Facing globalization, the challenge for political science resembles that of the founders of the United States: how to design institutions for a polity of unprecedented size and diversity. Globalization produces discord and requires effective governance, but effective institutions are difficult to create and maintain. Liberal-democratic institutions must also meet standards of accountability and participation, and should foster persuasion rather than rely on coercion and interest-based bargaining. Effective institutions must rely on self-interest rather than altruism, yet both liberal-democratic legitimacy and the meaning of self-interest depend on people’s values and beliefs. The analysis of beliefs, and their effect on institutional outcomes, must therefore be integrated into institutional analysis. Insights from branches of political science as diverse as game theory, rational-choice institutionalism, historical institutionalism, and democratic theory can help political scientists understand how to design institutions on a world—and human—scale.

The contemporary international relations literature links the democratic peace hypothesis to Kant’s famous peace plan. Yet, whether attempting to prove or disprove the hypothesis, most quantitative studies have lost sight of important dimensions of the Kantian vision. I reinterpret the democratic peace as a dynamic and dialectical learning process. In order to assess the dynamic dimension of this process (while controlling for exogenous dialectical reversals), I rely on quantitative evidence drawn from popular data sets. In conformance with the Kantian perspective, the conflict propensities among democracies exhibit a steadily falling trend since the nineteenth century. Yet, in partial opposition to Kant’s expectations, other dyads also experience a significant, although weaker, pacifying trend. A series of tests shows that these findings are robust to epochal effects, various control variables, and “maturity effects” measuring the age of democratic dyads.

Coherent democracies and harshly authoritarian states have few civil wars, and intermediate regimes are the most conflict-prone. Domestic violence also seems to be associated with political change, whether toward greater democracy or greater autocracy. Is the greater violence of intermediate regimes equivalent to the finding that states in political transition experience more violence? If both level of democracy and political change are relevant, to what extent is civil violence related to each? Based on an analysis of the period 1816–1992, we conclude that intermediate regimes are most prone to civil war, even when they have had time to stabilize from a regime change. In the long run, since intermediate regimes are less stable than autocracies, which in turn are less stable than democracies, durable democracy is the most probable end-point of the democratization process. The democratic civil peace is not only more just than the autocratic peace but also more stable.

We propose a remedy for the discrepancy between the way political scientists analyze data with missing values and the recommendations of the statistics community. Methodologists and statisticians agree that “multiple imputation” is a superior approach to the problem of missing data scattered through one’s explanatory and dependent variables than the methods currently used in applied data analysis. The discrepancy occurs because the computational algorithms used to apply the best multiple imputation models have been slow, difficult to implement, impossible to run with existing commercial statistical packages, and have demanded considerable expertise. We adapt an algorithm and use it to implement a general-purpose, multiple imputation model for missing data. This algorithm is considerably faster and easier to use than the leading method recommended in the statistics literature. We also quantify the risks of current missing data practices, illustrate how to use the new procedure, and evaluate this alternative through simulated data as well as actual empirical examples. Finally, we offer easy-to-use software that implements all methods discussed.

In the current debate over the status of moral virtue in ethical and political theory, Aristotle is an imposing and controversial figure. Both champions and critics of the ancient conception of virtue identify Aristotle as its most important proponent, but commentators often obscure the complexity of his treatment of moral virtue. His account of courage reveals this complexity. Aristotle believes that courage, and indeed virtue generally, must be understood as both an end in itself and a means to a more comprehensive good. In this way Aristotle’s political science offers a middle course that corrects and embraces the claims of nobility and necessity in political life. Honor is central to this political science. It acts as a bridge between the desires of the individual and the needs of the political community and reduces the dangers posed by the excessive pursuit of nobility and the complete acquiescence to necessity.

I establish three closely related claims. The first two are interpretive, the third theoretical. (1) The prevailing conception of moral economy in political science, presupposed by opponents as well as advocates, rests too heavily on the distinction between nonmarket and market-based societies. (2) The prevailing conception of moral economy reduces to the unduly narrow claim that economic incorporation of a nonmarket people is the basis for the moral indignation that leads to resistance and rebellion. (3) Reconceptualizing moral economy in terms of social goods reveals additional grounds for politically significant moral indignation and permits moral-economic political analysis of a larger set of cases and phenomena. Water politics in the arid American West illustrate the power of a conception of moral economy based on social goods.

We use national survey data to examine the extent to which various sources of political information expose people to dissimilar political views. We hypothesize that the individual’s ability and desire to exercise selective exposure is a key factor in determining whether a given source produces exposure to dissimilar views. Although a lack of diverse perspectives is a common complaint against American news media, we find that individuals are exposed to far more dissimilar political views via news media than through interpersonal political discussants. The media advantage is rooted in the relative difficulty of selectively exposing oneself to those sources of information, as well as the lesser desire to do so, given the impersonal nature of mass media.

