This paper is a revision of the Presidential Address delivered to the 66th Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, Los Angeles, California, September 10, 1970. It identifies nine aspects of political theories: storage and retrieval of memories; assistance to insight; simplification of knowledge; heuristic effectiveness; self-critical cognition; normative awareness of values; scientifically testable knowledge; pragmatic skills; and wisdom, or second-order knowledge of what contexts are worth choosing—a wisdom subject to the possibility of radical restructuring. These nine aspects of theory form an integrated production cycle of knowledge. “Scientific” and “humanistic” political theorists need each other to understand the central task of politics: the collective self-determination of societies. To appraise this steering performance of political systems, large amounts of empirical data as indicators of social performance are indispensable. Political science has grown in knowledge of cases, data, research methods, and sensitivity to problems of disadvantaged groups and of the individual. It is learning to recognize qualities and patterns, verify the limited truth content of theories, and be more critical of its societies and of itself. It needs to increase research on implementation of insights, on positive proposals for reform, changes in political wisdom, and on the abolition of poverty and large-scale war. For these tasks, cognitive contributions from political theory are indispensable; working to make them remains a moral commitment.

“Elite political culture” may be defined as the set of politically relevant beliefs, values, and habits of the most highly involved and influential participants in a political system. Studying elite political culture requires methodological innovation which will allow us to do justice to the subtleties of the belief systems of sophisticated political leaders without doing violence to our normal standards of reliability and verification. As one example of the study of elite political culture, this paper presents an empirically based analysis of “ideological politics” and “the end of ideology.”

After some clarification of the logical structure and empirical assumptions of existing descriptions of “ideological politics,” these descriptions are examined in the light of data from a study of the basic beliefs and values of British and Italian politicians, based on intensive interviews with random samples of 93 British MPs and 83 Italian deputati.

The core of the notion of “ideological politics” is interpreted in terms of “political style,” that is, how politicians talk and think about concrete policy problems such as poverty or urban transportation. Each respondent's discussion of two such issues was analyzed in terms of 12 “stylistic characteristics,” such as “inductive-deductive thinking,” “use of historical context,” “moralization,” and “reference to distributive group benefits.” Ratings of these stylistic characteristics are found to cluster in intelligible ways, and on the basis of the dominant stylistic dimension, an Index of Ideological Style is constructed. Those politicians who rank high on this Index are also found to be more ideologically motivated, more abstract in their conceptions of politics, especially party politics, and more idealistic than their less “ideological” colleagues. They are also more alienated from existing socio-political institutions and are concentrated at the extremes of the political spectrum. Further investigation shows, however, that contrary to the assumptions of the existing literature, these “ideologues” are not more dogmatic, not less open to compromise, not more antagonistic to the norms of pluralist politics, not more hostile to political opponents. Partisan hostility and ideological style are found to be two distinct syndromes.

The “end of ideology” thesis is examined by comparing the attitudes and style of respondents from different political generations. In both countries younger politicians are markedly less dogmatic and hostile, but in neither country are they any less “ideological” in their approach to political phenomena and problems of public policy.

In the light of these data the “end of ideology” debate is reformulated. The probable causes and consequences of both the decline of partisan hostility and the persistence of ideology are discussed. Finally, some conclusions are drawn concerning the role of ideology in politics and concerning the theoretical promise and methodological problems of studying elite political culture.

Rural France is often seen as culturally isolated and politically uninvolved. Using a combination of community studies and survey evidence, one can show that the lack of declared interest in politics of rural Frenchmen seems to mean an absence of involvement in the party system rather than a passivity toward public life. Nevertheless rural France produces higher voting turnouts in local and national elections than are found in other sections or population groups.

The weakness of partisan involvement, as opposed to citizen involvement, seems to bespeak not merely apathy, but actual hostility, toward party politics. This political hostility is widespread among French workers but is politically more important among French peasants. Thus voting choices are less party-oriented precisely where urban-based campaign organizations are least effective. Local non-party notables therefore probably play a greater brokerage role in national election campaigns, and election results are less predictable than in the rural sectors of many other societies. The degree of antipartisanship in rural constituencies also seems to encourage candidates to avoid national party labels in election campaigns.

