This paper revisits the issue of economic voting in the context of the 1996 Presidential Election in Russia. The election was branded as a fundamental choice between capitalism and communism, yet voters were also grappling with a large crisis of personal finances: about one in two workers experienced nonpayments of wages at the time of the elections. The analysis exploits a rich nationally representative household panel dataset to identify the impact of wage arrears on the second-round election outcome. Wage arrears reduced the vote for the incumbent President Yeltsin among workers from around 65% to 49%, which amounts to a drop of 4% in the Yeltsin vote in the second round. Support for Yeltsin vote declined with the amount of wage arrears at the time of the vote and with wage arrears in 1995. Wage arrears led more voters to believe the government to be noncaring and to favor income restrictions for the rich. Political attitudes of working men changed more than those of working women.

Political theory's relationship with political science over the last 60 years has been fraught with ambiguity and weighed down by epistemological tensions in a manner that suggests an old and extremely prickly marriage. To some, political theory has been nothing less than the theoretical foundation of political science as a discipline—the conceptual and epistemological ground for each and every subfield, cherished and nurtured by tolerant, even ecumenical political science departments. To others, it has been merely a distraction, a needless normative diversion from the empirical responsibilities of hard social science by those who do not understand its rigors. As was perhaps more common in the first half of the twentieth century, some have continued to see in political science and political theory complementary perspectives that need and entail one another, two sides of how we establish and balance the human sciences, doing empirical science even as we assess its epistemological standards and methods. But others have regarded the two as preternaturally antagonistic. At the height of the behavioral revolution in the 1960s, a few self-styled “hardboiled” scientists dismissed theory altogether as little more than mythology: moralizing fairy tales dressed up as a kind of prescriptive philosophy that confounded facts and values. But the real crux of the debate between political theory and political science has been the relationship of political science to politics, as exemplified in historian Alfred A. Cobban's scathing comment excoriating political science as mostly a device for avoiding politics without achieving science“The political scientist, in so far as he wishes to remain a scientist, is limited to the study of techniques. A good deal of what is called political science, I must confess, seems, to me a device, invented by academic persons, avoiding that dangerous subject politics, without achieving science” (Cobban 1960, 240).. Cobban's challenge was taken up by many theorists, including Leo Strauss, whose blunt rebuke to the “new” political science suggesting that it was doing little more than fiddling while Rome was burning inaugurated a debate that in 1962 set this mostly fire-proof journal aflame“One may say (of the new political science),” wrote Strauss, “that it fiddles while Rome burns. It is excused by two facts: it does not know that it fiddles, and it does not know that Rome burns”(Strauss 1962, 327)..

“The relation of history to reason,” observes Jurgen Habermas, “remains constitutive for the discourse of modernity—for better or worse” (1987, 392). The worse of it is: the modern premise of reason's imbeddedness in history means that unless we can demonstrate—through an increasingly suspect “grand narrative” of “reason in history”—that history is fundamentally rational, we must accept that reason is fundamentally historical and that all our “knowledge” is merely temporary, local, and arbitrary.

To avoid this collapse into historical relativism, we must reassess the crucial premise: reason's historicity. Why is the modern mind so utterly captivated by the idea that every mind is a prisoner of its times? This question receives its most probing treatment in the work of Leo Strauss. His rediscovery of the theory of esotericism—which is the premodern understanding of the relation of reason to history—poses important new challenges to the whole historicist paradigm. It points the way to a “posthistoricist” relegitimation of reason through a return to Socratic rationalism.

Mediation is one of the most widespread techniques for preventing conflict and promoting cooperation. I examine the conditions under which mediators can facilitate cooperation by building trust between two parties. Assuming mediators have no intrinsic commitment to honesty, they can be credible trust builders in one-round interactions only if they care about the issue at stake, have a moderate ideal point, and do not find conflict to be too costly. A mediator that is solely interested in promoting cooperation, or one that is biased toward one side, will be ineffective. A desire to preserve a reputation for honesty can overcome a limited amount of bias or issue indifference.