Although empirical studies have concluded that political leaders in democratic systems often respond to mass unrest by expanding the welfare state, most of this research fails to explain adequately why the state responds as it does. I test the validity of pluralist and social control theories of state response by examining black insurgency in the United States during the 1960s and 1970s. Using pooled time-series analysis, I estimate the relationship between state AFDC recipient rates, state incarceration rates, and black political violence, testing a series of specific hypotheses that distinguish between these two competing theories. The results lend much support to the social control characterization of state response and may help explain trends in welfare and criminal justice policies over the last two decades.

Most contracts, whether between voters and politicians or between house owners and contractors, are incomplete. “More law,” it typically is assumed, increases the likelihood of contract performance by increasing the probability of enforcement and/or the cost of breach. We examine a contractual relationship in which the first mover has to decide whether she wants to enter a contract without knowing whether the second mover will perform. We analyze how contract enforceability affects individual performance for exogenous preferences. Then we apply a dynamic model of preference adaptation and find that economic incentives have a nonmonotonic effect on behavior. Individuals perform a contract when enforcement is strong or weak but not with medium enforcement probabilities: Trustworthiness is “crowded in” with weak and “crowded out” with medium enforcement. In a laboratory experiment we test our model’s implications and find support for the crowding prediction. Our finding is in line with the recent work on the role of contract enforcement and trust in formerly Communist countries.

We present evidence of the kind of governmental processes Americans would like to see in Washington. People believe they have been excluded from current processes, but they do not want direct democracy. The extent to which individuals believe actual processes are inconsistent with their own process preferences is an important variable in understanding the current public mood. Moreover, individual-level differences in level of dissatisfaction with democratic processes help explain variations in public approval of government and in willingness to comply with the outputs of government. Of course, many political attitudes and behaviors are influenced by fondness for the policies that government produces, but it is also the case that sentiments and actions are affected by the way government produces those policies. Far from being merely a means to a policy end, governmental process is important in its own right.

Recent analyses of collective choice predict convergence among the outcomes of simple-majority decisions. I estimate the extent of convergence under restricted preference maximizing through a computer simulation of majority choice by committees in which individual decisions on proposal location and voting are constrained. The simulation generates distributions of majority-adopted proposals in two-dimensional space: nondeterministic outcomes of simple-majority choice. The proposal distributions provide data for a quantitative evaluation of the effects on convergence of relaxing conventional preference-maximizing assumptions. I find convergence of majority-adopted proposals in all cases, and that convergence increases under restricted proposal location. Moreover, under some voting restrictions, experiments yield stable outcomes that demonstrate remarkable convergence. I conclude that restricted preference maximizing generally increases the probability that simple-majority outcomes reflect the central tendency of member preference distributions. Since committees and legislatures are important formal procedures for democratic collective choice, this conclusion applies to a large class of political decisions.

The garbage can theory of organizational choice is one of the best-known innovations in modern organization theory. It also has significantly shaped a major branch of the new institutionalism. Yet, the theory has not received the systematic assessment that it both deserves and needs. We evaluate the early verbal theory and argue that it fails to create an adequate foundation for scientific progress. We then analyze and rerun Cohen, March, and Olsen’s computer model and discover that its agents move in lockstep patterns that are strikingly different from the spirit of the theory. Indeed, the simulation and the theory are incompatible. Next, we examine how the authors have built upon these incompatible formulations in developing the theory further. We assess this larger program, which includes the March-Olsen version of the new institutionalism, and find that many of the problems that attended the original article have intensified over time. We conclude that a fundamental overhaul is required if the theory is to realize its early promise.

Bendor, Moe, and Shotts want to rescue some of the ideas of the garbage can model and the new institutionalism. Their rescue program, however, is alien to the spirit of not only our work but also some recent developments that may promise a climate of dialogue between different approaches in political science. Bendor, Moe, and Shotts place themselves closer to a tradition of unproductive tribal warfare than to more recent attempts to explore the limits of and the alternatives to (means-end) rational interpretations of political actors, institutions, and change. By building on a narrow concept of what is valuable political science, they cut themselves off from key issues that have occupied political scientists for centuries.

It is a daunting assignment to review a book after it hasgarnered a major award bestowed by the organization thatpublishes this journal. Judith Baer's Our Lives before the Lawnot only is a very worthy recipient of the 2000 VictoriaSchuck Award for the best book on women in politics but alsois an erudite and wide-ranging critique of feminist thoughtwith the goal of "forc[ing] feminists to confront mainstreamdiscourse and mainstream discourse to confront feminism"(p. 175). This goal is in the service of Baer's desire toconstruct a new jurisprudence of sexual equality, one thatavoids the pitfalls Baer perceives as inherent in the efforts ofothers to date.

