleagues in a place of
employment or fellow members of a church. Although systems are definable
in terms of units that exhibit certain patterns of interaction with each other,
there also may be interaction between a system and its subsystems. A
national political system, for example, may interact with subsystems such as
interest groups, the media, or public opinion.
Systems and subsystems exist in a hierarchical setting. A department is a
subsystem of a corporation, for example, just as a corporation is a subsystem
of an industry. In international relations states are considered subsystems, or
components, of the entire international system. In analyzing the international
system, researchers often posit distinct political, economic, cultural, and
social subsystems.

STRUCTURES, INSTITUTIONS, AND

LEVELS OF ANALYSIS
Since the 1970s the study of international relations has been marked by a
renewed debate about the relationship between structures and institutions in
international systems. On one side of the controversy was a revival of the
school of realism, known as neorealism. Neorealism represented an effort to
inject greater precision, or conceptual rigour, into realist theory.
On the other side of the structures-institutions debate have been the
neoliberal institutionalists, who contend that institutions matter beyond
simply reflecting or codifying the power structure of the international system.
Although neorealist structuralists and neoliberal institutionalists
generally agree that international cooperation is possible, neorealists are
much more skeptical of its chances for long-term success.

CONSTRUCTIVISM
In the late 20th century the study of international relations was increasingly
influenced by constructivism. Constructivists hold that all institutions,
including the state, are socially constructed, in the sense that they reflect an
“intersubjective consensus” of shared beliefs about political practice,
acceptable social behaviour, and values. In much the same way, the
individual members of the state or other unit continuously construct the
reality about which policy decisions, including decisions about war and
peace and conflict and cooperation, are made.
Part of the newer intellectual landscape in the study of international
relations is formed by postmodernism and critical theory. According to
postmodernism, the international structures posited in realist and other
international relations theory are social constructions that reflect a
worldview that serves the interests of elites. Critical theory was developed
from the 1920s by the Frankfurt School of social and political philosophers,
especially Jürgen Habermas and Herbert Marcuse (1898–1979). For critical
theory the essential issue is how to emancipate human beings from social
institutions and practices that oppress them. Although inspired by Marxism,
critical theorists recognize forms of domination other than class domination,
including those based on gender, race, religion, ethnicity, and nationalism.
Because each of these forms has been in abundant evidence in the global
landscape, critical theory was thought to provide important insights into the
study of international relations at the start of the 21st century.

INTERNATIONAL POLITICAL
ECONOMY
Nothing is more illustrative of the inherently interdisciplinary nature of
international relations inquiry than the nexus between economic and political
factors. Although politics and economics have been studied separately for
analytic purposes and as academic disciplines, and although each has its own
paradigms, theories, and methodologies, it has long been recognized that
economic factors shape political decisions, just as political factors may have
a decisive influence on economic choices. Writings on political economy
proliferated from the rise of the modern state in the mid-17th century until the
mid-19th century. Much of the literature emphasized mercantilism, the notion
that economic activity is, or should be, subservient to the interests of the
state. Influenced by the work of Adam Smith (1723–90), David Ricardo
(1772–1823), Richard Cobden (1804–65), and John Stuart Mill (1806–73),
political economists of this period developed a fundamentally different
approach, known as economic liberalism, that held that a system of free trade
supported by government policies of laissez-faire would lead to economic
growth and expanded trade and make an important contribution to
international peace. In the latter 19th century a third approach, based on the
writings of Karl Marx, argued that an increasingly poor proletariat and an
increasingly affluent bourgeoisie would eventually clash in a violent
revolution resulting in the overthrow of the latter, the destruction of
capitalism, and the emergence of communism.
Each of these sharply differing approaches has left its imprimatur on
contemporary theories of international political economy. The earlier
mercantilist approach influenced contemporary economic nationalism, which
is characterized by several important assumptions: (1) states cannot remain
powerful in an anarchic setting without a strong economy, (2) economic
strength must be preserved by protecting key industries and jobs, (3) such
protectionism may require tariffs and governmental subsidies, (4) low-priced
imports may threaten domestic jobs and industry, (5) the state can and should
remain sovereign in economic matters, and (6) membership in international
economic organizations such as the WTO and agreements such as the North
American Free Trade Agreement may have adverse consequences for
national strength.
Contemporary economic liberalism shares with classical liberalism the
contention that the only way a state can maximize economic growth is by
allowing markets to operate free from government intervention. They
maintain that tariffs—which have the effect of distorting the allocation of
resources, production, and trade—restrict economic growth and should be
abolished. Accordingly, they support the creation and expansion of regional
and international free-trade organizations. Citing Ricardo’s theory of
comparative advantage and earlier ideas of Smith, they also argue that
national specialization is essential to world prosperity because it entails that
countries will produce only those goods and services they are best equipped
to make, which thus maximizes overall efficiency and minimizes overall
costs. More generally, liberals maintain that the basic units of the global
economy are now so closely integrated that efforts on the part of states to
restrict trade with other countries are bound to fail. Debate between
economic nationalists and liberals centres on the extent to which the state,
even if it can do so, should halt or reverse the forces leading to economic
globalization.
The third basic contemporary approach to international political
economy is rooted in Marxism, though the collapse of nearly all states with
Marxist economies greatly undermined Marxist-inspired theories of
international relations. Focusing on the relationship between wealthy states
and impoverished ones, this approach, known as dependency theory, rejects
the assumption that capitalism is the best means of economic development for
impoverished states and instead argues that participation in international
capitalism by poorer countries traps them in relationships of dependency and
subordination to wealthier states.
 CHAPTER FOUR

DOMESTIC POLITICS: PUBLIC

OPINION

P ublic opinion is an aggregate of the individual views, attitudes, and

beliefs about a particular topic, expressed by a significant proportion of
a community. Some scholars treat the aggregate as a synthesis of the views of
all or a certain segment of society; others regard it as a collection of many
differing or opposing views. Writing in 1918, the American sociologist
Charles Horton Cooley emphasized public opinion as a process of
interaction and mutual influence rather than a state of broad agreement. The
American political scientist V.O. Key, Jr., defined public opinion in 1961 as
“opinions held by private persons which governments find it prudent to
heed.” Subsequent advances in statistical and demographic analysis led by
the 1990s to an understanding of public opinion as the collective view of a
defined population, such as a particular demographic or ethnic group. The
influence of public opinion is not restricted to politics and elections. It is a
powerful force in many other spheres, such as culture, fashion, literature and
the arts, consumer spending, and marketing and public relations.

THEORETICAL AND PRACTICAL

CONCEPTIONS
In his eponymous treatise on public opinion published in 1922, the American
editorialist Walter Lippmann qualified his observation that democracies tend
to make a mystery out of public opinion with the declaration that “there have
been skilled organizers of opinion who understood the mystery well enough
to create majorities on election day.” Although the reality of public opinion
is now almost universally accepted, there is much variation in the way it is
defined, reflecting in large measure the different perspectives from which
scholars have approached the subject. Contrasting understandings of public
opinion have taken shape over the centuries, especially as new methods of
measuring public opinion have been applied to politics, commerce, religion,
and social activism.

U.S. voters in 2012 brave the rain to participate in the presidential election.

Political scientists and some historians have tended to emphasize the role
of public opinion in government and politics, paying particular attention to its
influence on the development of government policy. Indeed, some political
scientists have regarded public opinion as equivalent to the national will. In
such a limited sense, however, there can be only one public opinion on an
issue at any given time.
 Sociologists usually conceive of public opinion as a product of social
interaction and communication. According to this view, there can be no
public opinion on an issue unless members of the public communicate with
each other. Even if their individual opinions are quite similar to begin with,
their beliefs will not constitute a public opinion until they are conveyed to
others in some form, whether through print media, radio, television, the
Internet, or telephone or face-to-face conversation. Sociologists also point to
the possibility of there being many different public opinions on a given issue
at the same time. Although one body of opinion may dominate or reflect
government policy, for example, this does not preclude the existence of other
organized bodies of opinion on political topics. The sociological approach
also recognizes the importance of public opinion in areas that have little or
nothing to do with government.
Nearly all scholars of public opinion, regardless of the way they may
define it, agree that, in order for a phenomenon to count as public opinion, at
least four conditions must be satisfied: (1) there must be an issue, (2) there
must be a significant number of individuals who express opinions on the
issue, (3) there must be some kind of a consensus among at least some of
these opinions, and (4) this consensus must directly or indirectly exert
influence.
Those who aim to influence public opinion are more concerned with the
practical problem of shaping the opinions of specified “publics,” such as
employees, stockholders, neighbourhood associations, or any other group
whose actions may affect the fortunes of a client or stakeholder. Politicians
and publicists, for example, seek ways to influence voting and purchasing
decisions, respectively—hence their wish to determine any attitudes and
opinions that may affect the desired behaviour.
It is often the case that opinions expressed in public differ from those
expressed in private. Some views—even though widely shared—may not be
expressed at all. Thus, in a totalitarian state, a great many people may be
opposed to the government but may fear to express their attitudes even to
their families and friends. In such cases, an antigovernment public opinion
necessarily fails to develop.
THE FORMATION AND CHANGE OF
PUBLIC OPINION
No matter how collective views coalesce into public opinion, the result can
be self-perpetuating. The French political scientist Alexis de Tocqueville,
for example, observed that once an opinion "has taken root among a
democratic people and established itself in the minds of the bulk of the
community, it afterwards persists by itself and is maintained without effort,
because no one attacks it." In 1993 the German opinion researcher Elizabeth
Noelle-Neumann characterized this phenomenon as a “spiral of silence,”
noting that people who perceive that they hold a minority view will be less
inclined to express it in public.

COMPONENTS OF PUBLIC OPINION:

ATTITUDES AND VALUES
The concepts of opinion, attitude, and value used in public opinion research
were given an influential metaphorical characterization by the American-
born political analyst Robert Worcester. Values, he suggested, are “the deep
tides of public mood, slow to change, but powerful.” Opinions, in contrast,
are “the ripples on the surface of the public’s consciousness—shallow and
easily changed.” Finally, attitudes are “the currents below the surface, deeper
and stronger,” representing a midrange between values and opinions.
According to Worcester, the art of understanding public opinion rests not
only on the measurement of people’s views but also on understanding the
motivations behind those views.
No matter how strongly they are held, attitudes are subject to change if
the individual holding them learns of new facts or perspectives that challenge
his or her earlier thinking. Some opinion researchers have contended that the
standard technical concept of attitude is not useful for understanding public
opinion, because it is insufficiently complex. Irving Crespi, for example,
preferred to speak of “attitudinal systems,” which he characterized as the
combined development of four sets of phenomena: (1) values and interests,
(2) knowledge and beliefs, (3) feelings, and (4) behavioral intentions (i.e.,
conscious inclinations to act in certain ways).
Perhaps the most important concept in public opinion research is that of
values. Values are of considerable importance in determining whether people
will form opinions on a particular topic; in general, they are more likely to
do so when they perceive that their values require it. Values are adopted
early in life, are not likely to change, and strengthen as people grow older.
Values are relatively resistant to ordinary attempts at persuasion and to
influence by the media, and they rarely shift as a result of positions or
arguments expressed in a single debate. Yet they can be shaped—and in some
cases completely changed—by prolonged exposure to conflicting values, by
concerted thought and discussion, by the feeling that one is “out of step” with
others whom one knows and respects, and by the development of
significantly new evidence or circumstances.

FACTORS INFLUENCING PUBLIC

OPINION
Public opinion is influenced by a variety of factors, including social
environment, mass media, interest groups, and individual opinion leaders.

ENVIRONMENTAL FACTORS
Environmental factors play a critical part in the development of opinions and
attitudes. Most pervasive is the influence of the social environment. People
usually adjust their attitudes to conform to those that are most prevalent in the
social groups to which they belong. Researchers have found, for example,
that if a person in the United States who considers himself a liberal becomes
surrounded in his home or at his place of work by people who profess
conservatism, he is more likely to start voting for conservative candidates
than is a liberal whose family and friends share his political views.
Similarly, it was found during World War II that men in the U.S. military who
transferred from one unit to another often adjusted their opinions to conform
more closely to those of the unit to which they were transferred.
MASS MEDIA
The influence of mass media—including radio, television, and Internet-based
social media, e-mail, and blogs—is significant, especially in affirming
attitudes and opinions that are already established. The news media in
particular focus the public’s attention on certain personalities and issues,
leading many people to form opinions about them. Government officials
accordingly have noted that communications to them from the public tend to
“follow the headlines.”
The mass media can also reinforce latent attitudes and “activate” them,
prompting people to take action, sometimes immediately. Just before an
election, for example, voters who earlier had only a mild preference for one
party or candidate may be inspired by media coverage not only to take the
trouble to vote but perhaps also to contribute money or to help a party
organization in some other way.
In some European countries the growth of broadcasting, especially
television, affected the operation of the parliamentary system. Before
television, national elections were seen largely as contests between a number
of candidates or parties for parliamentary seats. As the electronic media
grew more sophisticated technologically, elections increasingly assumed the
appearance of a personal struggle between the leaders of the principal
parties concerned. In the United States, presidential candidates have come to
personify their parties.
 Occupy Wall Street protesters (pictured in 2011) brought media attention to income inequality in
the United States.

In areas where the mass media are thinly spread, as in developing

countries or in countries where the media are strictly controlled, word of
mouth can sometimes perform the same functions as the press and
broadcasting, though on a more limited scale. However social media have
helped to magnify word of mouth particularly among younger citizens, with
sometimes overwhelming results. For example, the pro-democracy protests
that took place in several countries of the Middle East and North Africa in
2010-12 (the “Arab Spring”) were frequently publicized and even
coordinated through social media.

INTEREST GROUPS
Interest groups, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), religious groups,
and labour unions (trade unions) cultivate the formation and spread of public
opinion on issues of concern to their constituencies. These groups may be
concerned with political, economic, or ideological issues, and most work
through the mass media as well as by word of mouth. Some of the larger or
more affluent interest groups around the world make use of advertising and
public relations. One increasingly popular tactic is the informal poll or straw
vote. In this approach, groups ask their members and supporters to “vote”—
usually by phone or via the Internet—in unsystematic “polls” of public
opinion that are not carried out with proper sampling procedures. Multiple
votes by supporters are often encouraged, and once the group releases its
findings to credible media outlets, it claims legitimacy by citing the
publication of its poll in a recognized newspaper or online news source.

OPINION LEADERS
Opinion leaders play a major role in defining popular issues and in
influencing individual opinions regarding them. Political leaders in
particular can turn a relatively unknown problem into a national issue if they
decide to call attention to it in the media. One of the ways in which opinion
leaders rally opinion and smooth out differences among those who are in
basic agreement on a subject is by inventing symbols or coining slogans: in
the words of U.S. Pres. Woodrow Wilson, the Allies in World War I were
fighting “a war to end all wars,” while aiming “to make the world safe for
democracy”; post-World War II relations with the Soviet Union were
summed up in the term “Cold War,” first used by U.S. presidential adviser
Bernard Baruch in 1947. Once enunciated, symbols and slogans are
frequently kept alive and communicated to large audiences by the mass media
and may become the cornerstone of public opinion on any given issue.
Opinion leadership is not confined to prominent figures in public life. An
opinion leader can be any person to whom others look for guidance on a
certain subject. Thus, within a given social group one person may be
regarded as especially well-informed about local politics, another as
knowledgeable about foreign affairs, and another as expert in real estate.
These local opinion leaders are generally unknown outside their own circle
of friends and acquaintances, but their cumulative influence in the formation
of public opinion is substantial.

COMPLEX INFLUENCES
Because psychological makeup, personal circumstances, and external
influences all play a role in the formation of each person’s opinions, it is
difficult to predict how public opinion on an issue will take shape. The same
is true with regard to changes in public opinion. Some public opinions can be
explained by specific events and circumstances, but in other cases the causes
are more elusive. (Some opinions, however, are predictable: the public’s
opinions about other countries, for example, seem to depend largely on the
state of relations between the governments involved. Hostile public attitudes
do not cause poor relations—they are the result of them.)
People presumably change their own attitudes when they no longer seem
to correspond with prevailing circumstances and, hence, fail to serve as
guides to action. Similarly, a specific event, such as a natural disaster or a
human tragedy, can heighten awareness of underlying problems or concerns
and trigger changes in public opinion. Public opinion about the environment,
for instance, has been influenced by single events such as the publication of
Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring in 1962; by the nuclear accident at Chernobyl,
Ukraine, in 1986; by British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher’s 1988
address to the Royal Society on a number of environmental topics, including
global warming; by the accidental spill from the oil tanker Exxon Valdez in
1989; by the Academy Award-winning documentary on climate change, An
Inconvenient Truth, in 2006; and by the Arab Spring in 2010. It is
nonetheless the case that whether a body of public opinion on a given issue is
formed and sustained depends to a significant extent on the attention it
receives in the mass media.

AL GORE AND PUBLIC OPINION

 Former Vice President Al Gore’s presidential bid came to an
unsuccessful end in 2000. Many attributed his loss to the personality
war he had with George W. Bush, a candidate portrayed as fun, folksy,
and charming. At the time, Gore was painted by conservatives as a
wooden exaggerator who could not apply charm when needed. Though
public opinion, hinging largely on personalities, cost Gore the
presidential election, afterward he managed to change public opinion
as he focused on his environmental work. Gore’s public persona made
a drastic change as he became a "rock star" of environmentalism, as
well as an Oscar and Nobel Prize winner. Some in the media even
affectionately dubbed him “the Goreacle.”
Although the opinions of his political past still followed him,in
2015, the conservative Tea Party supported Gore’s fight for solar
power and other green energy sources. Tea Party organizer Debbie
Dooley summed up her argument, “I want consumer choice, and clean
air and clean water and solar is the best way to create a competitive
choice.” Public opinion on Gore’s work evolved as his work came to
be seen as environmentally important.

PUBLIC OPINION AND

GOVERNMENT
By its very nature, the democratic process spurs citizens to form opinions on
a number of issues. Voters are called upon to choose candidates in elections,
to consider constitutional amendments, and to approve or reject municipal
taxes and other legislative proposals. Almost any matter on which the
executive or legislature has to decide may become a public issue if a
significant number of people wish to make it one. The political attitudes of
these persons are often stimulated or reinforced by outside agencies—a
crusading newspaper, an interest group, or a government agency or official.
The English philosopher and economist Jeremy Bentham (1748–1832)
saw the greatest difficulty of the legislator as being “in conciliating the
public opinion, in correcting it when erroneous, and in giving it that bent
which shall be most favourable to produce obedience to his mandates.” At
the same time, Bentham and some other thinkers believed that public opinion
is a useful check on the authority of rulers. Bentham demanded that all
official acts be publicized, so that an enlightened public opinion could pass
judgment on them, as would a tribunal: “To the pernicious exercise of the
power of government it is the only check.”
In the early years of modern democracy, some scholars acknowledged the
power of public opinion but warned that it could be a dangerous force.
Tocqueville was concerned that a government of the masses would become a
“tyranny of the majority.” But, whether public opinion is regarded as a
constructive or a baneful force in a democracy, there are few politicians who
are prepared to suggest in public that government should ignore it.
Political scientists have been less concerned with what part public
opinion should play in a democratic polity and have given more attention to
establishing what part it does play in actuality. From the examination of
numerous histories of policy formation, it is clear that no sweeping
generalization can be made that will hold in all cases. The role of public
opinion varies from issue to issue, just as public opinion asserts itself
differently from one democracy to another. Perhaps the safest generalization
that can be made is that public opinion does not influence the details of most
government policies but it does set limits within which policy makers must
operate. That is, public officials will usually seek to satisfy a widespread
demand—or at least take it into account in their deliberations—and they will
usually try to avoid decisions that they believe will be widely unpopular.
Yet efforts by political leaders to accommodate government policies to
public opinion are not always perceived as legitimate; indeed, journalists
and political commentators have often characterized them as pandering to
public opinion to curry favour with their constituents or as being driven by
the latest poll results. Such charges were questioned, however, by public
opinion scholars Lawrence R. Jacobs and Robert Y. Shapiro, who argued in
Politicians Don’t Pander: Political Manipulation and the Loss of
Democratic Responsiveness (2000) that politicians do not actually do this.
They found instead that by the early 1970s the accusation of pandering was
being used deliberately by prominent journalists, politicians, and other elites
as a means of lessening the influence of public opinion on government policy.
This practice, they theorized, might have resulted from long-standing
suspicion or hostility among elites toward popular participation in
government and politics. In keeping with their findings, Jacobs and Shapiro
postulated the eventual disappearance from public discourse of the
stigmatizing term pandering and its replacement by the more neutral term
political responsiveness.

POLITICAL POLLS
Polls conducted on the eve of voting day have been successful in
forecasting election results in nearly every case in which they have
been used for this purpose. Some notable failures occurred in the
United States in 1948 (when nearly all polls forecast a Republican
victory and the Democrats won by a narrow margin) and in Great
Britain in 1970 (when all but one of the major polls incorrectly
predicted a Labour Party victory) and again in 1992 (when all polls
incorrectly predicted a hung parliament). Professional opinion
researchers point out that predicting elections is always uncertain,
because of the possibility of last-minute shifts of opinion and
unexpected turnouts on voting day; nevertheless, their record has been
good over the years in nearly every country.
Although popular attention has been focused on polls taken before
major elections, most polling is devoted to other subjects, and
university-based opinion researchers usually do not make election
forecasts at all. Support for opinion studies comes largely from public
agencies, foundations, and commercial firms, which are interested in
questions such as how well people’s health, educational, and other
needs are being satisfied, how problems such as racial prejudice and
drug addiction should be addressed, and how well a given industry is
meeting public demands.
 Harry Truman holds the Chicago Daily Tribune, which erroneously reported he was beaten for
the presidency.