Three kinds of factors are suggested to account for both the high citizen involvement and the low partisan involvement: First, historically, the extension of the suffrage to the rural periphery long before the French party system was capable of the same kind of penetration may have habituated rural Frenchmen to the exercise of the vote in a non-partisan context. Second, the achievement of stable landholding for most peasants removes visible class conflict as a legitimizing factor for party organization, while an extensive interest group structure increases the tendency to keep informed, to participate, and to run for local office. Third, the political ecology of the French village both encourages high citizen involvement and discourages partisan involvement. While many of these factors are universal among peasant societies, the particular historical, sociological, and ecological configuration of the French village seems to produce a rural resident who is more informed and active than our inherited wisdom would suggest, but less partisan than are urban citizens with similar levels of involvement.

Arguments are presented for and against a series of hypotheses about the influence of the parliamentary party system on the stability of governments, and the hypotheses are tested against data on 196 governments in parliamentary democracies since 1945. A strong relation is found between the duration of governments and the fragmentation of the parliamentary party system and of the government parties, but the fragmentation of the opposition parties seems not to affect stability. One-party governments are more stable than coalition governments, and majority governments more than minority governments. The ideological dispersion of the parties—in the whole parliament, in the government, or in the opposition—does not explain stability any better than fragmentation, which is based upon only the number and sizes of parties; but the proportion of seats held by ‘anti-system’ parties (communists and neo-fascists, mainly) is a good indicator of stability. The best explanation of government stability found here is the combined linear influence of the size of the anti-system parties and the fragmentation of the pro-system parties.

This paper is a systematic analysis of the comparative method. Its emphasis is on both the limitations of the method and the ways in which, despite these limitations, it can be used to maximum advantage.

The comparative method is defined and analyzed in terms of its similarities and differences vis-à-vis the experimental and statistical methods. The principal difficulty facing the comparative method is that it must generalize on the basis of relatively few empirical cases. Four specific ways in which this difficulty may be resolved are discussed and illustrated: (1) increasing the number of cases as much as possible by means of longitudinal extension and a global range of analysis, (2) reducing the property space of the analysis, (3) focusing the comparative analysis on “comparable” cases (e.g., by means of area, diachronic, or intranation comparisons), and (4) focusing on the key variables.

It is argued that the case study method is closely related to the comparative method. Six types of case studies (the atheoretical, interpretative, hypothesis-generating, theory-confirming, theory-infirming, and deviant case analyses) are distinguished, and their theoretical value is analyzed.

The 1950 Report of the APSA Committee on Political Parties, “Toward a More Responsible Two-Party System,” is relevant today to current problems of public policy and party reform and to the efforts of political scientists, as political scientists, to contribute to the resolution of these problems. This essay examines the Report from a policy science perspective.

The Report was explicitly therapeutic in aim. It defined health, diagnosed ills, and prescribed remedies for the American party system; through the remedies prescribed, the whole American political system was to be restored to health. The healthy democratic system was asserted to be one in which the two national parties were cohesive, disciplined, programmatic, and responsible; internally responsible to their members through primaries, caucuses and conventions, and externally responsible to the whole electorate for carrying out their programs. The programs of the two parties were to be clearly differentiated so as to provide the electorate a real choice. The ills of the Ameican system were said to be due to the failure of parties to have these characteristics. The prescription was recommendation for comprehensive reform.

Despite the special expertise of political scientists on such “constitutional” questions and the work of such distinguished predecessors as Wilson, Goodnow, Lowell, Ford, and Herring, the Report was both normatively and empirically deficient. Little attempt was made to clarify or justify norms or goals. Repeatedly, instrumental propositions linking proposed reforms to goals were based on inadequate evidence or no evidence at all. Even in 1950, evidence (not mentioned in the Report) was available that cast doubt on the Committee's description of the political world. Subsequent research has produced a rich body of literature making clear that much of the substance of the Report is simply mistaken.