This is a welcome and provocative addition to the growingliterature on the politics of the Internet. In addition to its richintellectual texture and mother-lode of information aboutcomputer hard- and software, it is a quick read because theauthor has a sharp tongue and makes excellent points. It is aunique blend of political philosophy, political economictheory, and computer network technology in support of apolitical F-5 tornado warning.

"For quite a while," Peter Berkowitz notes, "leading aca-demic liberals and their best-known critics formed an unwit-ting alliance, promulgating the view that liberal politicaltheory" ignores the whole subject of virtue and cultivation (p.170). If that view is correct, this neglect not only would spawn"fatal theoretical lacunae" (p. 4) but also would raise seriousdoubts about liberalism's capacity to sustain the "qualities ofmind and character" (p. 172) required for "the operation andmaintenance" of "free and democratic institutions" (p. 6).In recent years, however, a new generation of liberals havechallenged this widely held view. Thinkers such as WilliamGalston and Stephen Macedo acknowledge that liberal re-gimes depend "upon a specific set of virtues," which "they donot automatically produce" (pp. 27­8). Their work pointstoward the "dependence" of liberal societies on "extraliberaland nongovernmental sources of virtue" (p. 28), such as "thefamily, religion and the array of associations in civil society"(p. 6). Simultaneously, they insist that "limited government isnot the same as neutral government" (p. 173), and they affirm"that the liberal state, within bounds, ought to pursue liberalpurposes" and, thus, "may, within limits, foster virtues" thatserve these purposes (p. xii).

Although there is a lot of it about, environmental philosophyhas so far had little influence on the world of environmentalpolitics and policy, avers de-Shalit in this fine contribution toecological political theory. In this assessment he is quite right.As someone who believes there should be a role in publicdiscourse for the philosopher, de-Shalit seeks to provide aremedy for this deficiency. Why should the rest of us care?

Integrity is a shifty, furtive concept. Philosophers have had ahard time defining the idea because it raises a couple ofrecurrent perplexities. First, consider former Speaker JimWright's remark that "integrity is . . . the state or quality ofbeing complete, undivided, [and] unbroken," or the OxfordEnglish Dictionary connotation of an "unbroken state" of"material wholeness." The problem is that integrity, sounderstood, seems to leave no room for the possibility ofindividuals whose lives display any kind of self-critical revi-sion, changes in course, or discontinuities over historicaltime, or for those who compartmentalize, differentiate, andassume conflicting roles across social space; in other words,for all of us. We need, as Amelie Rorty has written ("Integ-rity: Political, not Psychological," in Alan Montefiore andDavid Vines, eds., Integrity in the Public and Private Domains,1999), a far better account as to how and where "integrationand integrity . . . coincide".

This volume offers, as its blurb asserts, "substantive discus-sions of the key issues facing Jeffersonian scholars." Begin-ning with Michael Zuckert's by now familiar argument thatJefferson's thought is best understood as resting in a Lockeannatural rights framework, other able scholars more or lesstake issue with this analysis by appealing both to Jefferson'sown writings and to the works of major interpreters of thepolitical thought of the founding era. The result is a seriousreconsideration of Jefferson's thought that takes up most ofthe key themes raised by Louis Hartz and Bernard Bailynforty or more years ago over the place of the liberal traditionin American thought. Veteran expositors of Jefferson'sthought in a more civic republican and Christian way, JeanYarbrough and Garrett Ward Sheldon, take issue with Zuck-ert's Lockean, natural rights emphasis, upholding instead theinfluences of Aristotelian, Kamesian, and Christian thoughton Jefferson. Though one cannot deny the strong Lockeanstrand in Jefferson's thought, Yarbrough and Sheldon arguepersuasively for the strong presence of the other dimensionsas well. Zuckert's effort in his "Response" to claim that thismixes without resolving conflicting philosophies, and thus, ifYarbrough and Sheldon are right, leaves Jefferson hopelesslyinconsistent, misses Jefferson's brilliant blending of theseoutlooks, all obviously present in his writings, into what mightbe called a Jeffersonian republicanism.

In a sense, these two books, bearing almost identical titles,could not be more different. Patten's work is a narrowlyfocused study of those passages in Hegel (primarily in thePhilosophy of Right) that deal explicitly and pointedly with theidea of freedom. He proposes a "civic humanist" interpreta-tion of Hegelian freedom. Such an interpretation is designedto make sense of what Patten calls the "Sittlichkeit thesis,"according to which ethical norms are composed of, orotherwise reducible to, duties and virtues embodied in thecentral institutions of modern social life. Franco's work ismuch broader in scope. It offers a commentary on theentirety of the Philosophy of Right and argues, plausiblyenough, that Hegel's political philosophy is fundamentally aphilosophy of freedom. It briefly situates that philosophy inthe context of Hegel's immediate predecessors (Rousseau,Kant, Fichte) and reviews Hegel's own intellectual develop-ment, but its main goal is to show how Hegelian argumentsabout abstract right, morality, and ethical life constitute anaccount of what it means to be free.