The purpose of this paper is to elucidate the bases of support for Mexico's Partido Revolucionário Institucional. A model is developed which identifies the major and minor variables affecting changes in PRI support in the six elections between 1952 and 1967. Throughout the paper the unit of analysis is the state; the dependent variables are voter turnout and the percentage of the total vote in each state received by the PRI.

Several years ago James Q. Wilson studied the members of the three amateur Democratic clubs in New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles. He intended his study, by his own admission, to be interesting rather than theoretical, but we have found its theoretical portions to be intriguing. The amateur politicians studies by Wilson primarily concentrated their energies in local politics, although their ambitions extended far beyond local campaigns and issues. Indeed, they expressed a clear desire to alter fundamentally the character of the American party system and, accordingly, all governing institutions.

Wilson's task of identifying and characterizing the political motives and tactics of amateur Democrats was facilitated by the existence of political clubs. He had only to identify the clubs he wished to study and survey their members. Future researchers were left the responsibility of identifying similar political motives and tactics in less well-defined groups. We attempted to do this for a sample of delegates to the Democratic National Convention in 1968, and, following Wilson's criteria, we were successful in identifying a substantial proportion of amateur Democrats.

The amateur Democrat described by Wilson was not set apart from the more conventional party activitsts by his liberalism, his age, education or class. He was not a dilettante or an inept practitioner of politics, nor did he regard politics as an avocation or hobby. Rather the amateur found politics intrinsically interesting because it expressed a conception of the public interest. The political world was perceived in terms of policies and principles which were consistent with the amateur's theory of deomocracy.

No government yet established has had the loyalty and trust of all its citizens. Regardless of the popularity of its leaders or how careful they are in soliciting opinions and encouraging participation in the process of policy-making, there are always those who see inequalities and injustices in the society and harbor suspicions of the government's motives and intentions. Resentment and distrust are elements of disaffection and the first step toward resistance. Therefore, even the most dictatorial governments have usually striven to increase their credibility and popularity. For democratic governments, however, the problem of combating distrust and encouraging voluntary acceptance of its institutions and decisions is a paramount concern. One of democratic theory's distinctive characteristics is its strong emphasis on voluntary consent, both as a basis of political obligation and as a central attribute of citizenship. The concern expressed by democratic thinkers about the elements of due process and the protection of opportunities for widespread participation is directed toward the creation of citizens who voluntarily accept the society's goals; “the demand for consent is the demand that the government must be more than self-appointed and must, in some significant way, be the chosen instrument through which the body politic and community acts ….”

Democracy's guiding ideal is the substitution of mutual understanding and agreement for coerciveness and arbitrary authority in all phases of social and political life. The existence of distrustful citizens who are convinced that the government serves the interests of a few rather than the interests of all is a barrier to the realization of the democratic ideal.

This paper is concerned with assessing the stability of the American public's attention to foreign affairs, and the relationship of this to public support of international programs and commitments. In particular, the paper presents an empirical investigation of the evidence for the “mood theory” proposed by Gabriel Almond as one element of his classic study, The American People and Foreign Policy.

The mood theory contends, first of all, that attention to or interest in foreign policy is generally low and subject to major fluctuations in times of crisis.

The characteristic response to questions of foreign policy is one of indifference. A foreign policy crisis, short of the immediate threat of war may transform indifference to vague apprehension, to fatalism, to anger; but the reaction is still a mood.

On the basis of this premise about attention, Almond predicts that the public will not provide stable support for international commitments undertaken by the U.S. Government.

Because of the superficial character of American attitudes toward world politics … a temporary Russian tactical withdrawal may produce strong tendencies toward demobilization and the reassertion of the primacy of private and domestic values.

The acceptance of this view by scholars is evidenced by its presentation in important textbooks and treatises. As far as I have been able to determine it has not been challenged.

The empirical investigation in this paper considers evidence on both of these variables—attention=interest, and support for foreign policy commitments.