The errors of the Report do not vitiate its goals; democratic potential is not revealed by democratic practices. But the errors drastically affect the utility of the Report as policy science. The failure of the Report as policy science is due, in part, to failures of the discipline to clarify the roles of political scientist as policy scientist, to explore adequately the problems of relating knowledge to goals, to pay appropriate attention to the development of political theory, and to develop intellectual tools more specifically suited to the tasks of policy science. The last half of the essay is devoted to an examination of these problems, concluding that the political scientist will succeed in being effective in the policy field just to the extent he succeeds at his own distinctive tasks, in sharpening his own tools, and in thoughtfully applying his special knowledge and skills.

In an examination of responses to public opinion poll questions designed to assess the degree of generalized support for the wars in Korea and Vietnam, popular support for the two wars was found to follow highly similar patterns. Support was high initially but declined as a logarithmic function of American casualties, a function remarkably similar for both wars. While support for the war in Vietnam did finally drop below those levels found during the Korean War, it did so only after the fighting had gone on considerably longer and only after American casualties had greatly surpassed those of the earlier war. These trends seem to have been fairly impervious to particular events in either of the wars.

It is suggested that the greater vocal opposition to the Vietnam War reflects mainly a shift of opinion within the intellectual left on the wisdom of the two wars. Armed with new techniques of protest learned in its identification with the civil rights movement, the intellectual left has been able effectively to garner great attention for its cause during the Vietnamese War.

Also noted was the presence of a rather large body of opinion inclined to follow the President on war policy, giving him considerable room for maneuver, at least in the short run, and making public opinion in this area highly sensitive to current policy.

A crude comparison with data from World War II suggests that, while the earlier war was unquestionably more "popular" than the wars in Korea and Vietnam, support was less consensual than might be expected. The popularity of the Korean War rose slowly after its conclusion, but this sort of retrospective support for World Wars I and II may have declined as time went by and, at any rate, was quite sensitive to current events,

In repeated instances, differences in question wording were found to alter substantially the response generated to poll questions about the wars.

A transformation of basic political priorities may be taking place in Western Europe. I hypothesize: (1) that people have a variety of needs which are given high or low priority according to their degree of fulfillment: people act on behalf of their most important unsatisfied need, giving relatively little attention to needs already satisfied—except that (2) people tend to retain the value priorities adopted in their formative years throughout adult life. In contemporary Western Europe, needs for physical safety and economic security are relatively well satisfied for an unprecedentedly large share of the population. Younger, more affluent groups have been formed entirely under these conditions, and seem relatively likely to give top priority to fulfillment of needs which remain secondary to the older and less affluent majority of the population. Needs for belonging and intellectual and esthetic self-fulfillment (characterized as “post-bourgeois” values) may take top priorities among the former group. Survey data from six countries indicate that the value priorities of the more affluent postwar group do contrast with those of groups raised under conditions of lesser economic and physical security. National patterns of value priorities correspond to the given nation's economic history, moreover, suggesting that the age-group differences reflect the persistence of preadult experiences, rather than life cycle effects. The distinctive value priorities imply distinctive political behavior—being empirically linked with preferences for specific political issues and political parties in a predictable fashion. If the respective age cohorts retain their present value priorities, we would expect long-term shifts in the political goals and patterns of political partisanship prevailing in these societies.

In seeking a basis for political obligation in the “facts” of human nature, Hobbes has created a major problem for students of political theory. Recent scholarly debate has suggested that we understand Hobbes either as a descriptive and analytic theorist, or as a normative theorist. While this logical distinction has didactic value, it is apt to produce a misunderstanding of the dynamics of political thinking. All discourse does not rest upon logic: we must distinguish political argumentation, which often goes beyond the confines of logic by manipulating our factual perceptions, from disinterested philosophical debate, which aims at clarity.

Hobbes manipulates his readers' perceptions in such a manner as to preclude a number of assumptions underlying traditional moral arguments for political disobedience. While moral argument (at least of a sort) is possible, it is not necessary to the argument of the Leviathan. Hobbes grounds political obligation on one situational and two psychophysiological postulates: man's most fundamental concern is self-preservation; his passions lead him into situations of conflict which give rise to intense feelings of fear; this fear has an “enlightening value,” transforming human behavior from the merely reflexive to the contrived. Terror hence provides a strategy of fear-avoidance, a logic of survival to which the individual must conform in order to avoid future encounters with death.