Although they rejected the charge of pandering, Jacobs and Shapiro also
asserted that most politicians tend to respond to public opinion in cynical
ways; most of them, for example, use public opinion research not to establish
their policies but only to identify slogans and symbols that will make
predetermined policies more appealing to their constituents. According to
Jacobs and Shapiro, most public opinion research is used to manipulate the
public rather than to act on its wishes.
Public opinion exerts a more powerful influence in politics through its
“latent” aspects. As discussed by V.O. Key, Jr., latent public opinion is, in
effect, a probable future reaction by the public to a current decision or action
by a public official or a government. Politicians who ignore the possible
consequences of latent public opinion risk setback or defeat in future
elections. Government leaders who take latent public opinion into account,
on the other hand, may be willing to undertake an unpopular action that has a
negative effect on public opinion in the near term, provided that the action is
also likely to have a significant positive effect at a later and more important
time.
Public opinion seems to be much more effective in influencing policy
making at the local level than at the state or national levels. One reason for
this is that issues of concern to local governments—such as the condition of
roads, schools, and hospitals—are less complex than those dealt with by
governments at higher levels; another is that at the local level there are fewer
institutional or bureaucratic barriers between policy makers and voters.
Representative government itself, however, tends to limit the power of public
opinion to influence specific government decisions, since ordinarily the only
choice the public is given is that of approving or disapproving the election of
a given official.

PUBLIC OPINION POLLING

Public opinion polling can provide a fairly exact analysis of the distribution
of opinions on almost any issue within a given population. Assuming that the
proper questions are asked, polling can reveal something about the intensity
with which opinions are held, the reasons for these opinions, and the
probability that the issues have been discussed with others. Polling can
occasionally reveal whether the people holding an opinion can be thought of
as constituting a cohesive group. However, survey findings do not provide
much information about the opinion leaders who may have played an
important part in developing the opinion (although this information may be
obtained through subgroup analysis, provided that the original sample is
large enough to ensure that reports of opinion leaders are statistically
reliable to a reasonable degree).
Polls are good tools for measuring “what” or “how much.” Finding out
“how” or “why,” however, is the principal function of qualitative research—
including especially the use of focus groups—which involves observing
interactions between a limited number of people rather than posing a series
of questions to an individual in an in-depth interview. However, polls cannot
identify the likely future actions of the public in general, nor can they predict
the future behaviour of individuals. They are also inappropriate as tools for
exploring concepts unfamiliar to respondents. One of the best predictors of
how people will vote is, simply, the vote that they cast in the last election.
This is especially true if they automatically vote for the same political party.
 CHAPTER FIVE

DOMESTIC POLITICS:
ELECTIONS

E lections make a fundamental contribution to democratic governance.

Because direct democracy—a form of government in which political
decisions are made directly by the entire body of qualified citizens—is
impractical in most modern societies, democratic government must be
conducted through representatives. Elections enable voters to select leaders
and to hold them accountable for their performance in office. Elections also
reinforce the stability and legitimacy of the political community. They link
citizens to each other and thereby confirm the viability of the polity. As a
result, elections help to facilitate social and political integration. Elections
also serve a self-actualizing purpose by confirming the worth and dignity of
individual citizens as human beings.

TYPES OF ELECTIONS
In elections of officeholders, the electorates have only a limited power to
determine government policies. Most elections do not directly establish
public policy but instead confer on a small group of officials the authority to
make policy (through laws and other devices) on behalf of the electorate as a
whole.
Recall elections are an attempt to minimize the influence of political
parties on representatives. Widely adopted in the United States, the recall is
designed to ensure that an elected official will act in the interests of his
constituency rather than in the interests of his political party or according to
his own conscience. The actual instrument of recall is usually a letter of
resignation signed by the elected representative before assuming office.
During the term of office, the letter can be evoked by a quorum of
constituents if the representative’s performance fails to meet their
expectations.
In Fort Lauderdale, Fla., a ballot is scrutinized during a recount of the U.S. presidential election,
November 2000.
 The referendum and initiative are elections in which the preferences of
the community are assessed on a particular issue; whereas the former are
instigated by those in government, the latter are initiated by groups of
electors. Referenda often are used for bond issues to raise and spend public
money, though occasionally they are used to decide certain social or moral
issues—such as restrictions on abortion or divorce—on which the elected
bodies are deemed to possess no special competence.
Plebiscites are elections held to decide two paramount types of political
issues: government legitimacy and the nationality of territories contested
between governments. In the former case, the incumbent government, seeking
a popular mandate as a basis for legitimacy, employs a plebiscite to establish
its right to speak for the nation. In the latter case, plebiscites have decided
the nationality of territories such as after World War I when the League of
Nations proposed 11 plebiscites. This use of plebiscites, however, is
relatively rare, because it requires the prior agreement of the governments
involved.

SYSTEMS OF VOTE COUNTING

Individual votes are translated into collective decisions by a wide variety of
rules of counting that voters and leaders have accepted as legitimate prior to
the election. These rules may in principle call for plurality voting, which
requires only that the winner have the greatest number of votes; absolute
majority voting, which requires that the winner receive more than half the
total number of votes; extraordinary majority voting, which requires some
higher proportion for the winner (e.g., a two-thirds majority); proportional
voting, which requires that a political party receive some threshold to
receive representation; or unanimity.

LEGISLATIVE ELECTIONS
A wide variety of electoral systems exist for apportioning legislative seats.
In practice, legislative electoral systems can be classified into three broad
categories: plurality and majority systems, collectively known as
majoritarian systems (in which the party or candidate winning a plurality or
majority of votes in a constituency is awarded the contested seat);
proportional systems (in which the distribution of seats is broadly
proportional to the distribution of the vote among competing political
parties); and hybrid, or semiproportional, systems. The electoral system is an
important variable in explaining public policy decisions, because it
determines the number of political parties able to receive representation and
thereby participate in government.

EXECUTIVE ELECTIONS
In the parliamentary system, the head of government or head of State is
selected by the legislature. For example, in Germany the president is selected
by both the upper and the lower chamber of the legislature. By contrast, in
Ireland the president is elected by a plurality vote of the public.
In presidential systems and mixed (semipresidential) systems, the head of
state is elected independently of the legislature. Several methods of electing
presidents have been adopted. In the simplest method, the plurality system,
which is used in Mexico and the Philippines, the candidate with the most
votes wins election. In France the president is required to win a majority.
Both the plurality and the majority-decision rules are employed in the
election of U.S. presidents, who are elected only indirectly by the public.
The composition of the electoral college, which actually selects the
president, is determined by a plurality vote taken within each state. Although
voters choose between the various presidential candidates, they are in effect
choosing the electors who will elect the president by means of a majority
vote in the electoral college. With the exception of Maine and Nebraska, all
of a state’s electoral votes (which are equal in number to its seats in
Congress) are awarded to the presidential candidate who gains a plurality of
the vote in the state election. It is thus possible for a president to be elected
with a minority of the popular vote.

CONSTITUENCIES: DISTRICTING
AND APPORTIONMENT
The drawing up of constituencies—the subdivisions of the total electorate
that send representatives to the local or central assembly—is inextricably
linked with questions about the nature of representation and methods of
voting. The problem of electoral representation hinges on the question of
what is to be represented. As geographic areas, constituencies often contain
within their boundaries diverse, and sometimes incompatible, social,
economic, religious, or ethnic interests, all of which seek to be represented.

A map of gerrymandered electoral districts in Texas, August 3, 2003.

The solution to this problem has been largely historically determined.

Where the interests of electors have not been totally incompatible, and where
ethnic, religious, social, and economic differences have been relatively free
of passionate conflict, geographic areas (electoral districts) have usually
been considered the constituency, and the method of counting has been some
system of majority or plurality voting. In contrast, where the electorate is
composed of several minorities, none of which can hope to obtain a majority,
or perhaps not even a plurality sufficiently large to obtain representation, the
geographic district can be regarded only as an administrative unit for
counting votes.
The drawing up, or delimitation, of electoral districts is linked with
differing conceptions of representation, and conceptions of representation in
turn are linked with alternative methods of vote counting. Problems of
apportionment, in contrast to problems of districting, stem from efforts to
reconcile the territorial and population bases of representation. During the
19th and much of the 20th century, failure to reapportion the number of seats
in representative bodies to take account of population changes resulting from
increasing urbanization generally benefitted rural electoral districts. More
recently, the migration of people from cities to the suburbs has led to
possible underrepresentation of suburban populations as against urban ones.
Apportionment is often a complex problem. In particular, it is often
unclear how best to define the population among which a specified number of
legislative seats are to be apportioned. Constitutional or electoral
malapportionment must not be confused with gerrymandering—a form of
arbitrary districting used to benefit the party that at a given time controls the
apportionment process. Gerrymandering takes its name from the governor of
Massachusetts Elbridge Gerry (1744–1814), who recognized the possibility
of influencing electoral outcomes by manipulating the boundaries of electoral
districts (critics charged that one of the districts he designed resembled a
salamander). Gerrymandering involves concentrating large percentages of the
opposite party’s votes into a few districts and drawing the boundaries of the
other districts in such a way that the gerrymandering party wins them all,
even though the majority, or, in multiparty elections, the plurality, is
relatively small.

VOTING PRACTICES
There is a direct relationship between the size of an electorate and the
formalization and standardization of its voting practices. In very small voting
groups, in which political encounters are face-to-face and the members are
bound together by ties of friendship or common experience, political
discussion is mostly informal and may not even require formal voting,
because the “sense of the meeting” emerges from the group’s deliberations.
An issue is discussed until a solution emerges to which all participants can
agree or, at least, from which any one participant will not dissent.
By contrast, in modern mass electorates, in which millions of individual
votes are aggregated into a collective choice, formalization and
standardization of voting practices and vote counting are required to ensure
that the outcome is valid, reliable, and legitimate. Validity means that the
collective choice in fact expresses the will of the electorate; reliability refers
to each vote’s being accurately recorded and effectively counted; and
legitimacy means that the criteria of validity and reliability have been met, so
that the result of the voting is acceptable and provides authoritative
guidelines in subsequent political conduct. In some countries that hold
elections, observers have reported irregularities in the counting of votes and
have questioned the legitimacy of the results. For example, one study of the
U.S. presidential election of 2000 between Al Gore and G.W. Bush found
that millions of votes were uncounted as a result of outdated election
equipment, registration errors, and other problems, which led some critics to
argue that the outcome was illegitimate.
Routinized and standardized electoral practices in mass electorates were
developed beginning in the mid-19th century. Their development was as
much a corollary of the growth of rapid communication through telephone
and telegraph as of the growth of the electorate and rational insistence on
making electoral processes fair and equitable. Nevertheless, electoral
practices around the world differ a great deal, depending not just on formal
institutional arrangements but even more on a country’s political culture.
 People line up to vote in the U.S. presidential election in 2012.

SECRET VOTING
Once suffrage rights had been extended to masses of voters who, in theory,
were assumed to be equal, open voting was no longer tolerable, precisely
because it could and often did involve undue influence, ranging from hidden
persuasion and bribery to intimidation, coercion, and punishment. Equality, at
least in voting, was not something given but something that had to be
engineered; the secrecy of the vote was a first and necessary administrative
step toward the one person, one vote principle. Equality in voting was
possible only if each vote was formally independent of every other vote, and
this suggested the need for strict secrecy.
Secret voting dramatically reduces the possibility of undue influence on
the voter. Without it, influence can range from the outright purchase of votes
to social chastisement or economic sanctions. Although laws exist in most
countries to prohibit and punish the purchase or sale of votes, the
introduction of secret voting has not wholly eliminated bribery.

BALLOTING
The ballot makes secret voting possible. Its initial use seems to have been as
a means to reduce irregularities and deception in elections. However, this
objective could be achieved only if the ballot was not supplied by the voter
himself, as was the case in much early voting by secret ballot, or by political
parties, as is still the case in some countries. Ballot procedures differ
widely, ranging from marking the names of preferred candidates to crossing
out those not preferred or writing in the names of persons who are not formal
candidates. Some ballots require the selection of one or more candidates or
parties or both, and others require the preferential ordering of a number of
candidates.
The introduction of voting machines and computer technology has not
substantially changed the balloting process, though it generally has made it
faster and more economical. Voting machines are not without problems, in
that they may marginally depress the level of voting owing to improper use, a
problem that can be overcome through improved machines and voter
education.

COMPULSORY VOTING
In some countries, notably Australia and Belgium, electoral participation is
legally required, and nonvoters can face fines. The concept of compulsory
voting reflects a strain in democratic theory in which voting is considered not
merely a right but a duty. Its purpose is to ensure the electoral equality of all
social groups. However, whether created through laws or through social
pressure, it is doubtful that high voter turnout is a good indication of an
electorate’s capability for intelligent social choice. On the other hand, high
rates of abstention or differential rates of abstention by different social
classes are not necessarily signs of satisfaction with governmental processes
and policies and in fact may indicate the contrary.
ELECTORAL ABUSES
Corrupt electoral practices are not limited to bribery or voter intimidation.
They include disseminating scurrilous rumours and false campaign
propaganda, tampering with election machinery by stuffing ballot boxes with
fraudulent returns, counting or reporting the vote dishonestly, and
disregarding electoral outcomes by incumbent officeholders (e.g., by
mobilizing the military to thwart an election loss). The existence of these
practices depends more on a population’s adherence to political civility and
the democratic ethos than on legal prohibitions and sanctions. The integrity of
the electoral process can be maintained by a variety of devices and
practices, including a permanent and up-to-date register of voters and
procedures designed to make the registration process as simple as possible.

PARTICIPATION IN ELECTIONS
Electoral participation rates depend on many factors, including the type of
electoral system, the social groupings to which voters belong, the voters’
personalities and beliefs, their places of residence, and a host of other
idiosyncratic factors.
The level and type of election have a great impact on the rate of electoral
participation. Electoral turnout is greater in national than in state or
provincial elections, and greater in the latter than in local elections. If local
elections are held concurrently with provincial or national elections,
generally a higher voter turnout is achieved than for nonconcurrent elections.
Whether an election is partisan or nonpartisan also affects turnout, as fewer
people participate in nonpartisan elections.

VOTER ID LAWS
A voter identification law is any U.S. state law by which would-be
voters are required or requested to present proof of their identities
 before casting a ballot. Proponents of voter ID laws argue that they
are necessary to prevent in-person voter fraud and that they would
increase public confidence in the integrity of the electoral system.
Opponents point out that in-person voter fraud is virtually nonexistent
and argue that the real purpose of such laws is to suppress voting
among Democratic-leaning groups such as African Americans, the
poor, and the young, a greater proportion of whom do not possess the
relevant forms of identification.

Technicalities in the electoral law may disenfranchise many potential

voters. For example, people who change their legal residence may
temporarily lose their vote because of residence requirements for voters in
their new electoral district. Complicated voter-registration procedures,
combined with a high level of geographic mobility, significantly reduce the
size of the active electorate in the United States. In the early 21st century
many U.S. states also implemented voter ID laws, which required would-be
voters to present some form of identification at polling places as a condition
of voting; these measures too had the effect of reducing the number of eligible
or active voters. In contrast, in many other countries the size of the electorate
is maximized by government-initiated registration immediately prior to an
election. Voter registration in the United States is largely left to the initiative
of individuals and political parties. In the early 19th century, slaves were
denied the right to vote, as were newly naturalized nonwhite citizens. Even
freed slaves were denied this right, though mainly in slave-owning southern
states. Even after African Americans were granted suffrage, southern laws
subjected them to arbitrary examinations, their votes thrown out, and voters
were sometimes beaten or murdered. Voter registration requirements continue
to be hotly debated, as some say they negatively affect minorities and the
poor.
Relatively low levels of electoral participation are associated with low
levels of education, occupational status, and income. Those groups in society
that have been most recently enfranchised also tend to vote at lower rates.
For a significant period of time in the 20th century, women voted less
frequently than men, though the difference had been erased by the end of the
century in most countries. The rates of participation of racial minorities are
generally lower than those of majority groups, and members of the working
class vote less frequently than members of the middle class. In many
countries, participation by young people is significantly lower than that of
older people.
Voter participation varies from country to country. For example,
approximately half of the voting-age population participates in presidential
elections in the United States. In contrast, many European countries have
participation rates exceeding 80 percent. Even within Europe, however,
participation varies significantly. For example, post-World War II Italy has
averaged around 90 percent, whereas less than 40 percent of the electorate
participates in elections in Switzerland. Research has suggested a long-term
decline in turnout at national elections in western democracies since the
1970s; it seems most likely that this is a consequence of partisan dealignment
(i.e., a weakening of partisan identification), the erosion of social cleavages
based on class and religion, and increasing voter discontent.

INFLUENCES ON VOTING
BEHAVIOUR
The electoral choices of voters are influenced by a range of factors,
especially social-group identity, which helps to forge enduring partisan
identification. In addition, voters are to a greater or lesser extent susceptible
to the influence of more short-term and contingent factors such as campaign
events, issues, and candidate appeals. In particular, the perceived governing
competence of candidates and political parties often weighs heavily on
voters’ choices.
Research suggests that, through partisan dealignment, the proportion of
voters in Western democracies who retain their long-term partisan identities
has been reduced. In conjunction with the declining impact of social-group
influences, voter choice is now more heavily affected by short-term factors
relevant to specific election campaigns. This shift from long-term
predisposition to short-term evaluation has been facilitated in part by the
phenomenon of “cognitive mobilization,” a supposed enhancement of the
political independence and intelligence of voters who are both better
educated and better informed than earlier generations. Nevertheless, many
independents and nonvoters are poorly informed politically and relatively
uninterested and uninvolved in politics. Whether cognitively mobilized or
not, however, independent voters are often a decisive factor in elections. If
elections are to be competitive, and if control of the government is to
alternate between parties or coalitions of parties, then some voters must
switch party support from election to election. New voters and independent
voters, therefore, provide a vital source of change in democratic politics.
 CHAPTER SIX

DOMESTIC POLITICS:
GOVERNMENT

G overnment is the political system by which a country or community is

administered and regulated. Most of the key words commonly used to
describe governments—words such as monarchy, oligarchy, and democracy
—are of Greek or Roman origin. They have been current for more than 2,000
years and have not yet exhausted their usefulness. This suggests that
humankind has not altered very much since they were coined; however, such
verbal and psychological uniformity must not be allowed to hide the
enormous changes in society and politics that have occurred. Understanding
any of these political terms, however, requires an investigation of the
circumstances that have predisposed societies to adopt or reject the system
of government in question.

AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY
So long as humans were few, there was hardly any government. The division
of function between ruler and ruled occurred only, if at all, within the family.
The largest social groups, whether tribes or villages, were little more than
loose associations of families, in which every elder or family head had an
equal voice. Chieftains, if any, had strictly limited powers; some tribes did
without chieftains altogether.
The rise of agriculture began to change that state of affairs. In the land of
Sumer (in what is now Iraq) the invention of irrigation necessitated grander
arrangements. Control of the flow of water down the Tigris and Euphrates
rivers had to be coordinated by a central authority, so that fields could be
watered downstream as well as farther up. The heads of the first cities,
which were little more than enlarged villages, only gradually assumed the
special attributes of monarchy—the rule of one—and the village council only
gradually undertook a division of labour, so that some specialized as priests
and others as warriors, farmers, or tax gatherers. As organization grew more
complex, so did religion: an elaborate system of worship seemed necessary
to propitiate the gods who, it was hoped, would protect the city from attack,
from natural disaster, and from any questioning of the political arrangements
deemed necessary by the ruler group. Inevitably, the young cities of Sumer
quarrelled over the distribution of the rivers’ water, and their wealth excited
the greed of nomads outside the still comparatively small area of civilization.
War announced its arrival, and military leadership became at least as
important an element of kingship as divine sanction. The wars of Sumer also
laid bare another imperative of monarchy—the drive for empire, arising from
the need to defend and the need to find new means to pay for troops and
weapons.

THE SPREAD OF CIVILIZATION

The history of Old World monarchy, and indeed of civilization, was to
consist largely of variations on the patterns mentioned above for four or five
millennia. The effort to secure a measure of peace and prosperity required
the assertion of authority over vast distances, the raising of large armies, and
the gathering of taxes to pay for them. Those requirements in turn fostered
literacy and numeracy and the emergence of what later came to be called
bureaucracy—government by officials. Bureaucratic imperialism emerged
again and again and spread with civilization. Barbarian challenge
occasionally laid it low but never for very long. When one city or people
rose to hegemony over its neighbours, it simply incorporated their
bureaucracy into its own. Sumer and Babylon were conquered by Assyria;
Assyria was overthrown by the Medes of Persia, in alliance with a resurgent
Babylon and nomadic Scythians; the empire of the Persians was overthrown
by Alexander the Great (356–323 BCE) of Macedonia; the Macedonian
successor states were conquered by Rome, which was in due course
supplanted in the Middle East and North Africa by the Islamic Caliphate of
Baghdad. Conquerors came and went, but life for their subjects, whether
peasants or townspeople, was not much altered by anything they did, as long
as the battles happened elsewhere.