This article revisits the critique of political science outlined in Bernard Crick's (1959) The American Science of Politics. Although this work inspired a number of subsequent critics of the discipline and survives in the footnotes of many historical accounts of political science, its contents are now largely overlooked or forgotten. Having reconstructed its main arguments, I explore the mixed critical response this work elicited on publication, and then seek to explain why its influence was so short-lived. An important reason for its inability to deflect the discipline from its chosen course lies in the very distinctive republican–liberal project that guided Crick's thinking in these years. A critical reengagement with this text is worthwhile, I argue, both because it illustrates the importance of the migration of ideas and thinkers to the tradition of political science critique, and because Crick provides a strikingly different kind of argument for methodological pluralism and political relevance than that which is offered today by critics of political science.

Robertson (2005) and Rakove (1996) argue that Roger Sherman was surprisingly influential at the Constitutional Convention. Using empirically estimated ideal points, we show that Sherman was a pivotal voter from a pivotal state. We also demonstrate that if the votes were tallied by individual delegates, rather than being grouped by the home state, then Sherman would have been less pivotal. This suggests that the voting procedures adopted at the Constitutional Convention may have affected Sherman's ability to get his interests enacted. Such institutions might have been more responsible than his legislative ability for making Sherman effective.

“A Pivotal Voter From a Pivotal State” argues that Roger Sherman played a central role at the Constitutional Convention, but it takes a different approach to explaining Sherman's role than “Madison's Opponents and Constitutional Design.” First, the two articles are trying to answer different questions; “A Pivotal Voter” is trying to explain roll call votes, whereas “Madison's Opponents” was trying to explain the Constitution's substantive design. Second, “A Pivotal Voter” assumes that delegates' preferences were fixed, and their votes sincere, but “Madison's Opponents” finds that delegates' preferences often were contingent and votes sometimes insincere. Third, “A Pivotal Voter” ignores the sequence of choices, whereas “Madison's Opponents” argues that sequence is crucial. Finally, “A Pivotal Voter” discounts delegates' efforts to manipulate rules and agendas, whereas “Madison's Opponents” emphasizes these efforts. Together, our findings suggest the value of diversity in political science and the need for more research on the art of political manipulation.

Now largely forgotten, Lindsay Rogers addressed public and scholarly audiences, crossed intradisciplinary boundaries, and wrote about developments in political science. His career illuminates key changes in American political science, including a turn away from traditional institutionalism and engagement as a public intellectual and toward quantification and the academy, and a separation of political theory from empirical research. Understanding why his work was left behind reveals important events and mechanisms that produced disciplinary change. Rogers's work was lost from the canon because of political and institutional developments in political science, including academic survey researchers' efforts to maintain polling's legitimacy after the 1948 election; efforts by proponents of the behavioral revolution that oriented the discipline toward hypothesis-testing but also made it more internally segmented; and the scholarly entrepreneurs' creation and cultivation of institutions, curricula, and networks of scholars, which developed and promulgated empirically oriented quantitative approaches.

In its evolution over the past century, mainstream political science has failed to take account of changes in the development of interpretive approaches to politics. Adherents of the dominant approaches to political inquiry have misunderstood the nature of meaning of social and political action and the import of that meaning for the explanation of political life. Or, to put it more sharply, its understanding of the nature and importance the meaning of political life and of interpretive political inquiry have stagnated, not evolved. As a consequence, although conventional empirical and rationalist modes of explanation capture many aspects of political life, they misunderstand or ignore other important political phenomena or important dimensions to politics. Hermeneutic modes of interpretative theory offer the prospect of a competing and/or complementary perspective on the explanation of politics. The prospects for a modern version of practical reason that would allow for a more engaged political science are available but not widely recognizedIt is appropriate here to make several points concerning terminology. The literal English translation of the German word “hermeneutics” is interpretation. In the modern world, the term was first applied in the human sciences in attempts to offer explanations of ambiguous and allegorical passages of the Bible and the Torah. In the twentieth century, the term has come to mean something more than that. The German term has been widely adopted for English use and refers to a specific approach to understanding and explaining in the social sciences and humanities. For present purposes, it refers to the attempt to explain social and political life in terms of the language and complex meaning of that political action for social and political actors. I elaborate on the nature of hermeneutic-interpretive explanation later in this essay. For the remainder of the essay, I use hermeneutic-interpretation to refer to those modes of interpretation that see distinctively human behavior and understanding as linguistically mediated. I use interpretation and interpretive theory in a more general sense, referring to any form of social science that emphasizes understanding the meaning that social behavior has for actors, whether or not that perspective emphasizes the centrality of language. I hope to make these distinctions clear in my account of the evolution of this perspective. The term “practical reason” borrows from, but is not identical with, Aristotle's discussion of phronesis in Book VI of the Nicomachean Ethics. There, Aristotle distinguishes between theoria, knowledge about those things that are not open to deliberation and human decision (e.g., the structure of the solar system) and phronesis, knowledge about those things that are subject to deliberation and intersubjective agreement, for example, how ought one to live one's life or what kind of constitution a society ought to have. In this respect, interpretive accounts, and hermeneutic interpretation in particular, emphasize the importance of public engagement with the political life under examination. For an argument from a somewhat different perspective that political science needs to become more publicly engaged, see Putnam (2003). The German term verstehen also found its way into Anglo-American social science lexicon. It refers to the interpretive understanding of the intended meaning and significance that an action has for an actor performing it..