In “Politics, Ideology, And Belief Systems” Professor Sartori has undertaken the Sisyphean task of drawing up conceptual schemes to distinguish the political mentalities of the pragmatist and the ideologist. His “Hypothesis” poses the curious proposition that “ideology and pragmatisms qua ‘political cultures’ are related, respectively, to the ‘cultural matrixes’ rationalism and empiricism.” (p. 402) When political scientists put forth hypotheses, students of history are usually not far behind with their arid facts and pale negations. Sartori's hypothesis is an intriguing theoretical formulation of a central issue in twentieth century politics; whether it is historically valid is the concern of this article. For the question that remains uppermost as I read his article is simply who are the ideologists and who are the pragmatists? Historically considered, if we were to apply Sartori's defining characteristics to a specific context it may very well be that the totalitarian “ideologies” of communism and fascism would have to be judged “pragmatic,” while the mentality of American political behavior may even have to be considered “ideological.” Since I am sure Professor Sartori did not have this ironic interpretation in mind, perhaps some elaboration is in order.

When Marx turned Hegel on his head he not only gave a materialistic base to German idealism but imputed an activistic impulse to political theory. Dialectical materialism is the “actualization of philosophy,” the extension of contemplative thought into real life. And whether regarded as a “knowing-process” or as Sartori's “belief system,” Marxism represented a rejection of both the deductive rationalism of Descartes and the sensationalist rationalism of Locke.

In the last two decades of political science, there has been considerable interest in the determinants of electoral behavior. Theories have been developed and tested on the sociological, psychological, and political antecedents of the vote. Virtually neglected in this search for determinants have been the institutional or structural properties of the electoral system itself. With a few notable exceptions, such factors as electoral qualification requirements, registration laws, and ballot and voting systems have not generated much research enthusiasm. These institutional properties, however, provide the framework within which the effects of other independent variables must be judged. This applies to all basic electoral research—whether time specific or longitudinal—but especially to the latter. Too often longitudinal research tries to trace the causes of changing voting patterns without taking into account the institutional framework. A pointed example of this is Walter Dean Burnham's recent description of this country's “changing political universe” around the turn of the century—a change which he ascribed to a breakdown in party competition and consequent voter alienation, but which undoubtedly could be partially, if not largely, explained by reference to the many institutional changes in voting rules which occurred during this period. The effects of institutional properties must be sorted out if the researcher is to establish reliable baselines against which to measure the effects of other variables.

The purpose of this study is to analyze the effects of one such institutional property of the electoral system—the Australian Ballot reform—on the changing split ticket voting patterns of the American electorate in the 1876–1908 time period.

Because the codes, rules and ideology of mass, single-party systems reach the village areas more slowly than do the tangible personalizations of party authority, a situation of potential misuse of power exists where rural party organizations operate. Peasants are aware of face-to-face confrontations by a familiar figure who has gained a party position; they are unaware of the precepts and regulations that the national party has laid down for the village level functionaries. Consequently, political victimization is most prounced at the very grass-root level that national leaders are attempting to integrate politically. Moreover, by its nature the rural party is a multi-faceted organization that is acceptable to the peasants because its leaders provide services that in more structured societies are carried out by specific agencies and contracts. Functions such as family arbitration, police investigation and criminal adjudication are mixed with the more classical party activities of representation and the dispensing of patronage.

Taken together, the above two characteristics of a rural party—potential abuse, and the multi-faceted nature—significantly influence the extent and form of political participation in the areas they serve. This article attempts to analyze these characteristics in Tanzania, and thereafter to assess rural party participation, and more broadly to suggest the theoretical dimensions of political participation in a new nation.

Participation, it may be argued, is the problem par excellence for leaders of the new nations. The building of a state, both in terms of economic development and in the creation of a national consciousness, depends upon some type of participation by the citizens.

The working of the electoral system in Canada is investigated in this paper. The object is to identify the more important factors which go to determine the share of seats in the federal House of Commons won by a political party at a general election. Factors considered are share of vote, distribution of the vote and number of candidates in the field. The responsiveness of share of seats to variations in these factors is estimated by fitting linear equations by least squares to data for the fourteen federal general elections which took place in Canada between 1921 and 1965.

The scientific study of politics requires an environment which accepts free inquiry and discussion. Scholars must be permitted to ask questions of their own choosing, gather data without hindrance, and communicate freely with one another about their findings. To be sure, freedom to investigate sensitive policy matters is limited by all governments. Moreover, political scientists themselves inevitably introduce some measure of their own values or ideological predispositions into their works. But it is obvious that without the guarantee of certain minimum freedoms, political science as we know it in the West could never exist.