A depiction of 1st century CE Athens by J. Buhlmann.

Nevertheless, from time to time experiments were made, for no monarchy

had the resources to rule all its subjects directly. So long as they paid tribute
punctually, local rulers and local communities were perforce left to govern
themselves.

THE CITY-STATES OF GREECE

The city-state (polis in Greek, from which the term politics derives) was the
great political invention of classical antiquity. The city-state was made
possible by Mediterranean geography, which is such that every little fishing
village had to be able to defend itself against attack from land or sea. Each
city-state was, on the one hand, an economic, cultural, and religious
organization; on the other hand, each was a self-governing community
capable, in theory, of maintaining absolute independence by enlisting all its
adult male inhabitants as soldiers. Although it was a fact of the Greek world
that geography deterred the rise of an empire to federate and control all the
cities, a few nevertheless rose to imperial greatness. Athens was one of
these. During the period of its prime Athens was free to make what
experiments it liked in the realm of government, and to that period are owed
not just the first example of successful democracy in world history but also
the first investigations in political thought.

ROME AND THE REPUBLIC

But, as it turned out, the city-state had barely begun to display its full
political potential. To the west, two non-Greek cities, Carthage and Rome,
began to struggle for mastery, and, after the defeat of the Carthaginian general
Hannibal at Zama (202 BCE), Rome emerged as the strongest state in the
Mediterranean.
The Greek historian Polybius suggested that Rome’s constitution was
such a success because it was a judicious blend of monarchy, aristocracy,
and democracy. The Romans, a conservative, practical people, showed what
they thought of such abstractions by speaking only of an unanalyzed “public
thing”—res publica—and thus gave a new word, republic, to politics. With
this focus the patriotism of the city-state reached its greatest intensity.
Wars, always supposedly in self-defense, had gradually extended Rome’s
power over Italy, and led to conquests and widening of Rome’s lands. But the
strains of empire building led to an end to the republic and the beginning of
the monarchy of Augustus. The bedrock of the emperor Augustus’s power
was his command of the legions with which he had defeated all his rivals,
but he was a much better politician than he was a general. He reduced the
military establishment, laboured to turn the revolutionary faction that had
supported his bid for power into a respectable new ruling class, and
proclaimed the restoration of the republic in 27 BCE. However Augustus
never went so far as to restore genuinely free elections or the organs of
popular government. Like earlier monarchs elsewhere, he called in the aid of
religion to legitimize his monarchy.
Four centuries later, the age of the city-state was at last drawing to a
close. The emperor Caracalla extended Roman citizenship to all subjects of
the empire, so that he could tax them more heavily. The demands of the
imperial administration began to bankrupt the cities, new barbarian attacks
threw the empire onto the defensive, and in 410 CE the city of Rome itself
was captured and sacked by the Visigoths. About 65 years later the last
Roman emperor in the West was deposed, and thenceforward the caesars
reigned only in Constantinople and the East.

THE MIDDLE AGES

Seen against the background of the millennia, the fall of the Roman Empire
was so commonplace an event that it is almost surprising that so much ink has
been spilled in the attempt to explain it. What really needs explaining is the
fact that the Western Empire was never restored.

DISSOLUTION AND INSTABILITY

Imperial thrones were never vacant for long. In China, after every time of
troubles, a new dynasty received “the mandate of heaven,” and a new
emperor, or “son of heaven,” rebuilt order. Similar patterns mark the history
of India and Japan. When Justinian I, the greatest of the Eastern Roman
(Byzantine) emperors, reconquered large portions of the West in the 6th
century his soldiers made things worse rather than better. In 800
Charlemagne, king of the Franks, was actually crowned emperor of the
Romans by the pope. In later centuries the Hohenstaufen and Habsburg
dynasties tried to restore the empire, and as late as the 19th century so did
Napoleon I. None of those attempts succeeded. Britain fell away from the
empire in the 5th century; the little kingdoms of the Angles and Saxons were
just coming together as one kingdom, England, when the Viking invasions
began. In the 7th century the Arabs conquered North Africa; in the 8th they
took Spain and invaded Gaul. Lombards, Avars, Slavs, Bulgars, and Magyars
poured into Europe from the east. Not until German king Otto I’s victory over
the Magyars at Lechfeld in 955 did those incursions cease, and not until the
late 11th century was Latin Christendom more or less secure within its
borders, and by then it had been without an effective emperor for more than
600 years.

FEUDALISM
Various institutions had emerged to fill the gap. The Christian church, against
enormous odds, had kept the light of religion and learning alive and spread
what was left of Roman civilization into Ireland, England, central Europe,
and Scandinavia. It also provided a reservoir of literacy against the day
when professional government should again be possible. The kings of the
barbarians, of whom Charlemagne was the greatest, had provided military
leadership and tried to acquire some of the prestige and governmental
machinery of the Roman emperors. But the troublous times, during which
trade and urban life were minimal, meant that effective power lay with those
who controlled the land and its products: a military aristocracy of great
estates and fiefs (Latin feodum, hence “feudal system”). The aristocrats
called themselves nobiles in the Roman fashion and appropriated various
late imperial titles, such as comes (count) and dux (duke). But those titles
were mere decoration. The new kings, lacking the machinery for imperial
taxation, could not pay for standing armies. Hired knights waged war. Europe
fell under the rule of these armoured knights, and the course of the next few
hundred years gives reason to think that the democrats of Greece were right
to distrust the very idea of oligarchy, for the keynote of noble rule seemed to
be almost incessant warfare.

THE RISE OF LAW AND THE NATION-

STATE
Yet even at their height the military aristocrats never had it all their own way.
Medieval Europe was a constantly shifting kaleidoscope of political
arrangements operating on the principle that because everybody’s claim to
power and property was fragile and inconsistent with everybody else’s, a
certain degree of mutual forbearance was necessary. However, the evolving
Europe of privileged orders was also the Europe of rising monarchies. Kings
clawed power to themselves; by 1500 most of them presided over
bureaucracies (initially staffed by clerics) that would have impressed any
Roman emperor. But universal empire was still impossible. The foundations
of the new monarchies were purely territorial. Attempts at forced authority
caused several wars, and Spanish kings tried to force uniformity by way of
the Catholic religion. That uniformity paved the way for the most
characteristic governmental form of the modern world, the nation-state.
 Marie Antoinette being led to the guillotine on October 16, 1793.

THE RISE AND FALL OF ABSOLUTE

MONARCHY
The development of the nation-state was not easy, for the monarchs or anyone
else. Monarchs did all they could to resist the rise of representative
institutions—except in England, where Henry VIII and the other Tudor
monarchs worked with Parliament to make laws and where the folly of the
Stuart kings ultimately ensured Parliament’s supremacy. On the whole,
however, the monarchs of Europe—especially in France, Spain, Prussia, and
Austria—had great success at ruling autocratically. Their style of rule,
known as absolute monarchy or absolutism, was a system in which the
monarch was supposed to be supreme, in both lawmaking and policy making.
Absolutism lasted into the 18th century. Well before that time, though,
three great occurrences—the Renaissance, the Reformation, and the
discovery of the Americas—had transformed Europe. The truest symbol of
the Renaissance’s importance is the printing press. This invention
enormously increased the resources of government. Laws, for instance, could
be circulated far more widely and more accurately than ever before. More
important still was the fact that the printing press increased the size of the
educated and literate classes. Renaissance civilization thus became
something unprecedented: it acquired deeper foundations than any of its
predecessors or contemporaries on any continent by calling into play the
intelligence of more individuals than ever before. But the catch (from a
ruler’s point of view) was that this development also brought public opinion
into being for the first time.
The Reformation was the eldest child of the press. It, too, had diffuse and
innumerable consequences, the most important of which was the destruction
of the Roman Catholic Church’s effective claim to universality. The
consequence was the secularization of politics and administration and the
introduction of some measure of religious toleration. Gradually the way
became clear for rational, utilitarian considerations to shape government.
 The discovery of the Americas opened a new epoch in world history.
Portuguese and Spanish explorations gave far-flung overseas empires to both
countries—and as many difficulties as benefits. Other countries—France,
England, the Netherlands, Sweden, and Denmark—thought it both
undesirable and unsafe not to seek such empire themselves, and the Iberian
monarchies were thus involved in a perpetual struggle to defend their
acquisitions. However, this stretched the kingdoms’ revenues and
inadequacies of the monarchical system, notably their ability to effectively
rule or quell revolts, had been cruelly exposed.

REPRESENTATION AND
CONSTITUTIONAL MONARCHY
Meanwhile, the republican tradition had never quite died out. The Dutch
emerged from a long struggle against Spain clinging triumphantly to their new
religion and their ancient constitution, a somewhat ramshackle federation
known as the United Provinces. Switzerland was another medieval
confederation. Venice and Genoa were rigidly oligarchical republics.
In England the rise of Parliament introduced a republican, if not a
democratic, element into the workings of one of Europe’s oldest kingdoms.
The tradition of representative estates was first exploited by the Renaissance
monarchy of Henry VIII and his children, the Tudors, and then unsuccessfully
challenged by their successors, the Stuarts. After a series of upheavals,
William III, a Dutchman, conceded full power of the purse to the House of
Commons. A radically new age had dawned.Henceforth the country was to
be ruled by a partnership between king and Parliament later known as
constitutional monarchy.

THE AMERICAN AND FRENCH

REVOLUTIONS
The limited British monarchy found it little easier to govern a seaborne
empire than did the kings of France and Spain. If Britain’s North American
colonies were to grow in population and riches—so as to become sources of
strength to the empire, not military and financial liabilities—they had to be
given a substantial measure of religious, economic, and political autonomy.
However, that gift could not be revoked. Once a chain of more or less self-
governing communities had been created, it could not be undone. Thus, when
the British government attempted to impose tighter rule from London, the
Anglo-Americans fought with determination and good luck against their
former overlord, King George III, and in 1776 their leaders determined to be
rid of him and the British Parliament forever. The principles on which they
meant to found a new commonwealth were expounded in their Declaration of
Independence.
The American example might have had little effect on Europe but for the
French Revolution of 1789. The French had helped the Americans defeat the
British, but the effort had been too much in the end for the monarchy’s
finances. To avert state bankruptcy the Estates-General were summoned for
the first time in 175 years, and soon the whole government had been turned
upside down. The French repudiated the divine right of kings, the ascendancy
of the nobility, the privileges of the Roman Catholic Church, and the regional
structure of old France. Finally, they set up a republic and executed the king
and queen.
The kings had created the French state; the revolution made it stronger
than ever. The kings had united their subjects in the quest for glory; now the
nation made the quest its own. In the name of rationality, liberty, and equality
(fraternity was not a foremost concern), France again went to war. Yet, on the
whole, the work of the French Revolution survived. However many changes
of regime France endured (seven between 1814 and 1870), its institutions
had been thoroughly democratized.

NATIONALISM AND IMPERIALISM

The kingdom of Prussia and the empires of Austria and Russia readily
learned from the French Revolution that it was necessary to rationalize
government. They had been struggling along that path even before 1789. The
great dynasts, and the military aristocracies that supported them, had no
intention of admitting their obsolescence, though they were forced to make
limited concessions between 1789 and World War I.
Nationalism intensified the competitiveness that had always been a part
of the European state system. Peoples, it emerged, could be as touchy about
their prestige as monarchs. But for one hundred years there was no general
war in Europe, leaving the powers free to pursue interests in other parts of
the world. Asia and Africa thus came to feel the full impact of European
expansion, as the Americas had felt it before. Only the Japanese proved to
have the skill to adapt successfully to the new ways—taking what suited them
and rejecting the rest. The Netherlands, Spain, and Portugal clung to what
they had, though the last two suffered great imperial losses as Mexico,
Brazil, and other Latin American colonies shook off imperial rule. It seemed
that before long the whole world would be ruled by half a dozen powers.
It did not remain so for long. The problem of governmental legitimacy in
central, eastern, and southern Europe was too explosive. The obstinate
conservatism of the dynasts proved fatal to more than monarchy. Authority
itself, corrupted by power and at the same time gnawingly aware of its own
fragility, gambled on militarist adventures. The upshot was World War I and
the revolutions that resulted from it, especially those in Russia in March and
November 1917, which overthrew the tsardom and set up a new model of
government.
 Founder of the Russian Communist Party, Vladimir Ilich Lenin.

COMMUNISM AND FASCISM

In cold fact, the new Russian government was not quite as new as many of its
admirers and enemies believed. Tyranny was as old as civilization itself.
Prior tyrannical leaders enacted the belief that society was best governed by
the discipline thought necessary in an army at war. Such, too, was the
underlying principle of the Soviet Union, though it professed to be a
democracy and to be guided by the most advanced and scientific social
philosophy of its age.
Vladimir Ilich Lenin and his followers, the Bolsheviks (later known as
the Communist Party of the Soviet Union), won power in the turmoil of
revolutionary Russia because they were abler and more unscrupulous than
any other group. They retained and increased their power by force, but they
argued that the theories of Karl Marx (1818–83), as developed by Lenin,
were of universal, permanent, and all-sufficient validity, that the leadership
of the Communist Party had a unique understanding of those theories and of
the proper tactics for realizing them, and that therefore the party’s will could
never legitimately be resisted.
The Soviet model found many imitators. Lenin’s strictly disciplined
revolutionary party, the only morality of which was unswerving obedience to
the leader, was a particularly attractive example to those intent on seizing
power in a world made chaotic by World War I, such as Benito Mussolini of
Italy. Adolf Hitler of Germany added a vicious anti-Semitism and a lust for
mass murder to that brew. Mao Zedong in China combined Leninism with a
hatred of all the foreign imperialists who had reduced China to nullity. In the
Soviet Union itself Lenin’s successor and disciple, Joseph Stalin, outdid his
master in building up his power by mass terror and party discipline.
Terror and technology were all that kept their regimes afloat, yet in their
time they undeniably had a certain prestige. Liberal democracy and liberal
economics had apparently failed, suggesting to some minds that the future of
government lay with totalitarianism. However, after Stalin’s death in 1953,
the Soviet empire began to lurch from crisis to crisis. In 1985 a new
generation came to power under Mikhail Gorbachev, who was willing to
take enormous risks in order to revitalize the Soviet empire. Before long,
though, the communist regimes in Europe disintegrated, and in 1991 the
Soviet Union itself dissolved.

LIBERAL DEMOCRACY
Meanwhile, liberal democracy had gotten its second wind. Although the
democracies had failed to avert the World Wars and the Great Depression,
they crushed the Axis powers in World War II and warded off the rivalry of
communism in the Cold War that followed. The democratic system
everywhere brought with it growing prosperity, the emancipation of women,
recognition of the equal rights of law-abiding individuals and social groups
(whatever their origins or beliefs), and a professed commitment to
international cooperation. However, the prosperity of Western democracies,
as well as their free markets and free political institutions, was putting
enormous strain on the rest of the world, since the West used up far more of
the globe’s natural and human resources than the size of its population
seemed to justify. Non-Western societies were also having to cope with the
disproportionate effects of such problems as a rapidly growing population,
the HIV/AIDS pandemic, and the worldwide environmental issues of ozone
depletion and global warming. It was natural for some, or most, in every
country threatened by the hurricane of change to cling, however futilely, to
the shreds of tradition, or even to try to rebuild an order that had failed. So it
was in much of the Islamic world, where a resurgence of religious
fundamentalism led to campaigns for the establishment of Islamic republics,
following the example of Iran and the short-lived Taliban regime of
Afghanistan. But religious dictatorships did not seem likely to solve modern
problems any better than the military or secular kind had done.

PROSPECTS IN THE 21ST CENTURY

In a world increasingly knit together by trade and communications
technology, it seems ever more unlikely that the single nation-state can on its
own successfully handle the universal enemies of poverty, hunger, disease,
natural disaster, and war or other violence. Some thinkers believe that only a
form of world government can make decisive headway against those evils,
but no one has yet suggested convincingly either how a world government
could be set up without another world war or how, if such a government did
somehow come peacefully into existence, it could be organized so as to be
worthy of its name. Even effective global cooperation among national
governments can be extremely difficult, as the examples of the United
Nations and other international bodies have shown. Nevertheless, those
bodies have had many accomplishments, and the European Union (EU) has
been particularly successful. The EU began as an attempt to bury the long-
standing rivalry between France and Germany through economic
cooperation. By the early 21st century it had come to include almost all the
states between the Russian frontier and the Atlantic Ocean. Though its
overall constitutional structure remained weak, and agreement on how to
sufficiently strengthen it seemed unattainable, the EU’s common laws and
policies were playing a large part in the lives of its citizens.
 Yet Western democracy also faces other problems that may prove too big
for it to solve. The great experiment of European imperialism has long since
collapsed, but its legacy of corruption, war, and poverty, especially in
Africa, seemed even more challenging at the beginning of the 21st century
than it did 50 years previously. In all countries, nationalism still distorts
voters’ judgments in matters of foreign policy, as greed misleads them over
economic policy. Class conflicts have been muted rather than resolved.
Demagogues abound as much as they did in ancient Athens. The incompatible
claims of the city-states ruined ancient Greece; modern civilization may yet
be imperiled by the rival claims of the nation-states. At least one thing is
clear, however: if human beings, as political animals, are to progress further,
they cannot yet rest from seeking new forms of government to meet the ever-
new needs of their times.
 CHAPTER SEVEN

PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION

P ublic administration consists of the implementation of government

policies. It is a feature of all nations, whatever their system of
government. Within nations public administration is practiced at the central,
intermediate, and local levels. Indeed, the relationships between different
levels of government within a single nation constitute a growing problem of
public administration.

EARLY SYSTEMS OF
ADMINISTRATION
Public administration has ancient origins. In antiquity the Egyptians and
Greeks organized public affairs by office, and the principal officeholders
were regarded as being principally responsible for administering justice,
maintaining law and order, and providing plenty. The Romans developed a
more sophisticated system under their empire, creating distinct
administrative hierarchies for justice, military affairs, finance and taxation,
foreign affairs, and internal affairs, each with its own principal officers of
state. An elaborate administrative structure, later imitated by the Roman
Catholic Church, covered the entire empire, with a hierarchy of officers
reporting back through their superiors to the emperor. This sophisticated
structure disappeared after the fall of the Roman Empire in western Europe
in the 5th century, but many of its practices continued in the Byzantine Empire
in the east, where civil service rule was reflected in the pejorative use of the
word Byzantinism.
Early European administrative structures developed from the royal
households of the medieval period. Until the end of the 12th century official
duties within the royal households were ill-defined, frequently with multiple
holders of the same post. Exceptions were the better-defined positions of
butler (responsible for the provision of wine), steward (responsible for
feasting arrangements), chamberlain (often charged with receiving and
paying out money kept in the royal sleeping chamber), and chancellor
(usually a priest with responsibilities for writing and applying the seal in the
monarch’s name). With the 13th century a separation began between the
purely domestic functions of the royal household and the functions connected
with governing the state. The older household posts tended to disappear,
become sinecures, or decline in importance. The office of chancellor, which
had always been concerned with matters of state, survived to become the
most important link between the old court offices and modern ministries, and
the development of the modern treasury or finance ministry can be traced
back to the chamberlain’s office in the royal household.
From the middle of the 13th century three institutions began to emerge as
the major bodies for handling affairs of state: the high court (evolving
primarily from the chancellery), the exchequer, and the collegial royal
council. In England and France, however, it was not until the early 14th
century that such bodies emerged. In Brandenburg, which was governed by
an elector (a prince with a right to elect the Holy Roman emperor) and which
later formed the basis of the Prussian state, they became distinct entities only
at the beginning of the 17th century.

THE SONG/SUNG DYNASTY

The Song dynasty (also called the Sung dynasty) that ruled China from
960–1279 was in power during one of China’s most brilliant cultural
epochs. It is commonly divided into Bei (Northern) and Nan
(Southern) Song periods, as the dynasty ruled only in South China
after 1127.
The Bei Song was founded by Zhao Kuangyin, the military
inspector general of the Hou (Later) Zhou dynasty (last of the Five
Dynasties), who usurped control of the empire in a coup. He
persuaded powerful potential rivals to exchange their power for
 honours and sinecures, and became an admirable emperor (known as
Taizu, his temple name). He set the nation on a course of sound
administration by instituting a competent and pragmatic civil service;
he followed Confucian principles, lived modestly, and took the
country’s finest military units under his personal command. Before his
death he had begun an expansion into the small Ten Kingdoms of
southern China.
Taizu’s successors maintained an uneasy peace with the menacing
Liao kingdom of the Khitan to the north. As the dynasty’s bureaucracy
deteriorated, they became easy prey. The Juchen took over the North
and established a dynasty with a Chinese name, the Jin.
In the South, the climate and the beautiful surroundings were the
setting for the Nan Song dynasty established (1127) by the emperor
Gaozong. In due course, however, the dynasty began to decline. Their
eventual fall was because of a sustained campaign by the Mongols,
under Genghis Khan, who began with an assault on the Jin state in the
North in 1211 and ended with Genghis Khan’s grandsons who fought
on until 1276, when the Song capital fell. The dynasty finally ended in
1279 with the destruction of the Song fleet near Guangzhou (Canton).

