I show that restrictive registration laws do not dissuade individuals with lower levels of education from voting any more than individuals with higher levels of education. This finding contradicts the result reported in Wolfinger and Rosenstone's classic analysis of turnout. I show that their conclusion was actually an artifact of the methodology they employed. Examining predicted probabilities generated by a nonlinear model such as probit or logit may produce spurious results when used to determine interactive effects between two independent variables. By respecifying the model of turnout to explicitly include terms to test interactive hypotheses and reanalyzing the data from the 1972 Current Population Survey (as well as data from the 1984 survey), I show that in fact, no such substantive interactive effect between registration laws and individuals' level of education exists at the micro level.

Political efficacy has been studied extensively since the 1950s, hut analysts have never been fully satisfied with its measurement. After considerable testing, four new questions tapping internal political efficacy were added to the 1988 National Election Study. Our investigation shows that inter-item correlations among these questions indicate high internal consistency, that by both exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis the items measure a single concept distinct from external efficacy and political trust, that the measurement model is robust across major subgroups, and that the overall scale is externally valid and provides a good distribution of efficacy scores across the population. Further, the results of an order experiment in the survey suggest that responses are unaffected by mode of presentation. In short, the four new questions constitute the most satisfactory measure of internal political efficacy to date.

In the June 1991 issue of this Review John Orbell and Robyn Dawes have argued that prisoner's dilemma games are shaped, in part, by “cognitive misers”—players who assume other players are like themselves. In such games, this results in more play and in a higher expected payoff by cooperators than by defectors, lain McLean agrees with the conclusions of Orbell and Dawes but takes issue with their reasons and their model. In turn, Orbell and Dawes retort, arguing that players in prisoner's dilemma games do not respond as McLean assumes they will.