Large-scale complex research project designs are providing a new impetus to the elimination of subfield boundaries within political science. Major projects are taking advantage of the methodology and technology of contemporary social research to include comparisons among institutions, across cultural boundaries, and extending through time. As a consequence, traditionally narrow field and subfield concentrations on segments of the political process are giving way to intellectual interests that bring together hitherto separate concerns. The full potential for discipline-unifying research will, however, not be realized until there is a strengthening of the organizational infrastructures for research, a broadening of training in research design and administration, and an increase in funding for large-scale projects. The execution and subsequent intellectual exploitation of large research projects will carry additional problems that will be solved only with substantial changes in the workways of the political scientist, but those problems are greatly outweighed by the positive contribution that such research will make to the future of the discipline.

Georges Sorel was of course a critic of “citizenship” in the sense current then as now. But behind his ideal picture of industrial organization there lay a conception of citizenship which derived from an older tradition. This conception in turn modified the themes which Sorel drew from a second tradition, that of thought about “industry.” The result was a vision of industrial organization which displaced civil association by taking some of its typical features for itself. What is represented by notions such as the “myth of the general strike” is not, as some have held, a romantic reaction against modern organization but, on the contrary, a thoroughly modern doctrine of organization as the “sublimation” of civil life which continues to pose problems of relevance today.

The purpose of this article is to test the widely shared view that the experience of industrial democracy, the experience of direct decision making at places of work, necessarily leads to the enhancement of cooperative and egalitarian orientations among participants. Based on data collected through indepth interviews and questionnaires in Pacific-Northwest plywood cooperatives, the article argues that in market societies, such experiments in industrial democracy do not have the hypothesized results. Indeed, they seem to encourage the development of values most closely identified with classical liberalism or what MacPherson terms “possessive individualism.”

Carole Pateman (1970) argued that democratized industrial authority structures would require workers to develop precisely the skills and resources necessary for participation in political life beyond the workplace. She based her argument on a close analysis of classical democratic theory and the indirect empirical evidence available at the time concerning workplace-related political participation. Although a great deal of research in industrial psychology and sociology and organization behavior is available, none treats expressly political correlates of workplace democracy. Analysis of data from a new factory designed on the basis of semi-autonomous, self-managing work groups provides empirical evidence directly supporting Pateman. The analysis also results in empirically grounded scales that differentiate between work humanization and work democratization. The latter correlates significantly with a sense of political efficacy. Further research to support democratizing industrial authority structures seems warranted for a political science that would contribute to a more participatory politics.

As in Hobbes' view it is principally the capacity for speech that distinguishes men from even the social animals, so it is in verbal and doctrinal controversies that he usually finds the sources of conflict and sedition. Hobbes analyzes—in the hope of doing away with them—a variety of what he regards as abuses of language, such as metaphor, equivocation, eloquence, and absurdity, which are especially productive of political disorder. He also offers models and, in his own political philosophy, examples of the proper uses of language as science and counsel, which he believes are necessary to the establishment and governance of well-ordered commonwealths in the modern world, characterized as it is by widespread learning and disputatious habits. In the pursuance of his project, however, Hobbes himself is paradoxically forced to resort to the eloquence which he otherwise condemns, and his own observations on language provide grounds for doubts about the success of his enterprise.

Recent research has demonstrated that black Americans are far more politically active than whites of similar socioeconomic status. The difference has been related to black consciousness. Yet the reasons for this relationship have not been adequately explained. Starting with the work of Gurin and Gamson, this article theorizes that black consciousness contributes to political mistrust and a sense of internal political efficacy which in turn encourages policy-related participation. The relationship between the two attitudes and policy-related behavior is demonstrated to be conditional. The conditions favor blacks more than whites. What I shall call the Gamson-Gurin thesis is supported by data from Verba's and Nie's 1967 survey of the American public. The thesis, and its derivations, prove useful in clarifying the scope and nature of black participation in the American political process as well as helping us to understand how individuals in general select one mode of participation over another and how the choice varies by race and social class.

Over the past 25 years a number of conclusions concerning the development of political tolerance have come to be well accepted in the literature on political behavior. There are, however, two persisting problems with the studies that have generated these findings: they have relied on a content-biased measure of tolerance, and have failed to examine well specified models of the factors leading to tolerance. In this article we report the results of an analysis of the determinants of political tolerance using a content-controlled measure of tolerance and a more fully specified multivariate model. The parameters of the model are estimated from a national sample of the U.S. The results indicate the explanatory power of two political variables, the level of perceived threat and the commitment to general norms, and psychological sources of political tolerance. Social and demographic factors are found to have no direct effect and little indirect influence on the development of political tolerance.

Students of American political behavior have usually turned to “critical election” realignment theories to explain the dynamics of long-term change in the party system. These theories are problematic on both theoretical and empirical grounds. A theory that can account for change within the context of a stable electoral system is required. We propose a theory of issue evolution that explains normal partisan change, and illustrate the theory by examining the impact of racial issues on party identification. The theory looks to the evolution of new issues as the stimulus of partisan change and to the continuous replacement of the electorate as the mechanism through which such change is effected. In a comparison of three theoretical models of issue evolution, we conclude that racial desegregation has provoked a subtle but permanent change in the recruitment of new members of political parties.

Two hypotheses have received a great deal of attention from students of congressional elections. First, many analysts have concluded that an increase in the electoral value attached to incumbency accounts for the rise in incumbents' victory margins observed since the mid-sixties. Second, many scholars have attributed the decline in electoral turnover to the percentage increase in victory margins. Analyzing the electoral histories of 13 House cohorts (1952-76), this study reexamines these two hypotheses within the framework of a quasi-experimental design. The results presented here, in contrast to those of previous studies, cast doubt on the increased incumbency effect. Moreover, little relationship is found between an increase in electoral safety, as reflected by increased victory margins, and a decline in electoral turnover.

Public concerns about the social and political implications of energy choices have found expression in the nuclear debate. The Three Mile Island accident, in its complexity and far-reaching consequences, served to focus criticism of nuclear power that had been building up for a decade. It revealed with striking clarity that technology is a social concept to be understood in terms of social and political relationships if it is to be brought under public control. The ramifications of the accident revealed the conceptual difficulties of assessing social risks and the political difficulties in managing them. This article draws examples from the Three Mile Island accident to review several characteristics of nuclear technology, its scale and costs, its complexity, its uncertain and unpredictable physical effects, and its indirect risks. It then explores the implications for social, political and administrative institutions as they grope for ways to manage the risks of nuclear power in the context of critical public scrutiny. Finally it identifies a range of issues calling for policy research.