Apart from justice and treasury departments, which originated in old

court offices, modern ministerial structures in Europe developed out of the
royal councils, which were powerful bodies of nobles appointed by the
monarch. From the division of labour within these bodies the monarchs’
secretaries, initially given low status within a council, emerged as perhaps
the first professional civil servants in Europe in the modern sense. The
proximity of the secretaries to the monarch gave them more knowledge of
royal intentions, and their relative permanence gave them greater expertise in
particular matters of state than could be found among the more transient
nobles on the council. They were also assisted by staffs. The secretaries
grew in importance in the 15th and 16th centuries as they became more or
less full members of the council.
The distribution of functions among secretaries was initially based upon
geography. In England this geographical allocation—with, for example, a
secretary of the North and a secretary of the South—persisted until 1782,
when the offices of home and foreign secretary were created. In France a
more complex allocation of territorial responsibilities among secretaries of
state had begun to give way to functional responsibilities by the end of the
ancien régime in 1789.
The civil service in China was undoubtedly the longest lasting in history;
it was first organized, along with a centralized administration, during the Han
dynasty (206 BC–AD 220) and improved under the T’ang (618–907) and
Song (960–1279). The administration was organized so well that the pattern
stood until 1912. During the Song dynasty there developed the full use of
civil service examinations. Candidates were subjected to successive
elimination through written tests on three levels, more than a hundred persons
beginning the ordeal for each one who emerged successful. Although there
was strong emphasis on the Chinese Classics (because knowledge of the
Classics was thought to form the virtues of a good citizen), there was also an
effort to devise objective and meaningful tests for practical qualities, and
there were always long contentions over subject matter and testing methods.
To preserve the anonymity of the candidate and to ensure fairness in grading,
examination papers were copied by clerks, examinees were identified by
number only, and three examiners read each paper. Higher officials were
privileged to nominate junior relatives for admission to the bureaucracy, but
the great stress on examination grades in promotion, the use of annual merit
ratings, and the practice of recruiting many lower officials from the ranks of
the clerical service ensured a considerable freedom of opportunity.

MODERN DEVELOPMENTS
The modernization of government continued throughout the developed world.
Specific civil positions became defined regardless of political system. Some
countries emphasized centralization, while developing countries struggled
for consistency.

PRUSSIA
The foundations of modern public administration in Europe were laid in
Prussia in the late 17th and 18th centuries. The electors of Brandenburg
considered a rigidly centralized government a means of ensuring stability and
furthering dynastic objectives. Their principal effort was devoted in the first
instance to the suppression of the autonomy of the cities and to the
elimination of the feudal privileges of the aristocracy. Civil servants were
therefore appointed by the central government to administer the provinces,
where the management of crown lands and the organization of the military
system were combined in a Kriegs-und-Domänen-kammer (“Office of War
and Crown Lands”). Subordinate to these offices were the Steuerräte (“tax
councillors”), who controlled the administration of the municipalities and
communes. These officials were all appointed by the central government and
were responsible to it. At the apex of the new machinery of government was
the sovereign.
This centralized system was strengthened by creating a special corps of
civil servants. Special ordinances in 1722 and 1748 regulated recruitment to
the civil service. A single General Code regularized the system of
recruitment, promotion, and internal organization in 1794. Entry to the higher
civil service required a university degree in cameralistics, which was the
science of public finance and included the study of administrative law, police
administration, estate management, and agricultural economics. After the
degree course, candidates for the higher civil service spent a further period
of supervised practical training in various branches of the administration, at
the end of which they underwent a further oral and written examination. The
basic principles of modern civil services are to be found in this General
Code.

FRANCE
A fundamental change in the status of the civil servant came about as a result
of the French Revolution of 1789. The fall of the ancien régime and the
creation of a republic meant that the civil servant was seen as the servant no
longer of the king but rather of the state—even though rule by a king or
emperor was soon brought back and continued in France for nearly another
century. The civil servant became an instrument of public power, not the
agent of a person.
Bureaucratization was greatly fostered by Napoleon I, who built up a
new civil service marked not only by some of the features of military
organization but also by the principles of rationality, logic, and universality
that were the inheritance of the Enlightenment. There was a clear chain of
command and a firmly established hierarchy of officials, with duties clearly
apportioned between authorities. Civil servants had a general responsibility
for maintaining public order, health, and morality. They were all linked in a
chain to the national Ministry of the Interior. A special school, the École
Polytechnique, was set up to provide the state with technical specialists in
both the military and the civil fields—particularly in general administration.
In France under the Third Republic (1870–1940) there developed,
however, considerable political interference in some branches of the civil
service; and much of its vitality was diminished as its bureaucratic practices
tended to become unwieldy and its personnel lethargic. Not until 1946 was
the system reformed—which involved overhauling the administrative
structure of the central government, centralizing personnel selection, creating
a special ministry for civil service affairs, and setting up a special school,
the École National d’Administration, for the training of senior civil servants.

THE BRITISH EMPIRE

The first attempts by Great Britain to create efficient administrative
machinery arose from its commitment to govern India. Robert Clive,
appointed governor of Bengal for the second time in 1764, introduced a code
of practice that prohibited servants of the East India Company from trading
on their own account or accepting gifts from native traders. Recruitment was
carried on by the company in London, and after 1813 entrants to the civil
service had to study the history, language, and laws of India for a period of
four terms at Haileybury College, England, and to obtain a certificate of good
conduct before taking up their posts. New rules from 1833 stipulated that
four candidates had to be nominated for each vacancy and that they were to
compete with one another in “an examination in such branches of knowledge
and by such examinations as the Board of the Company shall direct.”
 In 1853 another legislative reform of the administration was proposed.
The experience of the Indian Civil Service influenced the foundation of the
modern civil service in the United Kingdom. A report of 1854 recommended
the abolition of patronage and recruitment by open competitive examination.
It further recommended (1) the establishment of an autonomous semijudicial
body of civil service commissioners to ensure the proper administration of
recruitment to official posts, (2) the division of the work of the civil service
into intellectual and routine work, the two sets of offices to have separate
forms of recruitment, and (3) the selection of higher civil servants more
decidedly on the basis of general intellectual attainment than specialized
knowledge. The Civil Service Commission was established in 1855, and
during the next 30 years patronage was gradually eliminated. The two
original classes were increased to four, and some specialized branches were
amalgamated to become the Scientific Civil Service. The new civil service
managed to attract to its senior levels highly capable, discreet, and self-
effacing university graduates.

A map of the holdings of the British Empire from 1883.

THE UNITED STATES
In the United States patronage remained the norm for considerably longer
than in Britain. From the early days of the federation two principles were
firmly held. First, there was antipathy to the notion of a cadre of permanent
civil servants. The second principle held that as far as possible public office
should be elective. After the Civil War, the federal government accepted a
restricted principle of entry by competitive open examination, and in 1883
the U.S. Civil Service Commission was established to control entry to office
in the federal service. After 1978 the functions of the commission were
divided between the Office of Personnel Management and the Merit Systems
Protection Board. Principal policy-making posts, numbering some 2,000,
remain outside the jurisdiction of these two bodies, being filled instead by
presidential nomination.
The development of civil service in U.S. local government varied among
states, counties, and cities. The adoption of a merit system can usually be
dated from the early 20th century, during the reform period of the muckrakers.
In some states the merit system became well established, with a central
personnel office that included a civil service commission or board similar to
the federal model. At the other extreme there was simply a central personnel
office headed by a single personnel director with no advisory board. At the
municipal level, by the mid-20th century, most large cities in the United
States had developed some sort of merit system; in smaller cities, however,
merit systems were correspondingly less common. In the counties, the
majority of which were rural and had relatively few public employees,
formally established merit systems were rare.

THE SOVIET UNION

In Russia the Revolution of 1917 swept away the tsarist civil service. The
Communist Party at first held that a strong administrative organization was
bound to damage the revolution by dampening spontaneity and other
revolutionary virtues. But it soon became clear that a regime dedicated to
social engineering, economic planning, and world revolution needed trained
administrators.
 As the Communist Party itself became bureaucratized and as the more
enthusiastic revolutionary leaders were eliminated, special industrial
academies were set up for party members who had shown administrative
talent. With the First Five-Year Plan (1928–32) the conditions of service and
status of civil servants was improved. In 1935 the State Commission on the
Civil Service was created and attached to the Commissariat of Finance with
responsibility for ensuring general control of personnel practice. This
commission remained under the close supervision of the Council of People’s
Commissars to ensure that it complied with party directives, but unlike those
in such countries as Great Britain and the United States, was given no
jurisdiction over the recruitment of civil servants. The Communist Party
made determined attempts to recruit higher civil servants as party members.
These drives, which followed periodically after the 1930s, went a long way
toward transforming the party itself into an administrative and managerial
elite and uniting the party and the state administration.

CHINA
The People’s Republic of China also illustrates the conflict between
revolutionary suspicion of bureaucracy and the need to construct strong
administrative machinery in order to attain revolutionary goals. China’s long
tradition of bureaucracy remained important even after the Communist Party
came to power in 1949. Within a decade the weight of the administration had
already led, according to party dogma, to a gap between the elite and the
masses and also to excessive stratification among the ruling bureaucrats, or
cadres, themselves. There was not only a distinction between “old cadres”
and “new cadres,” depending on nothing more substantial than the date of an
official’s entry into the revolutionary movement, but also a complex system
of job evaluation that divided the civil service into 24 grades, each with its
own rank, salary scales, and distinctions. The number of ratings represented
very considerable differences of power, prestige, and prerogatives and
produced psychological barriers between the highest and lowest grades at
least as great and as conspicuous as between the cadres and the masses.
These distinctions and discrepancies were widely attacked during the
Cultural Revolution of the 1960s and ‘70s, but they remained deeply
ingrained in the administrative structure.

JAPAN
Until the 17th century, Japan under the shogunate was administered by a
military establishment made up of vassals and enfeoffed nobles. After the
1630s a civil bureaucracy developed and began to assume a more important
role than the military. Appointment within the bureaucracy was based upon
family rank, and officials were loyal primarily to the feudal lord. Japanese
bureaucracy moved away from feudal rank as the basis of appointments only
after Matthew C. Perry sailed four U.S. warships into Uraga, ending Japan’s
isolation from the rest of the world. During the Meiji Restoration of the
1880s a modern civil service was created on the basis of job security, career
paths, and entry by open competition.
After World War II the Allied occupation authorities directed the passage
of a Japanese law guaranteeing that all public officials should be servants of
the people rather than of the emperor. The National Public Service Law of
1947 set up an independent National Personnel Authority to administer
recruitment, promotion, conditions of employment, standards of performance,
and job classification for the new civil service. Technically the emperor
himself became a civil servant, and detailed regulations brought within the
scope of the new law all civil servants from labourers to the prime minister.
Civil servants were classified into two groups, the regular service and a
special service. Civil servants in the former category entered the service by
competitive examination on a standard contract with tenure. The special
service included elected officials and political appointees and covered such
officials as members of the Diet (legislature), judges, members of the audit
boards, and ambassadors.

DEVELOPING NATIONS
Less-developed countries have had to face the opposite problem with their
civil services. After World War II many such countries became independent
before they had developed effective administrative structures or bodies of
trained civil servants. Few of the colonial powers had trained indigenous
administrators sufficiently. The British left a viable administrative structure
in India and a partly Indianized civil service, but the newly independent
Pakistan had few experienced civil servants. The Belgians left the Congo
without any trained administrative or technical staff, and for some years there
was near anarchy.
Even when they inherited reasonably efficient administrative
organizations, the newly independent countries’ politicians frequently proved
incapable of fulfilling their supporters’ expectations. Civil servants from the
old colonial powers who remained behind often found radical policies and
new masters uncongenial. The resulting exodus of many such civil servants
worsened matters, for indigenous civil servants were seldom an adequate
substitute.

Soldiers in an independence day parade in the former British colony Trinidad and Tobago.
 The lack of qualified personnel sometimes led to not only a reduction in
efficiency but also a decline in administrative morality. Nepotism, tribalism,
and corruption as well as inefficiency in the civil service were difficulties
often added to the other trials of independence. In many countries the
incapacity of the civil service was a factor leading to military rule, as were
the political failings of the elected leaders. Military regimes have frequently
been the last resort of a country where the civil power has failed to cope
with the problems of independence. Consequently, the United Nations (UN),
in conjunction with the governments of advanced countries, began to develop
training programs for civil servants from underdeveloped countries. The first
request came from Latin America, which led to the founding of a school of
public administration in Brazil, followed in 1953 by an Advanced School of
Public Administration for Central America. Various other international
organizations, including the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and
Development and the World Bank, supported institutions for the training of
administrators in the less-developed countries. Such institutions included the
Arab Planning Institute in Kuwait, the Arab Organization of Administrative
Sciences in Jordan, and the Inter-American School of Public Administration
in Brazil. Civil servants from the less-developed nations also studied
administration at such places as the Institute of Social Studies in The Hague,
Neth., the Institute of Local Government Studies in Birmingham, Eng., and the
International Institute of Public Administration in Paris.
After the 1970s the international agencies gave less help toward training,
on the assumption—often unrealized—that the less-developed nations would
take on greater responsibility themselves. Training also tended to be
generalist and academic, leading to acute shortages of trained administrators
in specialized fields such as finance and planning. However, organizations
such as the British Council began in the early 1980s to remedy some of these
deficiencies.
 CHAPTER EIGHT

CONSTITUTIONAL
GOVERNMENT

A constitution is the body of doctrines and practices that form the

fundamental organizing principle of a political state. In some cases,
such as the United States, the constitution is a specific written document; in
others, such as the United Kingdom, it is a collection of documents, statutes,
and traditional practices that are generally accepted as governing political
matters. States that have a written constitution may also have a body of
traditional or customary practices that may or may not be considered to be of
constitutional standing. Virtually every state claims to have a constitution, but
not every government conducts itself in a consistently constitutional manner.
The general idea of a constitution and of constitutionalism originated
with the ancient Greeks and especially in the systematic, theoretical,
normative, and descriptive writings of Aristotle. In his Politics,
Nicomachean Ethics, Constitution of Athens, and other works, Aristotle
used the Greek word for constitution (politeia) in several different senses.
The simplest and most neutral of these was “the arrangement of the offices in
a polis” (state). In this purely descriptive sense of the word, every state has a
constitution, no matter how badly or erratically governed it may be.

FEATURES OF CONSTITUTIONAL
GOVERNMENT
Virtually all contemporary governments have constitutions, but possession
and publication of a constitution does not make a government constitutional.
Constitutional government in fact comprises the following elements.
 Article I of the U.S. Constitution.

PROCEDURAL STABILITY
Certain fundamental procedures must not be subject to frequent or arbitrary
change. Citizens must know the basic rules according to which politics are
conducted. Stable procedures of government provide citizens with adequate
knowledge of the probable consequences of their actions. By contrast, under
many nonconstitutional regimes, such as Hitler’s in Germany and Stalin’s in
the Soviet Union, individuals, including high government officials, never
knew from one day to the next whether the whim of the dictator’s will would
not turn today’s hero into tomorrow’s public enemy.

ACCOUNTABILITY
Under constitutional government, those who govern are regularly accountable
to at least a portion of the governed. In a constitutional democracy, this
accountability is owed to the electorate by all persons in government.
Accountability can be enforced through a great variety of regular procedures,
including elections, systems of promotion and discipline, fiscal accounting,
recall, and referendum. In constitutional democracies, the accountability of
government officials to the citizenry makes possible the citizens’
responsibility for the acts of government. The most obvious example of this
two-directional flow of responsibility and accountability is the electoral
process. A member of the legislature or the head of government is elected by
adult citizens and is thereby invested with authority and power in order that
he may try to achieve those goals to which he committed himself in his
program. At the end of his term of office, the electorate has the opportunity to
judge his performance and to reelect him or dismiss him from office. The
official has thus rendered his account and has been held accountable.

REPRESENTATION
Those in office must conduct themselves as the representatives of their
constituents. To represent means to be present on behalf of someone else who
is absent. Elections, of course, are not the only means of securing
representation or of ensuring the representativeness of a government.
Hereditary medieval kings considered themselves, and were generally
considered by their subjects, to be representatives of their societies. Of the
social contract theorists only Rousseau denied the feasibility of
representation for purposes of legislation. The elected status of officeholders
is sometimes considered no guarantee that they will be “existentially
representative” of their constituents, unless they share with the latter certain
other vital characteristics such as race, religion, sex, or age. The problems of
representation are in fact more closely related to democratic than to
constitutionalist criteria of government: a regime that would be considered
quite unrepresentative by modern standards could still be regarded as
constitutional so long as it provided procedural stability and the
accountability of officeholders to some but not all of the governed and so
long as the governors were representative of the best or the most important
elements in the body politic.

DIVISION OF POWER
Constitutional government requires a division of power among several
organs of the body politic. Preconstitutionalist governments, such as the
absolute monarchies of Europe in the 18th century, frequently concentrated
all power in the hands of a single person. The same has been true in modern
dictatorships such as Hitler’s in Germany. Constitutionalism, on the other
hand, by dividing power—between, for example, local and central
government and between the legislature, executive, and judiciary—ensures
the presence of restraints and “checks and balances” in the political system.
Citizens are thus able to influence policy by resort to any of several branches
of government.

OPENNESS AND DISCLOSURE

Democracy rests upon popular participation in government, constitutionalism
upon disclosure of and openness about the affairs of government. In this
sense, constitutionalism is a prerequisite of successful democracy, since the
people cannot participate rationally in government unless they are adequately
informed of its workings. Originally, because they were concerned with
secrets of state, bureaucracies surrounded their activities with a veil of
secrecy. The ruler himself always retained full access to administrative
secrets and often to the private affairs of his subjects, into which bureaucrats
such as tax collectors and the police could legally pry. But when both
administrators and rulers were subjected to constitutional restraints, it
became necessary that they disclose the content of their official activities to
the public to which they owed accountability. This explains the provision
contained in most constitutions obliging the legislature to publish a record of
its debates.

CONSTITUTIONALITY
Written constitutions normally provide the standard by which the legitimacy
of governmental actions is judged. In the United States, the practice of the
judicial review of congressional legislation for its constitutionality—that is,
for its conformity with the U.S. Constitution—though not explicitly provided
for by the Constitution, developed in the early years of the republic. More
recently, other written constitutions, including the Basic Law of the Federal
Republic of Germany and Italy’s republican constitution, provided explicitly
for judicial review of the constitutionality of parliamentary legislation. This
does not necessarily mean that a constitution is regarded as being prior and
superior to all law. Although several European countries, including France
and Italy, adopted new constitutions after World War II, they kept in force
their codes of civil law, which had been legislated in the 19th century; and
the U.S. Constitution guarantees citizens certain substantive and procedural
rights to which they deemed themselves entitled as subjects of the British
crown under the ancient English common law. Despite the greater antiquity of
law codes, however, portions of them have been revised from time to time in
order to eliminate conflicts between the law and certain constitutional norms
that are regarded as superior. Parts of German family law and of the criminal
code, for example, were revised in order to bring them into conformity with
the constitutional provisions regarding the equality of persons irrespective of
sex and with the individual’s constitutionally guaranteed right to the free
development of his personality.
Conflicting interests or parties are, of course, likely to place different
interpretations on particular provisions of a constitution, and means,
therefore, have to be provided for the resolution of such conflicts. The
constitution itself may establish an institution, the task of which is to interpret
and clarify the terms of that constitution. In the American system, the
Supreme Court is generally regarded as the authoritative interpreter of the
Constitution. But the Supreme Court cannot be regarded as the “final”
interpreter of the meaning of the Constitution for a number of reasons. The
court can always reverse itself, as it has done before. The president can
gradually change the interpretative outlook of the court through the
nomination of new justices, and the Congress can exert a more negative
influence by refusing to confirm presidential nominations of justices.
Provision was made in the constitution of the Fifth French Republic for
the interpretation of certain constitutional matters by a Constitutional
Council. Soon after the French electorate, in a referendum in 1958, had voted
to accept the Constitution, a controversy erupted in France over the question
of whether the president of the republic could submit to popular referendum
issues not involving constitutional amendments but on which parliament had
taken a position at odds with the president’s. The Constitution itself seemed
to provide that the Constitutional Council could rule definitively on this
question, but Pres. Charles de Gaulle chose to ignore its ruling, which was
unfavourable to himself. As a result, the Constitutional Council lost authority
as the final interpreter of the meaning of the Constitution of the Fifth
Republic.
It may thus be seen that because of the inherent difficulties in assessing
the intentions of the authors of a constitution and because of the possibility
that the executive or legislative branch of government may be able to ignore,
override, or influence its findings, it is difficult to ensure constitutional
government merely by setting up an institution whose purpose is
constitutional interpretation.

CONSTITUTIONAL CHANGE
Written constitutions are not only likely to give rise to greater problems of
interpretation than unwritten ones, but they are also harder to change.
Unwritten constitutions tend to change gradually, continually, and often
imperceptibly, in response to changing needs. But when a constitution lays
down exact procedures for the election of the president, for relations
between the executive and legislative branches, or for defining whether a
particular governmental function is to be performed by the federal
government or a member state, then the only constitutional way to change
these procedures is by means of the procedure provided by the constitution
itself for its own amendment. Any attempt to effect change by means of
judicial review or interpretation is unconstitutional, unless, of course, the
constitution provides that a body (such as the U.S. Supreme Court) may
change, rather than interpret, the constitution.
Many constitutional documents make no clear distinction between that
which is to be regarded as constitutional, fundamental, and organic, on the
one hand, and that which is merely legislative, circumstantial, and more or
less transitory, on the other. The constitution of the German Weimar Republic
could be amended by as little as four-ninths of the membership of the
Reichstag, without any requirement for subsequent ratification by the states,
by constitutional conventions, or by referendum. Although Hitler never
explicitly abrogated the Weimar Constitution, he was able to replace the
procedural and institutional stability that it had sought to establish with a
condition of almost total procedural and institutional flux.
A similar situation prevailed in the Soviet Union under the rule of Stalin.
But Stalin took great trouble and some pride in having a constitution bearing
his name adopted in 1936. The Stalin constitution continued, together with
the Rules of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, to serve as the formal
framework of government until the ratification of a new, though rather
similar, constitution in 1977. The procedures established by these documents,
however, were not able to provide Soviet citizens and politicians with
reliable knowledge of the rules of the political process from one year to the
next or with guidance as to which institutions and practices they were to
consider fundamental or virtually sacrosanct and which they could safely
criticize. As a result, changes in the personnel and policies of the Soviet
Union and of similar Communist regimes were rarely brought about smoothly
and frequently required the use of violence.