Woodrow Wilson sought to establish a new kind of statesmanship for the American regime and a new science of politics. He intended the latter to support the former, so that the practicing politician and the studious academic would not talk past one another. His efforts to redirect the discipline away from a natural science orthodoxy and subdisciplinary fragmentation were largely ignored during his time because he failed to resolve the core disciplinary tension between political science and political power. Efforts similar to Wilson's have resurfaced periodically as a result, generating an ongoing contentiousness about the character of the discipline. We predict that the struggle over such fundamental matters will continue unabated, for that struggle is rooted in the very object of our studies.

The “policy scientist of democracy” was a model for engaged scholarship invented and embodied by Harold D. Lasswell. This disciplinary persona emerged in Lasswell's writings and wartime consultancies during the 1940s, well before he announced in his APSA presidential address, printed in the Review precisely 50 years ago, that political science was “the policy science par excellence.” The policy scientist of democracy knew all about the process of elite decision making, and he put his knowledge into practice by advising those in power, sharing in important decisions, and furthering the cause of dignity. Although Lasswell formulated this ambitious vision near the zenith of his influence, the discipline accorded the ideal—and Lasswell—a mixed reception. Some heralded the policy scientist of democracy; others observed a contradictory figure, at once positivist and value-laden, elitist and democratic, heroic and implausible. The conflicted response exemplifies Lasswell's legacy. The policy scientist of democracy was—and is—too demanding and too contradictory a hero. But the vital questions Lasswell grappled with still must be asked a century into the discipline's development: what is the role of the political scientist in a democratic society? Do political scientists have any obligation to inform or shape policy? Are there democratic values that political science should serve, and if so, what are they? Lasswell never satisfactorily answered these questions. But in asking and trying to answer them—in his writings and in his own career—he was guided by a profound and inspiring conviction: Political science has a unique ability, and even perhaps a special obligation, to engage with issues of democratic choice that fundamentally affect the life circumstances of citizens.

The Chicago School of Political Science, which emerged at the University of Chicago in the 1920s and 1930s, is widely known for its reconception of the study of politics as a scientific endeavor on the model of the natural sciences. Less attention has been devoted to the genesis of the school itself. In this article, we examine the scientific vision, faculty, curriculum, and supporting institutions of the Chicago School. The creation of the Chicago School, we find, required the construction of a faculty committed to its vision of the science of politics, the muster of resources to support efforts in research and education, and the formation of curriculum to educate students in its precepts and methods. Its success as an intellectual endeavor, we argue, depended not only on the articulation of the intellectual goals but also, crucially, on the confluence of disciplinary receptiveness, institutional opportunity, and entrepreneurial talent in support of a science of politics.

Among European émigré intellectuals who came to the United States between 1925 and 1940, a small group of prolific, influential scholars who received appointments at major colleges and universities helped to restore the comparative approach to the study of political systems. That approach had been dominant in the early years of the discipline but had been lost during its Americanization in the first quarter of the twentieth century. The teaching and writing of these scholars contributed to the formulation of theoretical frameworks designed to facilitate cross-national comparison. When the purview of comparative politics expanded in the 1950s and 1960s to include the developing areas, the advantages of multination comparisons became even more evident.