Thus, while Hobbes's answer to the problem of political obligation is nonmoral in the traditional sense, it is more than merely prudential. Hobbes's conception of homeostasis as informed by fear is, like morality, both universal and imperative. The natural law binds not because it is “good” but because its violation is too frequently accompanied by an all-consuming terror which the ordinary man cannot withstand.

Questionnaire data that delineate the positions of 197 Labour and 126 Conservative M.P.s in the British House of Commons on ten major policy issues are utilized in an empirical test of some of the positions taken by British political parry scholars, Samuel H. Beer and Robert T. McKenzie. Assuming that policy stances taken on these issues reflect more general ideological orientations, the data support Beer's view that serious ideological differences divide the parties. However, McKenzie's belief that policy differences between the frontbenches are narrower than are differences between their backbench supporters is also confirmed. The data also indicate that the differences between the front and backbenches are greater in the Labour party than in the Conservative party, a situation that could be intrinsic to the parties or merely a function of the fact that Labour was in power when these data were collected. Finally, it is suggested that although there are significant differences between the frontbenches and an extreme wing of their respective backbenches, as McKenzie had assumed, it would be unwise to exaggerate the importance of such intraparty differences.

The paper argues that ethical discourse is intimately involved in the research literature of social science, and especially of political science, but is relegated to a subsidiary position. It therefore shares some of the vagueness, flexibility, and potential self-contradiction of the discourse of everyday life, rather than being sharpened by rational criticism. The norms governing scientific discourse provide not only for empirical testing, but also for rational criticism in the formulation of theories; an analogous type of criticism is shared by legal discourse. Some of the norms of scientific communication may be transferred to ethics by the specification of rules for ethical argument, requiring that arguments derive from previously specified, clear and consistent “ethical hypotheses.” Within such rules, ethical systems formulated by social scientists and philosophers may be compared critically. Systems amenable to such comparison include those of welfare economics, cost-benefit analysis, and formal democratic theory. The discourse embodying this argument and criticism is particularly appropriate within the normative tradition of political science. Its possible benefits include clarity about our valuations; communication among disciplines that enlarges the perspectives of each discipline; and a more independent, self-conscious examination within the university of the criteria for policy formation.

A number of leading studies of voting behavior in recent years have concluded that specific issues are not a salient element in the electoral decision. These studies have indicated not only that voters are unfamiliar with most issues, but also that the electorate is generally unable to detect differences between Republican and Democratic positions on issues. Using the same Survey Research Center interviews upon which these previous findings were based, this article modifies these previous evaluations. This study concentrates on data from the 1964 election —a campaign that was notable not for the issues it raised, but rather for the public's strong reactions to the candidates. The findings in this article show that, even in 1964, most people were concerned with a number of specific issues and that these issue concerns had a very measurable effect on voting choice. Furthermore, large proportions of people were able accurately to perceive the differences between the parties on those issues that were salient to them. The major reason these findings are so different from previous results is that new measures and a different approach were used—particularly open-ended interview material that for the first time allowed the researcher to discover the issues that were salient to the voter.

This paper presents evidence that candidate issue positions have a measurable impact on elections for the U.S. House of Representatives. For eight election years, electoral margins of Northern incumbent congressional candidates were examined to test the proposition that “moderates” within each party are better vote getters than those whose roll call records reflect their party's ideological extreme. The effects of roll call positions on election results were estimated by examining the relationships between roll call “extremism” and vote margins with district presidential voting held constant as a control for normal constituency voting habits. Although no strong support was found for the proposition that Democratic Representatives lose electoral support when they take extremely liberal roll call positions, a clear pattern emerged for Republicans: the Republican Congressmen who are the best vote getters tend to be the relative moderates and liberals who avoid the extreme conservative end of the political spectrum. An analysis of survey data suggests that the small group of voters whose electoral decisions are influenced by their Republican Congressman's roll call performance are found within the ranks of a select group who are both free of strong partisan motivations and highly politically informed.