CONSTITUTIONAL STABILITY
If one distinguishes between stability and stagnation on the one hand and
between flexibility and flux on the other, then one can consider those
constitutional systems most successful that combine procedural stability with
substantive flexibility—that is, that preserve the same general rules of
political procedure from one generation to the next while at the same time
facilitating adaptation to changing circumstances. By reference to such
criteria, those written constitutions have achieved the greatest success that
are comparatively short; that confine themselves in the main to matters of
procedure (including their own amendment) rather than matters of substance;
that, to the extent that they contain substantive provisions at all, keep these
rather vague and generalized; and that contain procedures that are congruent
with popular political experience and know-how. These general
characteristics appear to be more important in making for stability than such
particular arrangements as the relations between various organs and levels of
government or the powers, functions, and terms of tenure of different officers
of state.
There is little evidence to support the thesis that a high level of citizen
participation necessarily contributes to the stability of constitutional
government. On the contrary, the English political economist Walter Bagehot,
who in 1867 wrote a classic analysis of the English constitution (The
English Constitution), stressed the “deferential” character of the English
people, who were quite happy to leave government in the hands of the
governing class.
Much more important than formal citizen behaviour, such as electoral
participation, are informal attitudes and practices and the extent to which
they are congruent with the formal prescriptions and proscriptions of the
constitution itself. Constitutional government cannot survive effectively in
situations in which the constitution prescribes a pattern of behaviour or of
conducting affairs that is alien to the customs and way of thinking of the
people. When, as happened in many developing countries in the decades after
World War II, a new and alien kind of constitutional democracy is imposed
or adopted, a gap may soon develop between constitutionally prescribed and
actual governmental practice. This in turn renders the government susceptible
to attack by opposition groups. Such attack is especially easy to mount in
situations in which a constitution has a heavy and detailed substantive
content, when, for example, it guarantees the right to gainful employment or
the right to a university education for all qualified candidates. In the event of
the government being unable to fulfill its commitment, the opposition is able
to call the constitution a mere scrap of paper and to demand its improvement
or even its complete replacement. Such tactics often have succeeded, but they
ignore the dual strategic function of the constitution. It is meant not only to
arrange the offices of the state, in Aristotle’s sense, but also to state the goals
toward which the authors and ratifiers of the constitution want their
community to move.

THE PRACTICE OF
CONSTITUTIONAL GOVERNMENT
Constitutional government as a political system has roots in Great Britain
before spreading across the globe.

GREAT BRITAIN
It is accepted constitutional theory that Parliament (the House of Commons
and the House of Lords acting with the assent of the monarch) can do
anything it wants to, including abolish itself. The interesting aspect of British
government is that, despite the absence of restraints such as judicial review,
acts that would be considered unconstitutional in the presence of a written
constitution are attempted very rarely, certainly less often than in the United
States.
 Queen Elizabeth II at the opening of Parliament, May 8, 2013.

The locus of power in the English constitution shifted gradually as a

result of changes in the groups whose consent the government required in
order to be effective. In feudal times, the consent of the great landowning
noblemen was needed. Later, the cooperation of commoners willing to grant
revenue to the crown—that is, to pay taxes—was sought. The crown itself,
meanwhile, was increasingly institutionalized, and the distinction was drawn
ever more clearly between the private and public capacities of the king.
During the course of the 18th century, effective government passed more and
more into the hands of the king’s first minister and his cabinet, all of them
members of one of the two houses of Parliament. Before this development,
the king’s ministers depended upon their royal master’s confidence to
continue in office. Henceforward they depended upon the confidence of the
House of Lords and especially the House of Commons, which had to vote the
money without which the king’s government could not be carried on. In this
way the parlay that was originally between the monarch and the houses of
Parliament was now struck between the ministry and its supporters, on the
one hand, and opposing members of Parliament, on the other. Parliamentary
factions were slowly consolidated into parliamentary parties, and these
parties reached out for support into the population at large by means of the
franchise, which was repeatedly enlarged in the course of the 19th century
and eventually extended to women and then to 18-year-olds in the 20th.
When a prime minister loses a vote of confidence in the House of
Commons, he can either resign to let the leader of the Opposition form a new
government or ask the monarch to dissolve Parliament and call for new
elections. As a result of the strong party discipline that developed in the 20th
century, prime ministers generally do not lose votes of confidence any more,
and they call for new elections at the politically most favourable moment.
According to an act of Parliament, elections must be held at least every five
years—but another act of Parliament can change or suspend this apparently
“constitutional” provision, as was done during World War II, when the life of
the incumbent House of Commons was extended until the defeat of Germany.
Similarly, relations between, and the relative powers of, the House of Lords
and the House of Commons have been repeatedly redefined to the
disadvantage of the House of Lords by acts of Parliament, to such an extent
that the Lords retain only a weak suspensory veto. All such fundamental
constitutional changes have occurred either informally and without any kind
of legislation at all or as a result of the same legislative procedures
employed to pass any other ordinary circumstantial bill.

UNITED STATES
The U.S. Constitution is not only replete with phrases taken from the British
constitutional vocabulary, but in several respects, it also represents a
codification of its authors’ understanding of the English constitution, to which
they added ingenious federalist inventions and the formal amending
procedure itself. Despite the availability of this procedure, however, many if
not most of the fundamental changes in American constitutional practice have
not been effected by formal amendments. The Constitution still does not
mention political parties or the president’s cabinet. Nor was the Constitution
changed in order to bring about or to sanction the fundamentally altered
relations between the executive and the Congress, between the Senate and the
House, and between the judiciary, the legislature, and the executive.
The presence of a constitutional document, however, has made American
politics more consciously “constitutionalist,” at least in the sense that
politicians in the United States take more frequent recourse than their British
counterparts to legalistic argumentation and to actual constitutional litigation.
The United States, moreover, is denied the kind of flexibility illustrated by
the postponement of British parliamentary elections during World War II
since the Constitution explicitly provides the dates for congressional and
presidential elections. It is one of the remarkable facts of American
constitutional history that the constitutional timetable for elections has
always been observed, even during external war and the Civil War of the
19th century.

EUROPE
France, Germany, and Italy, as well as most non-European countries
influenced by continental concepts of constitutionalism, have no record of
unbroken constitutional fidelity similar to that found in Britain and the United
States. Because of the highly substantive and ideological content of most
French constitutions, the best way to change them has been to replace them
altogether with a new, ideologically different document. Only the constitution
of the Third Republic (established in 1870) was exceptional in this respect,
since it consisted of very short, highly procedural organic laws, which
served France well for 70 years, until the German invasion of 1940.
The main political problem attributed to the constitution of the Third
Republic was the instability of cabinets. The negative majorities that voted
“no confidence” in a cabinet usually could not stay together for the positive
purpose of confirming a new cabinet. The constitution of the Fourth Republic
(1946–58) made the overthrow of governments by the National Assembly
more difficult. In fact, however, the life of the average cabinet in the Fourth
Republic was even shorter than in the Third, and French government became
virtually paralyzed when it had to deal with the problems raised by the
Algerian independence movement. To avert a military takeover, General de
Gaulle was given wide discretion in 1958 in the formulation of a new
constitution, which was overwhelmingly accepted in a referendum. The
constitution of the Fifth French Republic gives the president of the Republic
the power to dissolve Parliament and the means of circumventing a hostile
National Assembly through the referendum. Since 1958, French cabinets
have been very stable indeed, and the constitution proved resilient during the
student revolt and general strike of May 1968.
Germany, which was unified as a national state only in 1871, established
its first democratic constitution in 1919, after its defeat in World War I.
Although some of the greatest German jurists and social scientists of the time
participated in writing the Weimar Constitution, it has been adjudged a
failure. Political parties became highly fragmented, a phenomenon that was
explained partly by an extremely democratic electoral law (not a part of the
constitution) providing for proportional representation. Some of the parties
of the right, such as Hitler’s Nazis, and of the left, such as the Communists,
were opposed to the constitutional order and used violence in their efforts to
overthrow the Republic. To deal with these threats, the president used his
constitutional emergency powers under which he could suspend civil rights
in member states of the federal system. Several chancellors (the German
equivalent of a prime minister) stayed in office after the president had
dissolved a Parliament in which the chancellor lacked a supporting majority.
They continued to govern with the help of presidential emergency powers
and by legislating on the basis of powers previously delegated to them by
Parliament.

BRITISH DECOLONIZATION
AND EMERGING NATIONAL
CONSTITUTIONS
 The period 1957–62 was also the climax of decolonization. As early
as 1946–47, when Britain was granting independence to India and
states of the Middle East, the Attlee government sponsored the
Cohen–Caine plan for a new approach to West Africa as well. It
aimed at preparing tropical Africa for self-rule by gradually
transferring local authority from tribal chiefs to members of the
Western-educated elite. Accordingly, the Colonial Office drafted
elaborate constitutions, most of which had little relevance to real
conditions in countries that had no natural boundaries, no ethnic unity
or sense of nationalism, and no civic tradition. When the Gold Coast
(Ghana) elected the radical leader Kwame Nkrumah, who then
demanded immediate independence and got it in 1957, the British felt
unable to deny similar grants to neighbouring colonies. In 1959 the
Cabinet quietly decided to withdraw from Africa as soon as it won
reelection.
Most new African states had little more to support their
pretensions to nationhood than a paper constitution, a flag, and a
London-backed currency. Africa’s politicians invariably styled
themselves as charismatic leaders whose political and even spiritual
guidance was the prerequisite for progress. Many seized power,
which led to military unrest. By 1967 black Africa had suffered 64
attempted coups d’état, many born of tribal hatreds, and most Africans
had fewer political rights than under colonial rule.

When a new constitution was drafted for the Western zones of occupation
after World War II, every effort was made to correct those constitutional
errors to which the failure of the Weimar Republic was attributed. Under the
Basic Law of the Federal Republic of Germany, Parliament cannot delegate
its legislative function to the chancellor, and civil rights cannot be suspended
without continuous parliamentary surveillance. The president has been turned
into a figurehead on the model of the French presidents of the Third and
Fourth Republics, and Parliament cannot overthrow a chancellor and his
cabinet unless it first elects a successor with the vote of a majority of its
members. Negative majorities cannot paralyze government unless they can
agree on alternative policies and personnel. The extreme form of
proportional representation used before Hitler came to power was replaced
by a mixed electoral system under which half the members of the Bundestag
(the lower house of the legislature) are elected from party lists by
proportional representation, while the other half are elected in single
member constituencies. In order to benefit from proportional representation,
a party must obtain at least 5 percent of the votes cast. As a result, the
number of parties steadily contracted during the first two decades of the
Federal Republic and extremist parties were kept out of Parliament. Cabinets
have been very stable, and the provision for the “constructive vote of no
confidence” was invoked for the first time only in 1982.
Kwame Nkrumah, the first president of Ghana.
LATIN AMERICA, AFRICA, AND ASIA
The experience of constitutional government in continental Europe exerted
great influence on the newly independent former colonies of Europe in the
Middle East, Asia, and Africa. In the early years of their independence from
Spain, most Latin-American countries adopted constitutions similar to that of
the United States. But since they lacked the background that produced the
American Constitution, including English common law, most of their efforts
at constitutional engineering were unsuccessful.
In Asia and Africa and in the Caribbean, many former colonies of Great
Britain, such as India, Nigeria, Zambia, and Jamaica, have been
comparatively more successful in the operation of constitutional government
than former colonies of the continental European countries (e.g., Indonesia,
Congo, and Haiti). The British usually left a modified and simplified version
of their own constitution upon granting independence to their former subjects,
some of whom they had previously trained in the complicated operating
procedures of the British constitution. British parliamentary procedure
proved sufficiently adaptable to remain in use for some time after the
departure of the British themselves. France’s former colonies in Africa,
because they achieved independence after the founding of the Fifth Republic,
modeled their new constitutions upon General de Gaulle’s, partly because
this enhanced the power of the leaders under whom independence had been
achieved.
 CHAPTER NINE

INFLUENTIAL FIGURES IN
POLITICAL SCIENCE

T he thinkers and scholars discussed in this chapter have made

historically important contributions to the development of political
science.

CONFUCIUS
(551–479 BCE)
Confucius was born in Qufu in the small feudal state of Lu in what is now
Shandong province. His family name was Kong and his personal name Qiu,
but he is referred to as either Kongzi or Kongfuzi (Master Kong) throughout
Chinese history. Confucius had served in minor government posts managing
stables and keeping books for granaries before he married a woman of
similar background when he was 19. Confucius is known as the first teacher
in China who wanted to make education broadly available and who was
instrumental in establishing the art of teaching as a vocation. For Confucius
the primary function of education was to provide the proper way of training
exemplary persons (junzi), a process that involved constant self-
improvement and continuous social interaction.
 Confucius, China's most famous teacher, philosopher, and political theorist.

In his late 40s and early 50s Confucius served first as a magistrate, then
as an assistant minister of public works, and eventually as minister of justice
in the state of Lu. It is likely that he accompanied King Lu as his chief
minister on one of the diplomatic missions. Confucius’s political career was,
however, short-lived. His loyalty to the king alienated him from the power
holders of the time, the large Ji families, and his moral rectitude did not sit
well with the king’s inner circle, who enraptured the king with sensuous
delight. At 56, when he realized that his superiors were uninterested in his
policies, Confucius left the country in an attempt to find another feudal state
to which he could render his service. Despite his political frustration he was
accompanied by an expanding circle of students during this self-imposed
exile of almost 12 years. His reputation as a man of vision and mission
spread.
At the age of 67 he returned home to teach and to preserve his cherished
classical traditions by writing and editing. He died in 479 BCE, at the age of
73.

PLATO
(428/427–348/347 BCE)
Plato was an ancient Greek philosopher, student of Socrates (c. 470–399
BCE), teacher of Aristotle (384–322 BCE), and founder of the Academy, and
is best known as the author of philosophical works of unparalleled influence.
Plato’s family was aristocratic and distinguished: his father’s side claimed
descent from the god Poseidon, and his mother’s side was related to the
lawgiver Solon (c. 630–560 BCE). Plato as a young man was a member of
the circle around Socrates. The works of Plato commonly referred to as
“Socratic” represent the sort of thing the historical Socrates was doing. He
would challenge men who supposedly had expertise about some facet of
human excellence to give accounts of these matters—variously of courage,
piety, and so on, or at times of the whole of “virtue”—and they typically
failed to maintain their position. Resentment against Socrates grew, leading
ultimately to his trial and execution.
After the death of Socrates, Plato may have traveled extensively in
Greece, Italy, and Egypt. Plato, at Dion’s urging, apparently undertook to put
into practice the ideal of the “philosopher-king” (described in Plato's
dialogue the Republic) by educating Dionysius the Younger; the project was
not a success, and in the ensuing instability Dion was murdered. Plato’s
Academy, founded in the 380s, was the ultimate ancestor of the modern
university (hence the English term academic); an influential centre of
research and learning, it attracted many men of outstanding ability.
In the Republic, the character Socrates undertakes to show what Justice
is and why it is in each person’s best interest to be just. Socrates develops
the proposal that Justice in a city or an individual is the condition in which
each part performs the task that is proper to it; such an entity will have no
motivation to do unjust acts and will be free of internal conflict. The middle
books of the Republic contain a sketch of Plato’s views on knowledge and
reality and feature the famous figures of the Sun and the Cave, among others.

ARISTOTLE
(384–322 BCE)
Aristotle was an ancient Greek philosopher and scientist, one of the greatest
intellectual figures of Western history. He was the author of a philosophical
and scientific system that became the framework and vehicle for both
Christian Scholasticism and medieval Islamic philosophy.
Aristotle was born on the Chalcidic peninsula of Macedonia, in northern
Greece. He was a pupil and colleague of Plato’s for 20 years. When Plato
died about 348, Aristotle left Athens. He eventually became tutor to Philip
II’s 13-year-old son, the future Alexander the Great, though their relationship
cooled in later years. While Alexander was conquering Asia, Aristotle, now
50 years old, established his own school in a gymnasium known as the
Lyceum.
 Aristotle famously observed that "Man is a political animal": human
beings are creatures of flesh and blood, rubbing shoulders with each other in
cities and communities. Aristotle’s political studies combine observation and
theory. He and his students documented the constitutions of 158 states—one
of which, The Constitution of Athens, has survived on papyrus. Aristotle
asserts that all communities aim at some good. The state (polis), by which he
means a city-state such as Athens, is the highest kind of community, aiming at
the highest of goods. Government, Aristotle says, must be in the hands of one,
of a few, or of the many; and governments may govern for the general good or
for the good of the rulers. Government by a single person for the general
good is called monarchy; for private benefit, tyranny. Government by a
minority is aristocracy if it aims at the state’s best interest and oligarchy if it
benefits only the ruling minority. Popular government in the common interest
Aristotle calls polity; he reserves the word democracy for anarchic mob
rule.

KAUTILYA
(Flourished 300 BCE)
Kautilya was a Hindu statesman and philosopher who wrote a classic
treatise on polity, Artha-shastra (“The Science of Material Gain”), a
compilation of almost everything that had been written in India up to his time
regarding artha (property, economics, or material success).
He was born into a Brahman family and received his education at Taxila
(now in Pakistan). He is known to have had a knowledge of medicine and
astrology, and it is believed he was familiar with elements of Greek and
Persian learning introduced into India by Zoroastrians. Some authorities
believe he was a Zoroastrian or at least was strongly influenced by that
religion.
Kautilya became a counselor and adviser to Chandragupta (reigned c.
321–c. 297), founder of the Mauryan empire of northern India, but lived by
himself. He was instrumental in helping Chandragupta overthrow the
powerful Nanda dynasty at Pataliputra, in the Magadha region.
 Kautilya’s book came to be Chandragupta’s guide. Each of its 15 sections
deals with a phase of government, which Kautilya sums up as “the science of
punishment.” He openly advises the development of an elaborate spy system
reaching into all levels of society and encourages political and secret
assassination. Lost for centuries, the book was discovered in 1905.
Compared by many to Italian statesman and writer Niccolò Machiavelli
and by others to Aristotle and Plato, Kautilya is alternately condemned for
his ruthlessness and trickery and praised for his sound political wisdom and
knowledge of human nature. All authorities agree, however, that it was
mainly because of Kautilya that the Mauryan empire under Chandragupta and
later under Ashoka (reigned c. 265–c. 238) became a model of efficient
government.

IBN KHALDUN
(May 27, 1332– March 17, 1406)
Ibn Khaldun is considered the greatest Arab historian. He was born in Tunis
in 1332. At age 20, he was given a post at the court of Tunis, and served in
politics, though with some controversy. He was suspected of participating in
a rebellion and imprisoned. He once again returned to service, even being
sent to conclude a peace treaty with Pedro I of Castille, but yet again,
controversy followed him and he returned to Africa. During the next 10-year
period Ibn Khaldun served as prime minister and in several other
administrative capacities, led a punitive expedition, was robbed and stripped
by nomads, and spent some time “studying and teaching.”
 A monument of Arab historian Ibn Khaldun.

In 1375, craving solitude from the exhausting business of politics, Ibn

Khaldun took the most momentous step of his life: he sought refuge with the
tribe of Awlad ‘Arif, who lodged him and his family in the safety of a castle,
Qal’at ibn Salamah, near what is now the town of Frenda, Algeria. There he
spent four years, “free from all preoccupations,” and wrote his massive
masterpiece, the Muqaddimah, an introduction to history. It is difficult to
overstress Ibn Khaldun’s amazing originality. Muhsin Mahdi, a contemporary
Iraqi-American scholar, has shown how much his approach and fundamental
concepts owe to classical Islamic theology and philosophy, especially
Averroism. And, of course, he drew liberally on the historical information
accumulated by his predecessors and was doubtless influenced by their
judgments. But nothing in these sources or, indeed, in any known Greek or
Latin author can explain his deep insight into social phenomena, his firm
grasp of the links binding the innumerable and apparently unrelated events
that constitute the process of historical and social change.