Roughly two decades after the first issue of the American Political Science Review, sampling theory emerged to encourage learning about the many from the few. Once social scientists had worked out the selection procedures to deal with large and far-flung human populations, the stage was set for the scientific study of citizen behavior in national elections, as initially demonstrated by George Gallup in predicting the 1936 presidential race. This development unleashed a growing torrent of literature, which by now is simply overwhelming. The many high points in this literature could scarcely be listed, much less abstracted, in the brief compass allowed this essay. So I must invoke some severe selection principles in order to proceed.

A review of party-related articles in major political science journals over the past century reveals an increase in the incidence of such articles during the behavioral revolution and a decline in the proportion of studies that view parties holistically or in their organizational aspects and an increase in research on mass and legislative behavior. The essay calls for scholars of American parties to merge empirical findings with the generalist and normative concerns of an earlier age, to assess the recent advent of parties as ideologically focused instruments of policymaking.

Ideology has been the subject of a surprising amount of attention during the last half of the twentieth century. Although it has been argued that the term has been “thoroughly muddied by diverse uses” (Converse 1964, 207), an empirical investigation of the pages of the Review reveals substantial convergence among political scientists over time on a core definition. This essay traces the use of the concept in the Review since its launch in 1906. It reveals changing fashions in the connotation of the term, but suggests an underlying agreement on the essential components—coherence, stability and contrast—and underlines the centrality of the concept of ideology in political science.

Although political scientists have long expressed skepticism about the prospects for experimental science, an analysis of the first hundred volumes of the American Political Science Review reveals that randomized experiments have grown in impact and prominence. We document how thinking about experimentation has evolved over the century, and demonstrate the growing influence of laboratory, survey, and field experiments. A number of experiments have transformed how political scientists think about causal relationships in specific substantive areas. There are limits to the kinds of questions that experiments can address, but experiments have made important contributions in an array of political science subfields.

James Russell and Quincy Wright suggested in the Review in 1933 that the danger of conflict could be diminished by looking within states to discern what contributes to the risk of war. Revolutions in game theory technology and political economy modeling are helping to advance those goals. The combination of non-cooperative game theory as an analytic tool and the assumptions of political economy models about leaders' domestic interests and incentives offer a different explanation of international relations from that suggested by realist theories and other state-centric viewpoints. Together with more macro-level theorizing we gain insights into what makes some polities more prone to international conflict than others. By adding the micro-level, game theoretic investigation of domestic factors to the analytic repertoire we have now supplemented the aspects of received wisdom that are consistent with the record of history with explanations for puzzling facts about conflict that no longer seem anomalous.

In this essay, I rely primarily on unpublished documents from the Rockefeller Foundation Archives as well as the annual reports of the Ford Foundation and the Social Science Research Council (SSRC) to show that rather than being in a torpor, political theory in the 1950s was a large and eclectic field, marked by contest and rapid change. I focus on the Rockefeller Foundation's policy making for its program in Legal and Political Philosophy (LAPP), the largest grant program for political theory in the 1950s, both to see how the Foundation justified the creation of the program and how it defined its scope. I argue that when faced with the task of settling on a working definition of “political theory” for the purpose of awarding grants, the Foundation's officers and the academics who assisted them opted, after prolonged debate, for an eclectic definition of political theory. I read the emergence of this eclectic definition of political theory, however, not as evidence of pacific pluralism but as an attempt to contain some of the new challenges to the field by incorporating them into it, albeit in a subordinate position.

We review the relevance of the international relations articles published in the first 100 years of the Review for American foreign policy. We define a spectrum of “policy relevance” and give a brief overview of the Review's changing relationship to American foreign policy as the journal, the profession, and the foreign policy process evolved over the last century. We then look at the Review's role in key periods in American foreign policy, focusing in particular on the example of the democratic peace literature. We conclude that although the content of the journal has moved away from early aspirations to near-term and direct policy relevance, the journal has evolved toward basic research that influences American foreign policies by affecting what scholars teach students, publish in policy journals, write in newspaper op-eds, say on the media, advise political leaders, and do when they are themselves in public office.