This paper appraises the relationship between judicial biography and judicial behavior research in two ways: (1) conceptually, by comparing them as modes of inquiry; and (2) empirically, by making an inventory of the behavioral content of 15. leading judicial biographies. The central theme is that judicial biographies and judicial behavior research are complementary. Conceptually, they have important common premises and problems as well as major differences. Empirically, judicial biographies also offer considerable insight into judicial behavior. Using generous standards, the inventory of 15 biographies derived 2,232 behavioral-like propositions in eight categories of behavioral research. More importantly, the biographies suggest a substantial number of hypotheses worthy of empirical investigation and validation. When viewed as case studies in judicial politics, judicial biographies thus become related to behavioral inquiry. And their strengths and weaknesses fall into place as reflecting properties generally associated with case study as a mode of political analysis.

This article contends that the voting behavior of individuals depends not only upon their own traits but also upon the social context within which it takes place. Left voting depends upon the extent of class consciousness of the workers, where class consciousness is defined as the marginal rate of change of left voting when social structure changes. Marxist theory does not predict that workers will always vote for left parties but only that they will do so when the class is politically organized. According to this theory, the behavior of individuals depends upon the characteristics of the class and not vice versa. Several models can be constructed on the basis of these hypotheses. The choice of the proper function relating the variables is crucial for theory construction. This choice must be theoretically determined, i.e., it must follow from the premises of the theory. However, several theories may equally well explain the reality and the choice on the basis of empirical criteria is not always possible.

This article identifies four fundamental modes of thought employed in the cognition of policy problems. These modes of thought are moral, cause-effect, sociocentric, and imaginative. Nine variants of these four forms are described and investigated among a small sample of adolescents. The maturation of these forms of thought appears limited during adolescence, and change is not well predicted by the respondent's level of politicization. The article concludes with some speculations about the structure of socialization theory as it relates to the development of fundamental forms of political thinking.

This paper starts from the premise that traditional views of political roles among married couples emphasize role-differentiation, leading to masculine superiority; more recent perspectives stress role-sharing, leading to equality. The implications for individual political participation and political socialization vary according to the prevalence of and conditions surrounding the two patterns. Interview data from a national sample of middle-aged couples reveal substantial equality with respect to command over political resources, attention paid to politics, and manifest political participation. Levels of equality remain high under a variety of controls. When inequalities do exist, male dominance is more common, but the extent of that dominance varies across the range of political labor. Superiority of either parent in one arena tends to occur in others also, suggesting fixed modes of behavior. The relative advantage in education and personal efficacy which one partner holds over the other vitally affects the political advantage. These factors and mother's employment status operate more strongly among working class than middle class couples. Age of children has no appreciable impact. To achieve political parity or superiority mothers ordinarily need extraordinary resources to overcome the built-in constraints of culturally-defined sex roles.

By means of the Survey Research Center's national public opinion polls of the electorate during the 1956, 1960, and 1964 elections, the opinions of volunteer activists in the Republican and Democratic Parties were compared to those of rank and file members. On issues that divided rank and file Republicans from rank and file Democrats, Republican activists were found to be far more conservative than ordinary Republicans. Democratic activists, however, had about the same distribution of opinion as rank and file members of their party. Moreover, Republicans were proportionately far more active than Democrats. It was inferred from these findings that the two parties were different kinds of organizations. The Republican Party, it was argued, was a high participation party with an amateur base composed of right wing ideologues, while the Democratic Party was a low participation party with a professionalized base not dependent on ideological incentives to activism.

Research has shown that political attitudes spring from diverse sources. This paper focuses on isolationism, a set of beliefs that can stem from social factors (e.g., economic deprivation, poor education, social or geographic isolation) and from psychological factors (e.g., n. aggression, inflexibility and low self-esteem). The purpose is not to demonstrate again that there is a connection between personality and political belief. Instead, the authors ask whether or not it matters if a political attitude—in the present case, isolationism—stems from personality influences rather than from some other sources, for example, education, group memberships, or ideology. Isolationists low in self-esteem are shown to differ from those high in self-esteem on a range of values and beliefs: liberalism-conservatism, extreme political values, and specific foreign policy questions. Thus, those who hold common beliefs on one set of issues are likely to differ in the opinions they hold on other political questions depending on whether they owe their convictions to their personality characteristics or to some other influence.