NICCOLÒ MACHIAVELLI
(May 3, 1469–June 21, 1527)
Machiavelli was an Italian Renaissance political philosopher and statesman,
secretary of the Florentine republic, whose most famous work, The Prince
(Il Principe), brought him a reputation as an atheist and an immoral cynic.
Machiavelli’s family was wealthy and prominent, holding on occasion
Florence’s most important offices. His father, Bernardo, a doctor of laws,
was nevertheless among the family’s poorest members. At the age of 29,
Machiavelli became head of the second chancery (cancelleria), a post that
placed him in charge of the republic’s foreign affairs in subject territories.
During his tenure at the second chancery, Machiavelli persuaded
Florence's chief magistrate to reduce the city’s reliance on mercenary forces
by establishing a militia (1505), which Machiavelli subsequently organized.
He also undertook diplomatic and military missions to the court of France; to
Cesare Borgia (1475/76–1507), the son of Pope Alexander VI (reigned
1492–1503); to Pope Julius II (reigned 1503–13), Alexander’s successor; to
the court of Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I (reigned 1493–1519); and to
Pisa (1509 and 1511).
In 1512 the Florentine republic was overthrown and the gonfalonier
deposed by a Spanish army that Julius II had enlisted into his Holy League.
The Medici family returned to rule Florence, and Machiavelli, suspected of
conspiracy, was imprisoned, tortured, and sent into exile in 1513 to his
father’s small property in San Casciano, just south of Florence. There he
wrote his two major works, The Prince and Discourses on Livy, both of
which were published after his death. The former is ostensibly a book of
advice to princes regarding the best means of acquiring and maintaining
political power. For centuries it was regarded as dangerously wicked.

THOMAS HOBBES
(April 5, 1588–December 4, 1679)
Hobbes was an English philosopher, scientist, and historian, best known for
his political philosophy, especially as articulated in his masterpiece
Leviathan (1651). Hobbes viewed government primarily as a device for
ensuring collective security. Political authority is justified by a hypothetical
social contract among the many that vests in a sovereign person or entity the
responsibility for the safety and well-being of all. In metaphysics, Hobbes
defended materialism, the view that only material things are real. His
scientific writings present all observed phenomena as the effects of matter in
motion. Hobbes was not only a scientist in his own right but a great
systematizer of the scientific findings of his contemporaries, including
Galileo and Johannes Kepler. His enduring contribution is as a political
philosopher who justified wide-ranging government powers on the basis of
the self-interested consent of citizens.
Hobbes’s political views exerted a discernible influence on his work in
other fields, including historiography and legal theory. His political
philosophy is chiefly concerned with the way in which government must be
organized in order to avoid civil war. It therefore encompasses a view of the
typical causes of civil war, all of which are represented in Behemoth; or,
The Long Parliament (1679), his history of the English Civil Wars. Hobbes
produced the first English translation of Thucydides’ History of the
Peloponnesian War, which he thought contained important lessons for his
contemporaries regarding the excesses of democracy, the worst kind of
dilution of sovereign authority, in his view.
For nearly the whole of his adult life, Hobbes worked for different
branches of the wealthy and aristocratic Cavendish family. He served the
family and their associates as translator, traveling companion, keeper of
accounts, business representative, political adviser, and scientific
collaborator.
 Thomas Hobbes, English philosopher, scientist, and historian, best known for his political
philosophy.

JOHN LOCKE
(August 29, 1632–October 28, 1704)
Locke was an English philosopher whose works lie at the foundation of
modern philosophical empiricism and political liberalism. He was an
inspirer of both the European Enlightenment and the Constitution of the
United States. His philosophical thinking was close to that of the founders of
modern science, especially Robert Boyle, Sir Isaac Newton, and other
members of the Royal Society. His political thought was grounded in the
notion of a social contract between citizens and in the importance of
toleration, especially in matters of religion. Much of what he advocated in
the realm of politics was accepted in England after the Glorious Revolution
of 1688–89 and in the United States after the country’s declaration of
independence in 1776.
Locke’s family was sympathetic to Puritanism but remained within the
Church of England, a situation that coloured Locke’s later life and thinking.
Raised in Pensford, near Bristol, Locke was 10 years old at the start of the
English Civil Wars between the monarchy of Charles I and parliamentary
forces under the eventual leadership of Oliver Cromwell. After the first Civil
War ended in 1646, Locke attended Westminster School in London. The
curriculum of Westminster centred on Latin, Greek, Hebrew, Arabic,
mathematics, and geography. In 1650 Locke was elected a King’s Scholar, an
academic honour. Locke’s philosophies led him to a dual career as a
physician and philosopher. He became a fellow of the Royal Society where
he conducted scientific research. His most important philosophical work, An
Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1689) began at a meeting with
friends, probably in 1671.
Locke’s political philosophy was guided by his deeply held religious
commitments. Throughout his life he accepted the existence of a creating God
and the notion that all humans are God’s servants in virtue of that
relationship. The essentially Protestant Christian framework of Locke’s
philosophy meant that his attitude toward Roman Catholicism would always
be hostile. He rejected the claim of papal infallibility (how could it ever be
proved?), and he feared the political dimensions of Catholicism as a threat to
English autonomy, especially after Louis XIV in 1685 revoked the Edict of
Nantes, which had granted religious liberty to the Protestant Huguenots.

JEAN-JACQUES ROUSSEAU
(June 28, 1717–July 2, 1778)
Rosseau was a Swiss-born philosopher, writer, and political theorist whose
treatises and novels inspired the leaders of the French Revolution and the
Romantic generation. Rousseau was the least academic of modern
philosophers and in many ways was the most influential. His thought marked
the end of the Age of Reason. He propelled political and ethical thinking into
new channels. His reforms revolutionized taste, first in music, then in the
other arts. He had a profound impact on people’s way of life; he taught
parents to take a new interest in their children and to educate them
differently; he furthered the expression of emotion rather than polite restraint
in friendship and love. He introduced the cult of religious sentiment among
people who had discarded religious dogma. He opened people’s eyes to the
beauties of nature, and he made liberty an object of almost universal
aspiration.
Rousseau was brought up by his father, who taught him to believe that the
city of his birth was a republic as splendid as Sparta or ancient Rome.
However, when he arrived in Paris at age 30, he joined a group of
intellectuals gathered round the great French Encyclopédie, an organ of
radical and anticlerical opinion. As part of what Rousseau called his
“reform,” or improvement of his own character, he began to look back at
some of the austere principles that he had learned as a child in the Calvinist
republic of Geneva. By the time his Lettre à d’Alembert sur les spectacles
(1758; Letter to Monsieur d’Alembert on the Theatre) appeared in print,
Rousseau had already left Paris to pursue a life closer to nature near
Montmorency.
 In his Discours sur l'origine de l'inegalité (1755; Discourse on the
Origin of Inequality), Rousseau suggests that original humans were not
social beings but entirely solitary, and to that extent he agrees with Hobbes’s
account of the state of nature. But in contrast to the English pessimist’s view
that human life in such a condition must have been “poor, nasty, brutish, and
short,” Rousseau claims that original humans were healthy, happy, good, and
free. Human vices, he argued, date from the time when societies were
formed. Civil society, as Rousseau describes it, comes into being to serve
two purposes: to provide peace for everyone and to ensure the right to
property for anyone lucky enough to have possessions. It is thus mostly to the
advantage of the rich, since it transforms their de facto ownership into
rightful ownership and keeps the poor dispossessed. Rousseau's Du Contrat
social (1762; The Social Contract) begins with the sensational opening
sentence: “Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains,” and proceeds
to argue that men need not be in chains. If a civil society could be based on a
genuine social contract, as opposed to the fraudulent social contract depicted
in the Discourse, people would receive in exchange for their independence a
better kind of freedom, namely true political, or republican, liberty.
 Jean-Jacques Rousseau, philosopher, writer, and political theorist.

MONTESQUIEU
(January 18, 1689–February 10, 1755)
Charles-Louis de Secondat, baron de La Brède et de Montesquieu was a
French political philosopher whose major work, The Spirit of Laws, was a
major contribution to political theory. His father, Jacques de Secondat,
belonged to an old military family of modest wealth. When his mother died in
1696, the barony of La Brède passed to Charles-Louis, then aged seven.
Educated first at home and then in the village, he was sent away to school in
1700, then continued his studies at the faculty of law at the University of
Bordeaux. Soon thereafter, he married a wealthy woman and became
financially and socially secure at the age of 27.
In 1721 he surprised all but a few close friends by publishing his Lettres
persanes (Persian Letters, 1722), in which he gave a brilliant satirical
portrait of French and particularly Parisian civilization, supposedly seen
through the eyes of two Persian travellers. It pokes fun at all social classes
and discusses, in its allegorical story of the Troglodytes, the theories of
Thomas Hobbes relating to the state of nature. It also makes an original, if
naive, contribution to the new science of demography, among other things.
The success of this book launched his political career and he took a seat at
the Académie Française in 1728. He later began to take more interest in
literature, publishing several political works, beginning with Considérations
sur les causes de la grandeur des Romains et de leur décadence (1734;
Reflections on the Causes of the Grandeur and Declension of the Romans,
1734). After the publication of the Considérations, he rested for a short time
and then, undismayed by failing eyesight, applied himself to this new and
immense task. He undertook an extensive program of reading in law, history,
economics, geography, and political theory, filling with his notes a large
number of volumes, of which only one survives, Geographica, tome II.
Subsequent works were De l’esprit des loix; ou, du rapport que les loix
doivent avoir avec la constitution de chaque gouvernement, les moeurs, le
climat, la religion, le commerce, etc. (The Spirit of Laws, 1750), one of the
great works in the history of political theory and in the history of
jurisprudence, and his final work, Essai sur le goût (Essay on Taste), with
many between them.

ADAM SMITH
(c. June 5, 1723–July 17, 1790)
Smith was a Scottish social philosopher and political economist. He was the
son by second marriage of Adam Smith, comptroller of customs at Kirkcaldy,
a small (population 1,500) but thriving fishing village near Edinburgh, and
Margaret Douglas, daughter of a substantial landowner. As an adult, owing to
his mother’s connections, Smith was able to give a series of public lectures
in Edinburgh—a form of education then much in vogue in the prevailing spirit
of “improvement.” The lectures, which ranged over a wide variety of
subjects from rhetoric to history and economics, made a deep impression on
some of Smith’s notable contemporaries. In 1751, at the age of 27, he was
appointed professor of logic at Glasgow, from which post he transferred in
1752 to the more remunerative professorship of moral philosophy.
In 1759 Smith published his first work, The Theory of Moral Sentiments.
Didactic, exhortative, and analytic by turns, it lays the psychological
foundation on which The Wealth of Nations was later to be built. In it Smith
described the principles of “human nature,” which, together with Hume and
the other leading philosophers of his time, he took as a universal and
unchanging datum from which social institutions, as well as social behaviour,
could be deduced. His second work, The Wealth of Nations is in fact a
continuation of the philosophical theme begun in The Theory of Moral
Sentiments. The ultimate problem to which Smith addresses himself is how
the inner struggle between the passions and the “impartial spectator”—
explicated in Moral Sentiments in terms of the single individual—works its
effects in the larger arena of history itself, both in the long-run evolution of
society and in terms of the immediate characteristics of the stage of history
typical of Smith’s own day.

EDMUND BURKE
(January 12, 1729–July 9, 1797)
Burke was a British statesman, parliamentary orator, and political thinker
prominent in public life from 1765 to about 1795 and important in the history
of political theory. He championed conservatism in opposition to Jacobinism
in Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790).
Burke, the son of a solicitor, entered Trinity College, Dublin, in 1744 and
moved to London in 1750 to begin his studies at the Middle Temple. After an
unsuccessful first venture into politics, Burke was appointed secretary in
1765 to the Marquess of Rockingham, leader of one of the Whig groups, the
largely liberal faction in Parliament, and he entered the House of Commons
that year. Burke soon took an active part in the domestic constitutional
controversy of George III’s reign. The main problem during the 18th century
was whether king or Parliament controlled the executive. Burke’s chief
comment on this issue is his pamphlet “Thoughts on the Cause of the Present
Discontents” (1770). He argued that George’s actions were against not the
letter but the spirit of the constitution. In 1774 Burke was elected a member
of Parliament for Bristol, then the second city of the kingdom and an open
constituency requiring a genuine election contest. He held this seat for six
years but failed to retain the confidence of his constituents.
A second great issue that confronted Burke in 1765 was the quarrel with
the American colonies. Britain’s imposition of the Stamp Act there in 1765,
along with other measures, provoked unrest and opposition, which soon
swelled into disobedience, conflict, and secession. Burke’s best-known
statements on this issue are two parliamentary speeches, “On American
Taxation” (1774) and “On Moving His Resolutions for Conciliation with the
Colonies” (1775), and “A Letter to…the Sheriffs of Bristol, on the Affairs of
America” (1777). British policy, he argued, had been both imprudent and
inconsistent, but above all legalistic and intransigent, in the assertion of
imperial rights. Authority must be exercised with respect for the temper of
those subject to it, if there was not to be collision of power and opinion. This
truth was being ignored in the imperial quarrel; it was absurd to treat
universal disobedience as criminal: the revolt of a whole people argued
serious misgovernment.
Burke also tried to address the issue of Irish independence, and the issue
of Indian independence, which he considered to be the larger task. Burke
concluded that the corrupt state of Indian government under British rule could
be remedied only if the vast patronage it was bound to dispose of was in the
hands neither of a company nor of the crown.
HENRI DE SAINT-SIMON
(October 17, 1760–May 19, 1825)
Saint-Simon was a French social theorist and one of the chief founders of
Christian socialism. Saint-Simon was born of an impoverished aristocratic
family. He entered military service at 17, and was sent to aid the American
colonies in their war against England. He remained in France during the
French Revolution, bought lands, but was imprisoned in the Palais de
Luxembourg, but when he emerged, he was very wealthy. Unfortunately he
was unable to hold on to his gains and turned to the study of science. His first
published work, Lettres d’un habitant de Genève à ses contemporains
(1803; “Letters of an Inhabitant of Geneva to His Contemporaries”), Saint-
Simon proposed that scientists take the place of priests in the social order.
He argued that the property owners who held political power could hope to
maintain themselves against the propertyless only by subsidizing the advance
of knowledge.
Throughout his life Saint-Simon devoted himself to a long series of
projects and publications through which he sought to win support for his
social ideas. As a thinker, Saint-Simon was deficient in system, clearness,
and coherence, but his influence on modern thought, especially in the social
sciences, is undeniable. Apart from the details of his socialist teachings, his
main ideas are simple and represented a reaction against the bloodletting of
the French Revolution and the militarism of Napoleon. Saint-Simon correctly
foresaw the industrialization of the world, and he believed that science and
technology would solve most of humanity’s problems.
Saint-Simon died in 1825, and by 1826 a movement supporting his ideas
had begun to grow. In July 1830 his disciples, the Saint-Simonians, issued a
proclamation demanding the ownership of goods in common, the abolition of
the right of inheritance, and the enfranchisement of women. Although the
movement fragmented and broke up, the Saint-Simonians had a pervasive
influence on the intellectual life of 19th-century Europe.

AUGUSTE COMTE
(January 19, 1798–September 5, 1857)
Comte was a French philosopher known as the founder of sociology and
positivism. His father, Louis Comte, a tax official, and his mother, Rosalie
Boyer, were strongly royalist and deeply sincere Roman Catholics. But their
sympathies were at odds with the republicanism and skepticism that swept
through France in the aftermath of the French Revolution. Comte resolved
these conflicts at an early age by rejecting Roman Catholicism and royalism
alike. Comte attended the École Polytechnique and read widely in
philosophy and history and was especially interested in those thinkers who
were beginning to discern and trace some order in the history of human
society. He met Henri de Saint-Simon in Paris and found that their ideas
were very similar, at least at first. In 1826 Comte began a series of lectures
on his “system of positive philosophy” for a private audience. In 1828/29 he
again took up his projected lecture series. This was so successfully
concluded that he redelivered it at the Royal Athenaeum during 1829–30.
The following 12 years were devoted to his publication (in six volumes) of
his philosophy in a work entitled Cours de philosophie positive (1830–42;
“Course of Positive Philosophy”; Eng. trans. The Positive Philosophy of
Auguste Comte).
His other major work was the Système de politique positive, 4 vol.
(1851–54; System of Positive Polity), in which he completed his formulation
of sociology. The entire work emphasized morality and moral progress as the
central preoccupation of human knowledge and effort and gave an account of
the polity, or political organization, that this required. Comte lived to see his
writings widely scrutinized throughout Europe. Many English intellectuals
were influenced by him, and they translated and promulgated his work. His
French devotees had also increased, and a large correspondence developed
with positivist societies throughout the world. Comte died of cancer in 1857.

KARL MARX
(May 5, 1818–March 14, 1883)
Karl Heinrich Marx was a revolutionary, sociologist, historian, and
economist. He published (with Friedrich Engels) Manifest der
Kommunistischen Partei (1848), commonly known as The Communist
Manifesto, the most celebrated pamphlet in the history of the socialist
movement. He also was the author of the movement’s most important book,
Das Kapital.
Karl Heinrich Marx was the oldest surviving boy of nine children. Both
his parents were Jewish but his father was baptized in the Evangelical
Established Church a year before Marx’s birth. Marx received a liberal
education, attended the University of Bonn and took courses in humanities,
then enrolled at the University of Berlin to study law and philosophy. In
1842, Marx began to contribute to a liberal newspaper and later became its
editor. After Prussian authorities suspended the publication, Marx agreed to
coedit with the liberal Hegelian Arnold Ruge a new review, the Deutsch-
französische Jahrbücher (“German-French Yearbooks”), which was to be
published in Paris. Though the yearbooks were short-lived, they led Marx to
befriend Friedrich Engels, who became his lifelong collaborator.
An unusual sequence of events led Marx and Engels to write their
pamphlet The Communist Manifesto. In June 1847 a secret society, the
League of the Just, composed mainly of emigrant German handicraftsmen,
met in London and decided to formulate a political program. They sent a
representative to Marx to ask him to join the league; Marx overcame his
doubts and, with Engels, joined the organization, which thereupon changed
its name to the Communist League and enacted a democratic constitution.
Entrusted with the task of composing their program, Marx and Engels worked
from the middle of December 1847 to the end of January 1848. The London
Communists were already impatiently threatening Marx with disciplinary
action when he sent them the manuscript; they promptly adopted it as their
manifesto.
In 1859 Marx published his first book on economic theory, Zur Kritik der
politischen Ökonomie (A Contribution to the Critique of Political
Economy). In its preface he again summarized his materialistic conception of
history, his theory that the course of history is dependent on economic
developments. Economic fortune however, was not Marx’s fate. He found
himself in political isolation and financial ruin for years depending on
handouts from Engel and his family. He had a brief resurgence during the
1870s, but after the death of his wife and eldest daughter, he died in London
in 1883. His other great work, Das Kapital was published after his death.
 Karl Marx worked with Friedrich Engels to publish The Communist Manifesto.

FRIEDRICH ENGELS
(November 28, 1820–August 5, 1895)
Engels was a German socialist philosopher, the closest collaborator of Karl
Marx in the foundation of modern communism. They coauthored The
Communist Manifesto (1848), and Engels edited the second and third
volumes of Das Kapital after Marx’s death. Engels grew up in a family with
moderately liberal political views. Though interested in poetry, Engels father
insisted that he work expanding the family business. He went to Bremen to
work in business and also exhibited a talent for journalism. He then
volunteered in an artillery regiment, learning military matters that became
one of his specialties.
In 1842 he met Moses Hess who converted him to communism. He
sometimes joined the group of philosophers Marx belonged to, and their
friendship was established when the two went on a 10-day visit to Paris.
Shortly after, Engels published Die Lage der arbeitenden Klasse in England
(1845; The Condition of the Working Class in England). Their first major
joint work was Die deutsche Ideologie (1845; The German Ideology),
which, however, was not published until more than 80 years later.
The revolutions of 1848, which were precipitated by the attempt of the
German states to throw off an authoritarian, almost feudal, political system
and replace it with a constitutional, representative form of government, was a
momentous event in the lives of Marx and Engels. It was their only
opportunity to participate directly in a revolution and to demonstrate their
flexibility as revolutionary tacticians with the aim of turning the revolution
into a communist victory. Their major tool was the newspaper Neue
Rheinische Zeitung, which Marx edited in Cologne with the able assistance
of Engels. After the failure of the revolution, Engels and Marx were reunited
in London, where they reorganized the Communist League and drafted
tactical directives for the communists in the belief that another revolution
would soon take place. But how to replace his depleted income soon became
Engels’s main problem. He also found himself giving financial support to
Marx.
After Marx’s death (1883), Engels served as the foremost authority on
Marx and Marxism. Aside from occasional writings on a variety of subjects
and introductions to new editions of Marx’s works, Engels completed
volumes 2 and 3 of Das Kapital (1885 and 1894) on the basis of Marx’s
uncompleted manuscripts and rough notes. Engels’s other two late
publications were the books Der Ursprung der Familie, des
Privateigenthums und des Staats (1884; The Origin of the Family, Private
Property and the State) and Ludwig Feuerbach und der Ausgang der
klassischen deutschen Philosophie (1888; Ludwig Feuerbach and the
Outcome of Classical German Philosophy).

