Taking its point of departure in the elitist paradigm and the much-discussed relationship between elite integration and stable democratic political systems, this article offers a typology of fragmented and integrated national elites and investigates the structure of the “consensually integrated” elite type. It is hypothesized that “consensually integrated” elites have largely similar structures consisting of personal interaction networks which are more inclusive and less class-based, and which contain more extensive and centralized connections among all major elite groups, than the plural elite, power elite or ruling class models of elite structure separately depict. Support for these hypotheses is found in a comparison of the network structures of two consensually integrated national elites, the American and Australian, as these structures are revealed by issue-based sociometric data taken from closely comparable elite samples and studies in the two countries.

This study offers an empirical description of the voting alignments that dominated the American Constitutional Convention as the delegates struggled to produce the final report of that historic assembly. Its conceptual roots are firmly planted in the theoretical traditions of Schattschneider on conflict and cleavage, and of Key, Burnham and Sundquist on critical realignment of the American party system. I demonstrate that dynamic processes analogous to Key's conception of “critical elections” at the macro-level of national politics can also be identified and analyzed at the micro-level of the constituent assembly. Therefore, I argue that one of the “mainsprings of American politics,” as Burnham calls the critical election phenomenon, permeates all levels of the American political system and not simply the national level of electoral mass politics. More specifically, this clear description of coalition alignment, operation and realignment in the Constitutional Convention, when informed and enlightened by the “critical realignment” model, greatly facilitates the more traditional discussion of debate, conflict and ultimate decision on the central issues before that body—representation, federalism, senatorial authority, and the nature of the executive in a republican government.

James Madison believed that political institutions are not the effects of conflicts among private groups in society. He traced political authority to human nature. It is the ultimate source of both public opinion and the motives which impel some individuals to hold government offices. Prudently contrived governmental institutions can moderate the countervailing tendencies arising from these two sources of authority, although they are necessarily in a state of continuing tension. Strict accountability of representatives to the whole range of diverse opinion in society is in conflict with the tendency of government to become autonomous. The latter tendency follows from government's using its power to establish the fiscal and military institutions required to wage war. By doing so a government may Creole a new political equilibrium which is masked by apparent adherence to established constitutional balance and is then independent of the balance of private property.

Like all languages, the language of American law can liberate or confine thinking. Its confining power is illustrated by the absence of the radical “group rights” claim in the Bakke litigation despite the prominence of that argument in the popular debate over affirmative discrimination. This absence establishes the limitations of the metaphor developed to give meaning to the concept “persons” in the equal protection context. While capable of investing the corporation with many of the attributes of “personhood” as defined by the Fourteenth Amendment, the metaphor makes absurd the claim of a racial group to exercise rights or privileges distinct from those of its members. This analysis illuminates the metaphorical structure of law language and concludes that the restricted range of metaphorical thinking in law weakens the law's capacity to mediate struggles over social goals.

The right to leave one's country, in conjunction with the right to change one's nationality, both of which are proclaimed in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948), are examined in historical and philosophical perspective and with special reference to their implications for a theory of citizenship. These rights are novel elements in enumerations of fundamental rights, at variance with traditional conceptions of state sovereignty and with the practice of many slates, past and present. They are also rights which have not frequently been defended, and have often been denied, by political and legal philosophers, many of whom have defended stronger ties of allegiance and obligations between the citizen and the state than is evidently implied by the human rights doctrine. These rights are clearly grounded in basic liberal values of individual liberty and voluntarism; however, they represent extensions of these values beyond what was usually acknowledged in the classical liberal tradition.

There are many similarities between Dewey and Marx, particularly the claim by each to have united theory and practice. But this article argues that the distance between the two remains great. Dewey denies what Marx affirms; namely, that partisanship performs a variety of positive functions in the movement towards a more morally adequate society and in the moral transformation of man. Against Marx, Dewey argues that the “rivalry of parties” must come under the control of the norms of critical inquiry which, Dewey believes, can also serve as the site of a more comprehensive and nonpartisan social interest. The article concludes that both Dewey and Marx are correct in what they have to say about partisanship, but in a more limited way than either would acknowledge. If partisanship is functional in the reconstruction of society, as Marx holds, and dysfunctional to the moral growth of the individual, as Dewey holds, then the controversy between liberal amelioration and radical politics is likely to persist.

This article is a comparative analysis of state income tax checkoff programs adopted between 1973 and 1979 that grew out of the Watergate era and were intended to reform methods of political finance in state elections. The descriptive characteristics of these programs are examined, their economic performance, factors contributing to economic success and program type, and the political behavior of taxpayers choosing whether to exercise the checkoff option and, if so, which suboptions they choose. Finally, a reform model based on recent works is offered as a basis for judging the performance of tax checkoffs. It is suggested that the performance of most checkoff programs falls considerably short of the expectations of the model.

Geographically based intermediary groups in cities, primarily the political party structure and community groups, can potentially affect the distribution of public services to neighborhoods in three ways. First, they can stimulate citizen demands for services, which urban bureaucracies transform into outputs; more demands yield more services. Second, urban service agencies may grant special consideration to demands mediated by the intermediary structures, producing more output per demand for mediated demands. Finally, parties and groups may intervene in neighborhoods to co-produce services, gaining more impact from agency efforts than in neighborhoods not represented by strong intermediary structures.

Using data on citizen complaints, agency outputs and service impacts in neighborhoods, this study of building code enforcement in Chicago finds that the party structure is efficacious at all three stages of the service provision process, but that groups are not effective at any stage.

Recent years have witnessed an increasing demand by women for political representation of women. This demand points the way toward a number of important problems for political research, many of which remain unsolved primarily because of the segregation of women's studies from the dominant concerns of political science. This discussion focuses on the problem of group interests and representation, drawing on and suggesting further research on public opinion, interest groups, social movements, international politics, political elites, and public policy.