Communist regimes traditionally have made independent inquiry or objective discussion of political phenomena impossible. In the Stalinist period, scholarly analyses of politics—or, for that matter, of aesthetic, literary, moral or economic questions—amounted to little more than doctrinal exegesis or the elaboration of practical measures to implement the Party's demands. An autonomous social science in Stalin's Russia or Eastern Europe was simply unthinkable.

Since the dictator's death, however, Communist governments have modified their hostility toward the social sciences in general, and toward political science in particular. A decade of de-Stalinization has been accompanied by steps to encourage the scientific study of politics. In several East European countries, political science now enjoys recognition as a discipline in its own right.

This does not mean that political science in Communist countries has freed itself of political controls, or that what is presented as political science is always of scholarly merit.

Discussing the character of the Polish party system elsewhere, I have suggested a label of “hegemonic party system” for it, as well as for some other party systems based on similar principles. The hegemonic party systems stand mid-way between the mono-party systems and the dominant party systems as defined by Maurice Duverger. In an earlier paper written jointly with Rajni Kothari we have suggested the following typology of party systems:

1. Alternative party systems, where two or more political parties compete for political power with realistic chances of success;

2. Consensus party systems, where multi-partism does exist but one political party commands in a lasting way the loyalties of a predominant majority of the citizens and permanently runs the government;

3. Hegemonic party systems, where all the existing parties form a lasting coalition within which one of them is accepted as the leading force of the coalition;

4. Mono-party systems;

5. Suspended party systems, where political parties exist but are prevented from regulating political life by other forces (for instance, by the military);

6. Non-party systems, where the government is ideologically hostile toward the political parties as such and does not permit them to function.

Quite obviously, this typology does not exclude mixed types of party systems. On the contrary, the very fact that in political life nothing is absolutely permanent leads to the emergence of transitory types of party systems.

The object of this note is to demonstrate that generalizations about political participation may be invalid when applied to “developing” or “transitional” societies. Specifically, the relationship between rates of voter turnout and levels of education for urban Chinese in Malaya is not consistent with results reported for Western societies.

A geographical classification of bibliographic entries in Lester Milbrath's Political Participation discloses a very interesting statistic: only 3 of the 288 listed entries concern the transitional societies of Asia, Africa and Latin America. The lack of data on developing areas may, in large measure, explain the emphasis placed on studies of political participation in North America and Western Europe. Although there is more research on transitional societies today, most studies still focus on advanced industrial societies. The validity of the generalizations presented in Political Participation, therefore, is restricted to North America and Western Europe.

Using data collected in Malaya (1957), I examine four of Milbrath's hypotheses. These include:

(1) higher education increases participation (p.122);

(2) middle-aged persons participate more than young or old persons (p. 134);

(3) men are more likely to participate than women (p. 133); and

(4) religion affects participation (p. 137).

In this brief note it is demonstrated that if all the conditions for the existence of a competitive equilibrium are satisfied, then simple majority voting to determine the distribution of goods may be less efficient than a price system.

The argument here may be somewhat cryptic for those not familiar with the work of Anthony Downs. A considerably more discursive presentation of the background material is given in “A Two Party System, General Equilibrium and the Voters' Paradox.” The tax and public goods aspect of the voting problem have been discussed elsewhere in “Notes on the Taxonomy of Problems Concerning Public Goods.” The result presented here, nevertheless, stands by itself, hence is presented in this brief form.

The political system is modeled at its simplest. We assume the existence of two players called “political parties.” The goal of each player is to win an election by as large a vote as possible. A strategy for each player is to name a policy that it will carry out if it is elected. A policy is any point in the set of feasible distributions of final product. It follows immediately that, although any policy may be considered as a strategy, any non-Pareto optimal policies are dominated by some policy that is optimal. A discussion of the reasons for modeling a party in this simple manner is given in detail elsewhere. It is assumed that all voters are passive or “mechanistic,” i.e., they do not form groups but merely vote individually, selecting optimally between the two policies offered.