ARTHUR F. BENTLEY
(October 16, 1870–May 21, 1957)
Arthur Fisher Bentley was an American political scientist and philosopher
known for his work in epistemology, logic, and linguistics and for his
contributions to the development of a behavioral methodology of political
science.
Bentley received a B.A. in 1892 and a Ph.D. in 1895 from Johns Hopkins
University and taught a seminar in sociology the following year at the
University of Chicago. He then engaged in reporting and editorial work for
the Times-Herald and Record-Herald of Chicago until 1910, when he retired
to Paoli, Ind., to manage his orchard and write. He was active in the Red
Cross during World War I and was Indiana leader of the presidential
campaign of Senator Robert M. La Follette of the Progressive Party in 1924.
In The Process of Government: A Study of Social Pressures (1908), his
most noted work, Bentley attempted to develop a methodology of behavioral
social-science research and urged concentration of study on overt human
activity, the raw material of the political process. He arranged political data
in terms of groups, interests, and pressures (a given activity might be viewed
as the activity of a group, the expression of an interest, or the exertion of
pressure). He did not attempt to formulate a general group theory and in his
later work was prepared to consider the individual as the focal point of
inquiry into the political process. Concerned more with methodology than
with theory, he saw the study of manifest behaviour as the way to more
profound understanding of human affairs. Together with the philosopher John
Dewey, Bentley developed a “transactional” view of social explanation that
went beyond the existing prescientific “self-action” and mechanistic
“interaction” approaches and postulated knowledge as a social phenomenon.
In The Process of Government Bentley dealt with the social nature of
language, in which all description and thought are to be found. Other works
by Bentley include Relativity in Man and Society (1926), Linguistic
Analysis of Mathematics (1932), Behavior, Knowledge, Fact (1935),
Knowing and the Known (1949, with John Dewey), and Inquiry into
Inquiries: Essays in Social Theory (1954).

HAROLD DWIGHT LASSWELL

(February 13, 1902–December 18, 1978)
Lasswell was an influential political scientist known for seminal studies of
power relations and of personality and politics and for other major
contributions to contemporary behavioral political science.
Lasswell received his bachelor’s degree in philosophy and economics in
1922 and his Ph.D. in 1926 from the University of Chicago, and he studied at
the Universities of London, Geneva, Paris, and Berlin during several
summers in the 1920s. He taught political science at the University of
Chicago (1922–38) and then served at the Washington School of Psychiatry
(1938–39) and was director of war communications research at the U.S.
Library of Congress (1939–45). After World War II, he went to Yale
University, where he served in various capacities He was also a professor of
law at John Jay College of the City University of New York and at Temple
University. He was a visiting lecturer at campuses throughout the world and
was a consultant to numerous U.S. government agencies.
Lasswell viewed political science as the study of changes in the
distribution of value patterns in society, and, because distribution depends on
power, the focal point of his analysis was power dynamics. He defined
values as desired goals and power as the ability to participate in decisions,
and he conceived political power as the ability to produce intended effects
on other people. In Politics: Who Gets What, When, How (1936)—a work
whose title later served as the standard lay definition of politics—he viewed
the elite as the primary holders of power, but in Power and Society: A
Framework for Political Inquiry (1950), written with Abraham Kaplan, the
discussion was broadened to include a general framework for political
inquiry that examined key analytic categories such as person, personality,
group, and culture.
His works on political psychology include Psychopathology and
Politics (1930), which seeks the means of channeling the desire for
domination to healthy ends; World Politics and Personal Insecurity (1935);
and Power and Personality (1948), which deals with the problem of power
seekers who sublimate their personal frustrations in power. In these and later
works, Lasswell moved toward a moralistic posture, calling for the social
and biological sciences to reorient themselves toward a science of social
policy that would serve the democratic will for justice. Other features of
political science that can be traced to Lasswell include systems theory,
functional and role analysis, and content analysis.
Some of his other major works include Propaganda Technique in the
World War (1927), World Revolutionary Propaganda (with Dorothy
Blumenstock, 1939), Politics Faces Economics (1946), The Policy
Sciences: Recent Developments in Scope and Method (with Daniel Lerner,
1951), and The Future of Political Science (1963).

V.O. KEY, JR.

(March 13, 1908–October 4, 1963)
Key was a U.S. political scientist known for his studies of the U.S. political
process and for his contributions to the development of a more empirical and
behavioral political science.
Educated at the University of Texas (B.A., 1929; M.A., 1930) and the
University of Chicago (Ph.D., 1934), Key joined the faculty of the University
of California at Los Angeles. In 1936–38 he served with the Social Science
Research Council and the National Resources Planning Board. He taught at
Johns Hopkins University (1938–49) with interruptions for government
service with the Bureau of the Budget during World War II. He taught at Yale
in 1949–51 and at Harvard University from 1951 until his death.
In 1942 Key published Politics, Parties, and Pressure Groups, in which
he analyzed the part played by organized interests in the political process.
His Southern Politics in State and Nation (1949) pioneered the use of
quantitative techniques and was a classic in regional political studies. In
Public Opinion and American Democracy (1961) he analyzed the link
between the changing patterns of public opinion and the governmental
system. He was vigorous in opposing the idea that voters’ preferences are
socially determined, and in his posthumous work, The Responsible
Electorate: Rationality in Presidential Voting 1936–60 (1966), he analyzed
public opinion data and electoral returns to show what he believed to be the
rationality of voters’ choices. Other works by Key include The Techniques
of Political Graft in the United States (1936), A Primer of Statistics for
Political Scientists (1954), and American State Politics: An Introduction
(1956). He served as president of the American Political Science
Association in 1958–59.

WILLIAM RIKER
(September 22, 1920–June 26, 1993)
William Harrison Riker was an American political scientist who popularized
the use of mathematical models, and in particular game theory, in the study of
political behaviour.
Riker graduated from Shortridge High School in Indianapolis in 1938 and
attended DePauw University in Greencastle (B.A., 1942). Because of his
country’s involvement in World War II, Riker decided to defer his graduate
studies and joined the Radio Corporation of America (later RCA
Corporation). He resumed his studies after the war, receiving a Ph.D. in
government from Harvard University in 1948. As a professor and department
chair at the University of Rochester, Riker transformed the political science
department into a flagship of positive political theory, a term he coined to
describe his approach, which aimed to produce empirically verifiable
theories of political behaviour. Riker and his department were so closely
connected that Riker’s approach came to be known as the Rochester School
of Political Science.
Riker introduced the use of formal modeling. Riker labeled his theory
“positive political theory,” because it endeavoured to produce only
statements that are falsifiable and can be empirically verified. Riker’s
scientific model of political behaviour is also known as a form of public
choice theory, or rational choice theory, because it relies on the assumption
that individuals base their decisions on their calculation of costs and benefits
and their desire to maximize the latter.
Riker also exercised a profound and lasting influence on the study of
federalism. In his Federalism: Origin, Operation, Significance (1964), he
rejected the idea that federalism in the United States originated in the desire
of the founders to promote a common good or to defend liberty against the
encroachment of central government. Riker defined federalism as a form of
political organization in which different levels of government (regional,
central) have authority over different issue areas. Riker also emphasized the
importance of the party system. The more the central parties control the
parties competing at the state or regional level, he believed, the more
centralized the federal system will be.
Riker’s other seminal publications include The Theory of Political
Coalitions (1962) and Liberalism Against Populism (1982). He served as
president of the Public Choice Society (1966), a group dedicated to the
advancement of public choice theory across disciplinary lines, and of the
American Political Science Association (1982–83). Riker was also one of
the first political scientists to be elected a member of the National Academy
of Sciences.
 American political scientist William Riker.

ROBERT A. DAHL
(December 17, 1915–February 5, 2014)
Robert Alan Dahl was an American political scientist and educator. A
leading theorist of political pluralism, Dahl stressed the role in politics
played by associations, groups, and organizations.
Dahl was a graduate of the University of Washington (A.B., 1936) and
obtained a Ph.D. from Yale University in 1940. He served in the U.S. Army
during World War II and was awarded the Bronze Star (with cluster) for
distinguished service. After the war, Dahl returned to Yale, where he taught
until 1986. He subsequently became Sterling Professor Emeritus of Political
Science and Senior Research Scientist Sociology.
In The Concept of Power (1957), his first major contribution to the field
of political science, Dahl developed an operational definition of power: “A
has power over B to the extent that he can get B to do something that B would
not otherwise do.” Dahl argued that his definition could be used to compare
the power of political actors in a given sphere—for instance, the influence of
different U.S. senators on questions of foreign policy.
In his best-known work, Who Governs?: Democracy and Power in an
American City (1961), a study of power dynamics in New Haven, Conn.,
Dahl argued that political power in the United States is pluralistic. He
introduced the term polyarchy to characterize American politics and other
political systems that are open, inclusive, and competitive (Polyarchy,
1971). Polyarchies are based on the principle of representative rather than
direct democracy and therefore constitute a form of minority rule, yet they are
also (imperfectly) democratized systems that limit the power of elite groups
through institutions such as regular and free elections.
Despite his critique of elite-power theory, Dahl was faulted after the
publication of Who Governs? for underestimating the importance of broad-
based civic participation. Later, in Democracy and Its Critics (1989), he
recognized the value of an active citizenry and associated polyarchy with
political rights such as freedom of expression and association.
Dahl’s other works include A Preface to Democratic Theory (1956);
After the Revolution?: Authority in a Good Society (1970); Size and
Democracy (1973), coauthored with Edward R. Tufte; A Preface to
Economic Democracy (1985); On Democracy (1998); and How Democratic
Is the American Constitution? (2001). He served as president of the
American Political Science Association (1966–67) and was a member of
numerous research organizations and learned societies, including the
National Academy of Sciences, the American Philosophical Society, the
American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the British Academy.
CONCLUSION
Changes in culture, whether slowly over decades or quickly due to a forcible
shift such as world war, and changes in technology or the environment have
forced political systems to be dynamic. Fundamental theories and ideas have
changed with the needs and desires of cultures, as power has crumbled as it
did at the end of the Russian Revolution, been slowly built as it was during
the heyday of the Roman empire, or hastily seized as in the aftermath of war.
Political philosophies have made great changes since the early days of Plato,
yet these early philosophies provide the foundation, framework, and lexicon
used to build on and discuss politics today.
A study of the great civilizations that ushered in the birth of political
science and political philosophy is essential to understanding how modern
political systems work and why they must be flexible in order to meet the
demands of an ever-changing society. It is also essential to the understanding
that politics can and should be changed by the will of the people.
 GLOSSARY
ABSOLUTISM The political doctrine and practice of unlimited,
centralized authority and absolute sovereignty, as vested especially in a
monarch or dictator.
APPORTIONMENT An act or result of dividing something among or
between people.
AUTHORITARIANISM The principle of blind submission to
authority, as opposed to individual freedom of thought and action.
BEHAVIORALISM The view that the subject matter of political sciece
should be limited to phenomena that are independently observable and
quantifiable.
BOND A loan contract issued by a government or corporation specifying
an obligation to return borrowed funds with interest.
BOURGEOISIE The middle class.
BUREAUCRACY A group of unelected people involved in running a
government. A system of government that operates under a complicated
set of rules.
CONSTITUENCIES Groups who support a particular politician or
political party. Voting districts.
DESPOTISM A system of rule by a person who has total power and who
often uses that power in cruel and unfair ways.
DICTATORSHIP Rule or control by one person with total power.
ENFEOFFED Invested with a fief, a large area of land ruled over by a
lord.
FEDERALIST A supporter of federal government, especially a supporter
of the U.S. Constitution.
OLIGARCHY Government or control by a small group of people.
PARTISAN A firm adherent of a political party, faction, cause, or person,
especially one exhibiting blind, prejudiced, and unreasoning allegiance.
PLEBISCITES Votes by which the people of a country or region express
their opinion for or against an important proposal.
PLURALIST One who believes that people of different social classes,
religions, or races should live together in a society.
PROLETARIAT The labouring class, especially the class of industrial
workers who lack their own means of production and hence sell their
labour to live.
REFERENDUM An event in which the people of a county or state vote
for or against a law that deals with a specific issue. A public vote on a
particular issue.
REGIME A form of government.
SOCIALISM A way of organizing a society in which major industries are
owned and controlled by the public rather than by individual people and
companies.
SOCIOLOGY The study of society, social institutions, and social
relationships.
STATISM The concentration of economic controls and planning in the
hands of a highly centralized government, often extending to government
ownership of industry.
TYRANNY A government in which all power belongs to one person.
 BIBLIOGRAPHY

CONSTITUTION
Current texts of more than 150 national constitutions are available in English
translation in Albert P. Blaustein and Gisbert H. Flanz (eds.), Constitutions
of the Countries of the World, 20 vol. (1971– ), issued in looseleaf format
and updated frequently. Another compendium of constitutions is Amos J.
Peaslee, Constitutions of Nations, rev. 3rd ed. by Dorothy Peaslee Xydis, 4
vol. in 7 (1965–70), and a rev. 4th ed. of vol. 1–2 (1974–85). Famous
constitutions, at the national as well as subnational levels, are collected in
Albert P. Blaustein and Jay A. Sigler (eds.), Constitutions That Made
History (1988). John J. Wuest and Manfred C. Vernon (eds.), New Source
Book in Major European Governments (1966), provides excerpts of
constitutional documents of the major governments in Europe.
An intellectual overview is provided by A.V. Dicey, Introduction to the
Study of the Law of the Constitution, 10th ed. (1959, reissued 1985).
Aristotle’s classic work on politics is available as The Politics of Aristotle,
trans. and ed. by Ernest Barker (1946, reissued 1972); while more recent
classic works are collected in Ernest Barker (ed.), Social Contract: Essays
by Locke, Hume, and Rousseau (1947, reissued 1980). Robert R. Bowie and
Carl J. Friedrich (eds.), Studies in Federalism (1954), is another important
source. William S. Livingston, Federalism and Constitutional Change
(1956, reprinted 1974), stands as the best study of constitutional change.
Herbert J. Spiro, Government by Constitution: The Political Systems of
Democracy (1959), is a valuable study, while his Responsibility in
Government: Theory and Practice (1969) focuses on the related problems
of accountability and responsibility. Carl J. Friedrich, Constitutional
Government and Democracy: Theory and Practice in Europe and America,
4th ed. (1968), is a comprehensive treatment. Additional important works
include Ivor Jennings, Cabinet Government, 3rd ed. (1969); Edward
McWhinney, Judicial Review, 4th ed. (1969), and Constitution-Making:
Principles, Process, Practice (1981); and Jon Elster and Rune Slagstad
(eds.), Constitutionalism and Democracy (1988).
Walter Bagehot, The English Constitution (1867, reissued 1993),
remains a classic exposition. The best history of the origins of English
constitutionalism is Charles Howard McIlwain, The High Court of
Parliament and Its Supremacy: An Historical Essay on the Boundaries
Between Legislation and Adjudication in England (1910, reprinted 1979).
Francis Dunham Wormuth, The Origins of Modern Constitutionalism
(1949), is another useful work.
Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay, The Federalist
(1788), has been reissued many times and is indispensable for understanding
the origins of American constitutionalism. The basis of American
constitutionalism is ably traced in Donald S. Lutz, The Origins of American
Constitutionalism (1988); and David A.J. Richards, Foundations of
American Constitutionalism (1989). Discussions of the impact of the
American constitution upon the political process include Sarah Baumgartner
Thurow (ed.), Constitutionalism in America, vol. 3, Constitutionalism in
Perspective: The United States Constitution in Twentieth Century Politics
(1988); and Corwin & Peltason’s Understanding the Constitution, 13th ed.
by J.W. Peltason (1991).
Samuel H. Beer and Adam B. Ulam (eds.), Patterns of Government: The
Major Political Systems of Europe, 3rd ed. (1973), provides a useful
analysis. Studies of French constitutionalism include Stanley Hoffmann et al.,
In Search of France (1963), and Decline or Renewal?: France Since the
1930s (1974). Ralf Dahrendorf, Society and Democracy in Germany (1967,
reprinted 1992; originally published in German, 1965), is a sociological
account; it is complemented by Arnold J. Heidenheimer and Donald P.
Kommers, The Governments of Germany, 4th ed. (1975). The concept of
congruence between political and social patterns of authority is examined in
Harry Eckstein, Division and Cohesion in Democracy: A Study of Norway
(1966). Constitutionalism in the European Community is discussed in Vernon
Bogdanor (ed.), Constitutions in Democratic Politics (1988), on the
European Community. The impact of American constitutionalism upon other
nations is the topic of George Athan Billias (ed.), American
Constitutionalism Abroad: Selected Essays in Comparative Constitutional
History (1990).
Studies of constitutional development include Herbert J. Spiro (ed.),
Patterns of African Development: Five Comparisons (1967); B.O.
Nwabueze, Constitutionalism in the Emergent States (1973); Lawrence
Ward Beer (ed.), Constitutionalism in Asia: Asian Views of the American
Influence (1979); and William B. Simons (ed.), The Constitutions of the
Communist World (1980), still of historical interest. The potential role of
constitutions in resolving societal conflict is considered in Albert P.
Blaustein and Dana Blaustein Epstein, Resolving Language Conflicts: A
Study of the World’s Constitutions (1986). Douglas Greenberg et al. (eds.),
Constitutionalism and Democracy: Transitions in the Contemporary
World: The American Council of Learned Societies Comparative
Constitutionalism Papers (1993), offers an excellent compilation of studies
of constitutionalism after the recent transitions to democracy.

ELECTION
A classic English-language review of the history of elections is Charles
Seymour and Donald Paige Frary, How the World Votes: The Story of
Democratic Development in Elections, 2 vol. (1918). A readable,
comprehensive overview of electoral institutions is David M. Farrell,
Electoral Systems: A Comparative Introduction (2001). The impact of
electoral systems on party systems is analyzed in Douglas W. Rae, The
Political Consequences of Electoral Laws, rev. ed. (1971); Rein Taagepera
and Matthew Soberg Shugart, Seats and Votes: The Effects and
Determinants of Electoral Systems (1989, reissued 1991); and Arend
Lijphart et al., Electoral Systems and Party Systems: A Study of Twenty-
seven Democracies, 1945–1990 (1994). The significance for democratic
theory of electoral arrangements is considered in Richard S. Katz,
Democracy and Elections (1997). The development of mixed-member
electoral systems is the focus of Matthew Soberg Shugart and Martin P.
Wattenberg (eds.), Mixed-Member Electoral Systems: The Best of Both
Worlds? (2001).
 Analyses of referenda and direct democracy can be found in David B.
Magleby, Direct Legislation: Voting on Ballot Propositions in the United
States (1984); Thomas E. Cronin, Direct Democracy: The Politics of
Initiative, Referendum, and Recall (1989, reissued 1999); David Butler and
Austin Ranney (eds.), Referendums Around the World: The Growing Use of
Direct Democracy (1994); and Ian Budge, The New Challenge of Direct
Democracy (1996).
Classic perspectives on voting behaviour and electoral participation can
be found in Anthony Downs, An Economic Theory of Democracy (1957,
reissued 1965); Angus Campbell et al., The American Voter (1960, reprinted
1980); and Seymour M. Lipset and Stein Rokkan (eds.), Party Systems and
Voter Alignments: Cross-National Perspectives (1967). Other developments
in voting behaviour are discussed in Ivor Crewe and David Denver (eds.),
Electoral Change in Western Democracies: Patterns and Sources of
Electoral Volatility (1985); Stefano Bartolini and Peter Mair, Identity,
Competition and Electoral Availability: The Stabilisation of European
Electorates, 1885–1985 (1990); Mark N. Franklin et al., Electoral Change:
Responses to Evolving Social and Attitudinal Structures in Western
Countries (1992); Samuel L. Popkin, The Reasoning Voter: Communication
and Persuasion in Presidential Campaigns, 2nd ed. (1994); Warren E.
Miller and J. Merrill Shanks, The New American Voter (1996); Geoffrey
Evans (ed.), The End of Class Politics?: Class Voting in Comparative
Context (1999); and Samuel Merrill III and Bernard Grofman, A Unified
Theory of Voting: Directional and Proximity Spatial Models (1999).

LIBERALISM
The foundations of liberalism were laid in Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan
(1651); and John Locke, Two Treatises of Government (1690), especially the
second treatise. Other important contributions are Adam Smith, An Inquiry
into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (1776); Alexander
Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay, The Federalist (1788); Jeremy
Bentham, An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation
(1789); James Mill, An Essay on Government (1820, reissued 1955); Alexis
de Tocqueville, De la démocratie en Amérique (1835; Democracy in
America, 1835); John Stuart Mill, On Liberty (1859), Considerations on
Representative Government (1861, reprinted 1991), and The Subjection of
Women (1869, reissued 1997); and Thomas Hill Green, “Lectures on the
Principles of Political Obligation,” in R.L. Nettleship (ed.), Works of
Thomas Hill Green, vol. 2, Philosophical Works (1886, reprinted 1997; also
reissued separately as Lectures on the Principles of Political Obligation
and Other Writings, ed. by Paul Harris and John Morrow, 1986).
Classic works of the 20th century include L.T. Hobhouse, Liberalism
(1911); John Maynard Keynes, The General Theory of Employment,
Interest, and Money (1936); and F.A. Hayek, The Road to Serfdom (1944),
and The Constitution of Liberty (1960).
General studies of liberalism include Guido de Ruggiero, The History of
European Liberalism (1927, reprinted 1981; originally published in Italian,
1925); Robert Denoon Cumming, Human Nature and History: A Study of the
Development of Liberal Political Thought (1969); Louis Hartz, The Liberal
Tradition in America: An Interpretation of American Political Thought
Since the Revolution (1955, reprinted 1991); Kenneth R. Minogue, The
Liberal Mind (1963, reissued 2000); Eldon J. Eisenach, Two Worlds of
Liberalism: Religion and Politics in Hobbes, Locke, and Mill (1981);
Thomas A. Spragens, Jr., The Irony of Liberal Reason (1981); Knud
Haakonssen (ed.), Traditions of Liberalism (1988); John Gray, Beyond the
New Right: Markets, Government, and the Common Environment (1993),
and The Two Faces of Liberalism (2000); and Charles K. Rowley (ed.), The
Political Economy of the Minimal State (1996).
The most influential works in contemporary liberal political philosophy
are John Rawls, A Theory of Justice, rev. ed. (1999), and Political
Liberalism, expanded ed. (2005), supplemented by Justice as Fairness: A
Restatement, ed. by Erin Kelly (2001); and Robert Nozick, Anarchy, State,
and Utopia (1974, reissued 2003). Accounts of liberalism as a doctrine that
is neutral with regard to conceptions of the good include Bruce A. Ackerman,
Social Justice in the Liberal State (1980); Ronald Dworkin, Taking Rights
Seriously (1977); and Charles E. Larmore, Patterns of Moral Complexity
(1987). Criticism of this view is offered in Joseph Raz, The Morality of
Freedom (1986); William A. Galston, Liberal Purposes: Goods, Virtues,
and Diversity in the Liberal State (1991); and Michael J. Sandel,
Liberalism and the Limits of Justice, 2nd ed. (1998). Susan Moller Okin,
Justice, Gender, and the Family (1989), is a clear statement of liberal
feminism.

POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY
George Holland Sabine, A History of Political Theory, 4th ed., rev. by
Thomas Landon Thorson (1973), provides a comprehensive survey. William
Archibald Dunning, A History of Political Theories, 3 vol. (1902–20,
reissued 1936–38), is still valuable. Also of interest is K.R. Popper, The
Open Society and Its Enemies, 5th ed., rev., 2 vol. (1966). Additional
surveys that will be useful include Leo Strauss and Joseph Cropsey (eds.),
History of Political Philosophy, 2nd ed. (1972, reprinted 1981); Leo Rauch,
The Political Animal: Studies in Political Philosophy from Machiavelli to
Marx (1981); and Anthony Pagden (ed.), The Languages of Political Theory
in Early-Modern Europe (1987). Ernest Barker, Principles of Social &
Political Theory (1951, reissued 1980), analyzes essential problems. Other
important works are John Bowle, Politics and Opinion in the Nineteenth
Century (1954, reissued 1966); William Ebenstein, Modern Political
Thought: The Great Issues, 2nd ed. (1960); Harold D. Lasswell, The Future
of Political Science (1962, reissued 1974); and Joseph Cropsey, Political
Philosophy and the Issues of Politics (1977, reissued 1980).

POLITICAL SCIENCE
Works of classical political philosophy contain vast and valuable insights
that influence current scholars whether they are aware of them or not.
Aristotle’s Politics and Machiavelli’s The Prince must be counted as the
discipline’s founding classics. The intellectual basis for modern democracy
can be found in John Locke, Two Treatises on Civil Government (1690). The
foundation for studies of political culture is Alexis de Tocqueville,
Democracy in America (1835–40). Weber’s work is well summarized in
H.H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills (eds.), From Max Weber: Essays in
Sociology (1946, reprinted 1998); and in Reinhard Bendix, Max Weber: An
Intellectual Portrait (1960, reissued 1998).
 A critical overview of 20th-century developments is Karl W. Deutsch,
Andrei S. Markovits, and John Platt (eds.), Advances in the Social Sciences,
1900–1980: What, Who, Where, How (1986). The view that political
science has too closely aped the natural sciences is presented by David
Ricci, The Tragedy of Political Science: Politics, Scholarship, and
Democracy (1984, reissued 1987).
There are few modern classics, but among those considered
indispensable are Joseph Schumpeter, Capitalism, Socialism and
Democracy, 6th ed. (1987); E.E. Schattschneider, The Semisovereign
People: A Realist’s View of Democracy in America (1960, reissued 1988);
and V.O. Key, Politics, Parties and Pressure Groups, 5th ed. (1964), and
The Responsible Electorate (1966, reissued 1968). Modern political theory,
including rational choice theory, owes much to Mancur Olson, The Logic of
Collective Action: Public Goods and the Theory of Groups (1968, reissued
1995). Samuel P. Huntington has been a major force in post-World War II
political science, especially his Political Order in Changing Societies
(1968) and The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order
(1996). Robert A. Dahl, Modern Political Analysis, 5th ed. (1991), is an
excellent guide to the renowned political scientist’s views. Seymour Martin
Lipset, Political Man: The Social Bases of Politics (1960), is a prime
example of the behavioral approach, and his American Exceptionalism: A
Double-Edged Sword (1996) illustrates the historical-cultural approach. The
historical-cultural perspective is also the focus of Robert Putnam, Making
Democracy Work: Civic Traditions in Modern Italy (1993), and Bowling
Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community (2001).
Introductory works on comparative politics include Ruth Lane, The Art of
Comparative Politics (1996); Arend Lijphart, Electoral Systems and Party
Systems: A Study of Twenty-seven Democracies, 1945–1990 (1994); B. Guy
Peters, Comparative Politics: Theory and Method (1998); Michael G.
Roskin, Countries and Concepts: Politics, Geography, and Culture, 8th ed.
(2004); and Alfred Stepan, Arguing Comparative Politics (2001).
An excellent overview of the field of international relations is James E.
Dougherty and Robert L. Pfaltzgraff, Jr., Contending Theories of
International Relations, 5th ed. (2001). A critical and philosophical
overview is Raymond Aron, Peace and War: A Theory of International
Relations (1973, reprinted 1981; originally published in French, 1962). The
realist approach in international relations is presented in Hans J.
Morgenthau, Politics Among Nations: The Struggle for Power and Peace
(1948); and in Henry Kissinger, Diplomacy (1994).

PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION
The most comprehensive treatment of public administration is Andrew
Dunsire, Administration: The Word and the Science (1973, reprinted 1981).
Included among the classics in the field are Frederick Winslow Taylor, The
Principles of Scientific Management (1911), available in numerous later
editions; Henri Fayol, General and Industrial Management, rev. ed. (1984;
originally published in French, 1917); and Max Weber, Economy and
Society: An Outline of Interpretive Sociology, edited by Guenther Roth and
Claus Wittich, 2 vol. (1978; originally published in German, 4th rev. ed.,
1956). Marshall W. Meyer, Change in Public Bureaucracies (1979), is an
important quantitative study of the process of change; and E.N. Gladden, A
History of Public Administration, 2 vol. (1972), is an informative survey of
developments from the 11th century to the present day. For further study,
useful information can be found in Jay M. Shafritz, The Facts on File
Dictionary of Public Administration (1985); and also in Robert D.
Miewald, The Bureaucratic State: An Annotated Bibliography (1984).
The traditional approach to public administration and its principles are
set forth in Luther H. Gulick and L. Urwick (eds.), Papers on the Science of
Administration (1937, reprinted 1987); and L. Urwick, The Elements of
Administration, 2nd ed. (1947). Challenges to the principles, as well as
efforts to build a theory of decision making as central to administration,
appear in Chester I. Barnard, The Functions of the Executive (1938,
reprinted 1979); Herbert A. Simon, Administrative Behaviour: A Study of
Decision-Making Processes in Administrative Organization, 2nd ed. (1957,
reissued 1965); and Herbert A. Simon, Donald W. Smithburg, and Victor A.
Thompson, Public Administration (1950, reprinted 1971). A thoughtful
review of the evolution of public administration in its relation to society is
provided in Dwight Waldo, The Administrative State: A Study of the
Political Theory of American Public Administration, 2nd ed. (1984). A
challenge to the traditional dichotomy between policy and administration is
expressed cogently in various works of Paul H. Appleby, most notably in his
Policy and Administration (1949, reprinted 1975). Later developments of
similar views are found in David B. Truman, The Governmental Process:
Political Interests and Public Opinion, 2nd ed. (1971); Emmette S.
Redford, Democracy in the Administrative State (1969); and Harold
Seidman and Robert Gilmour, Politics, Position and Power: From the
Positive to the Regulatory State, 4th ed. (1986). The nature and role of
cost–benefit analysis is discussed in Peter Self, Econocrats and the Policy
Process: The Politics and Philosophy of Cost-Benefit Analysis (1975). The
incremental approach to decision making is set out in Charles E. Lindblom,
The Intelligence of Democracy: Decision Making Through Mutual
Adjustment (1965); the problems involved in applying techniques such as
PPBS and Programme Analysis and Review are discussed in Aaron
Wildavsky, The Politics of the Budgetary Process, 4th ed. (1984); and
Andrew Gray and William I. Jenkins, Administrative Politics in British
Government (1985). The prophet of the human relations movement was Mary
Parker Follett, some of whose writings are published in Dynamic
Administration: The Collected Papers of Mary Parker Follett, new ed.,
edited by Elliot M. Fox and L. Urwick (1973, reissued 1982). The derivative
movement, now called organization development, is treated in Chris Argyris,
Integrating the Individual and the Organization (1964); Rensis Likert, New
Patterns of Management (1961, reprinted 1987); and Warren G. Bennis,
Organization Development: Its Nature, Origins, and Prospects (1969). A
wide-ranging discussion of issues in policy analysis is provided in Brian W.
Hogwood and Lewis A. Gunn, Policy Analysis for the Real World (1984). A
growing literature has developed since World War II in case studies of actual
administrative experience. Pioneered and led by the American Inter-
University Case Program, the use of cases has spread to many other
countries. An example of the use of cases in comparative analysis is
Frederick C. Mosher (ed.), Governmental Reorganizations: Cases and
Commentary (1967). John E. Rouse, Jr., Public Administration in American
Society: A Guide to Information Sources (1980), is a comprehensive
annotated bibliography.
On the administrative systems of different countries, see Brian Chapman,
The Profession of Government: The Public Service in Europe (1959,
reprinted 1980); F.F. Ridley (ed.), Specialists and Generalists: A
Comparative Study of the Professional Civil Servant at Home and Abroad
(1968); Fred W. Riggs, Administration in Developing Countries: The
Theory of Prismatic Society (1964); Morroe Berger, Bureaucracy and
Society in Modern Egypt: A Study of the Higher Civil Service (1957,
reissued 1969); and Joseph La Palombara (ed.), Bureaucracy and Political
Development, 2nd ed. (1967).

PUBLIC OPINION
Classic treatments of public opinion include William Alexander MacKinnon,
On the Rise, Progress and Present State of Public Opinion in Great
Britain, and Other Parts of the World (1828, reprinted 1971); James Bryce,
The American Commonwealth, 2 vol. (1888, reissued 1995); Albert V.
Dicey, Lectures on the Relation Between Law & Public Opinion in England
During the Nineteenth Century, 2nd ed. (1914, reissued 1985); Charles
Horton Cooley, Social Process (1918, reissued 1966); Walter Lippmann,
Public Opinion (1922, reissued 2004); William Albig, Modern Public
Opinion (1939, reissued 1956); and Leonard W. Doob, Public Opinion and
Propaganda, 2nd ed. (1966).
The history of public opinion is traced in Harold D. Lasswell, Daniel
Lerner, and Hans Speier (eds.), Propaganda and Communication in World
History, 3 vol. (1979); John G. Geer, From Tea Leaves to Opinion Polls: A
Theory of Democratic Leadership (1996); John R. Zaller, The Nature and
Origins of Mass Opinion (1992); and Slavko Splichal, Public Opinion:
Developments and Controversies in the Twentieth Century (1999).
Excellent summaries of polling theory and application are found in
Sherry Devereaux Ferguson, Researching the Public Opinion Environment:
Theories and Methods (2000); Frank Louis Rusciano et al., World Opinion
and the Emerging International Order (1998); Paul J. Lavrakas and
Michael W. Traugott, Election Polls, the News Media, and Democracy
(2000); and Richard Hodder-Williams, Public Opinion Polls and British
Politics (1970).
Defenses of the polling process by eminent practitioners, albeit with
suggestions about how the polls might be improved, are George Gallup and
Saul Forbes Rae, The Pulse of Democracy (1940, reissued 1968); George
Gallup, A Guide to Public Opinion Polls, 2nd ed. (1948); Frank Teer and
James D. Spence, Political Opinion Polls (1973); John Clemens, Polls,
Politics, and Populism (1983); Robert M. Worcester (ed.), Political
Opinion Polling: An International Review, 2nd ed. (2002); Leo Bogart,
Polls and the Awareness of Public Opinion, 2nd ed. (1988); Robert M.
Worcester, British Public Opinion (1991); Albert H. Cantril, The Opinion
Connection (1991); and Daniel Yankelovich, Coming to Public Judgment
(1991).
Academic critiques of polling include Lindsay Rogers, The Pollsters:
Public Opinion, Politics, and Democratic Leadership (1949); Michael
Wheeler, Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics: The Manipulation of Public
Opinion in America (1976); Benjamin Ginsberg, The Captive Public: How
Mass Opinion Promotes State Power (1986); Irving Crespi, The Public
Opinion Process: How the People Speak (1997); John Lukacs, Democracy
and Populism: Fear and Hatred (2005); and Hanno Hardt and Slavko
Splichal, trans. and eds., Ferdinand Tönnies on Public Opinion: Selections
and Analyses (2000).
Innovative and significant works using poll data include V.O. Key, Public
Opinion and American Democracy (1961); Ronald Inglehart, The Silent
Revolution: Changing Values and Political Styles Among Western Publics
(1977); Paul M. Sniderman, Richard A. Brody, and Phillip E. Tetlock,
Reasoning and Choice: Explorations in Political Psychology (1991); and
Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann, The Spiral of Silence: Public Opinion, Our
Social Skin, 2nd ed. (1993; originally published in German, 1980), which
tries to show how perceptions of public opinion themselves shape what
individuals say and do. Policy making at the legislative and executive levels
is discussed in Lawrence R. Jacobs, The Health of Nations: Public Opinion
and the Making of American and British Health Policy (1993); Lawrence
R. Jacobs and Robert Y. Shapiro, Politicians Don’t Pander: Political
Manipulation and the Loss of Democratic Responsiveness (2000); and
Geoff Mulgan, Connexity: Responsibility, Freedom, Business, and Power in
the New Century (1997).
The continuing problem of “rationality” is the focus of V.O. Key, The
Responsible Electorate: Rationality in Presidential Voting, 1936–1960
(1966); Graeme C. Moodie and Gerald Studdert-Kennedy, Opinions,
Publics, and Pressure Groups: An Essay on ‘Vox Populi’ and
Representative Government (1970); Benjamin I. Page, Choices and Echoes
in Presidential Elections: Rational Man and Electoral Democracy (1978);
and Benjamin I. Page and Robert Y. Shapiro, The Rational Public: Fifty
Years of Trends in Americans’ Policy Preferences (1992).
Classic studies of American elections, which reveal a great deal about
public opinion, include Bernard Berelson, Paul F. Lazarsfeld, and William
N. McPhee, Voting: A Study of Opinion Formation in a Presidential
Campaign (1954, reprinted 1986); Angus Campbell, Gerald Gurin, and
Warren E. Miller, The Voter Decides (1954, reprinted 1971); Angus
Campbell et al., The American Voter (1960, reprinted 1980); Paul F.
Lazarsfeld, Bernard Berelson, and Hazel Gaudet, The People’s Choice, 3rd
ed. (1968); and Martin P. Wattenberg, The Rise of Candidate-Centered
Politics: Presidential Elections of the 1980s (1991). Diffusion of
information and opinion leadership is discussed in Elihu Katz and Paul F.
Lazarsfeld, Personal Influence, 2nd ed. (2006); and Todd Gitlin, “Media
Sociology: The Dominant Paradigm,” Theory and Society, 6(2):205–253
(September 1978).
 INDEX

A
accountability, constitutional government and, 106–107
Adorno, Theodor, 18
Africa, constitutional government and, 118, 120
agricultural society, government and, 75–77
Almond, Gabriel, 23
American Revolution, 85
American Voter, The, 19
Aristotle, 1, 2, 3, 105, 125–126, 127
Asia, constitutional government and, 120–121

B
Bagehot, Walter, 13, 112
balloting, 70
Banfield, Edward, 23
behavioralism, 11, 13, 18–22, 23, 25, 38–39, 144, 145, 147
Bentley, Arthur F., 9, 144–145
Bertalanffy, Ludwig von, 25
Bodin, Jean, 5
Bowling Alone, 24
Bryce, James, 13
Burke, Edmund, 5, 137–138
Butler, David, 19
C
Chicago school, 9–11
China, public administration and, 101
Civic Culture, The, 23, 24
communism, 26, 29, 31, 38, 44, 87–88, 89, 100, 101, 111, 117, 140–141, 143
Comte, Auguste, 6, 10, 139–140
Confucius, 1, 25, 93, 122–124
constitutional change, constitutional government and, 110–111
constitutional government
features of, 105–113
practice of, 113–121
constitutionality, constitutional government and, 109–110
constitutional stability, constitutional government and, 112–113
constructivism, 42–43
Crozier, Michel, 18

D
Dahl, Robert A., 29, 149–151
democratic theory, 28–30
dependency theory, 16
Deutsch, Karl, 25
division of power, constitutional government and, 18
Djilas, Milovan, 12
Downs, Anthony, 27
Duverger, Maurice, 18

E
Easton, David, 25
elections
districting and apportionment, 65–67
participation in, 71–73
types of, 62–64
vote counting, 64–65
voting practices, 68–71, 74
Engels, Friedrich, 8, 11, 141, 143–144
England
constitutional government, 113–115
decolonization and national constitutions, 118
public administration and empire, 97–99
environment, public opinion and, 51
Eurobarometer, 20, 22
Europe, constitutional government and, 116–117, 119
executive elections, vote counting and, 65

F
fascism, 18, 87–88
feudalism, 80–81
foreign policy analysis, overview of, 40–41
France, public administration and, 96–97
French Revolution, 5, 85–86, 96

G
general-system perspective, 41–42
Gore, Al, 55, 68
government, 21st-century, 89–90
Greek city-states, 2, 78, 126
H
Hitler, Adolf, 12, 88, 106, 108, 111, 117, 119
Hobbes, Thomas, 4, 130, 135
Huntington, Samuel, 27, 29

I
Ibn Khaldun, 1, 127–128
imperialism, rise of, 86
interest groups, public opinion and, 53
international political economy, overview of, 43–45
international relations
early history of, 31–33
and integration, 38–39
modern, 39–45
post-World War I, 33–34
post-World War II, 34–38

J
Japan, public administration and, 101–102

K
Kaplan, Morton, 26
Kautilya, 1, 126–127
Key, V.O., Jr., 19, 46, 59, 147
Kjellén, Rudolf, 12

L
Lasswell, Harold Dwight, 10, 18, 25, 145–147
Latin America, constitutional government and, 120
legislative elections, vote counting and, 64
Lenin, Vladimir Ilich, 87–88
liberal democracy, 88–89
Lijphart, Arend, 29
Linz, Juan, 29
Lipset, Seymour, 24, 29
Locke, John, 4, 132–133

M
Machiavelli, Niccolò, 3–4, 127, 129
Marx, Karl, 8, 11, 12, 16, 31, 43, 44, 45, 88, 140–41, 143, 144
mass media, public opinion and, 51–53
Merriam, Charles, 10
Michels, Robert, 12
Middle Ages, government and, 79–81
monarchy
absolute, 83–84
constitutional, 84
Montesquieu, 5, 135–136
Moral Basis of a Backward Society, The, 23
Morgenthau, Hans, 11, 37, 38
Mosca, Gaetano, 12

N
nationalism, rise of, 86
nation-state, origins of, 81
neoliberalism, 42
neorealism, 42
North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), 35, 36

O
O’Donnell, Guillermo, 20
opinion leaders, public opinion and, 53–54
Ostrogorsky, Moisey, 13

P
Pareto, Vilfredo, 12
Parsons, Talcott, 25
Plato, 1–2, 23, 124–125, 127
Political Change in Britain, 20
political culture, overview of, 23–25
political polls, 53, 58, 60–61
political science, history of,
ancient, 1–3
early modern, 3–5
19th-century, 6–8
20th-century, 8–12, 15
Political System, The, 25
procedural stability, constitutional government and, 106
Prussia, public administration and, 95–96
public administration
and developing nations, 102–104
early systems, 91–92, 94–95
public opinion
formation of, 49–50
and government, 56–60
 influences, 51–56
polling, 53, 58, 60–61
theories of, 46–49
Putnam, Robert, 24

R
rational choice theory, 27–28
realism, postwar, 37–38
representation, constitutional government and, 107
Ricardo, David, 44, 45
Riker, William, 27–28, 148–149
Rokkan, Stein, 20
Roman Republic, 78–79
Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 4–5, 107, 133–134
Russia, public administration and, 100

S
Saint-Simon, Henri de, 6, 138–139
Siegfried, André, 13
Smith, Adam, 5, 44, 45, 136–137
Song dynasty, 92–93, 94
Stalin, Joseph, 11, 88, 106, 117
Stokes, Donald, 19
structure-institution debate, 42
Survey Research Center, 19
systems analysis, 12, 25–27

T
Tingsten, Herbert, 13
Tocqueville, Alexis de, 6–8, 12, 23, 24
transparency, constitutional government and, 108

U
United States
constitutional government and, 116
public administration and, 99–100

V
Valenzuela, Arturo, 16, 20
Verba, Sidney, 23
voter identification laws, 72
voting
compulsory, 70–71
corrupt practices, 71
influences on voting behaviour, 74
secret, 69–70

W
Weber, Max, 12, 15, 18
Wilson, Woodrow, 9, 31, 54