Although American political science is, as Bernard Crick emphasised, in many respects a distinctly American science of politics, its evolution has been deeply informed by European ideas. This was quite obviously the case during the nineteenth century, when the German concept of the state dominated the discourse of the field, as well as in the early part of the twentieth century, when English scholars made significant contributions to the theory of democratic pluralism. By the middle of the century, German émigrés had contributed to a fundamental transformation in political theory which challenged the mainstream vision of political enquiry; but what is less well understood is the extent to which the reaction to this challenge in behavioural political science was also based on ideas that were the product of the European exodus.

Effective delivery of services for the public good involves a multiplicity of organizations and actors, including those from the public, nonprofit, and private sectors. In some cases, service delivery is accomplished using programs that directly engage volunteers, including key public services like community-based and nonprofit volunteer fire departments. Volunteers in fire departments—often highly engaged volunteers with specialized training—provide vital services for a substantial portion of the United States, allowing local governments to realize considerable cost savings. Thus, issues of volunteer retention are a critical challenge for fire departments. Existing research has addressed issues of retention in a variety of settings; we argue that the challenging and particular context of fire departments is worthy of focused research. This article is an exploratory study of the predictors of voluntary firefighter retention in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. We use data from a web-based survey of volunteer firefighters to examine the factors that influence volunteer retention, focusing specifically on volunteer management practices and broader job-related concepts. Results indicate that volunteer training, performance management, job satisfaction, and organizational commitment influence both short- and mid-term intent to remain, indicating that management practices and programs, as well as other contextual factors that shape satisfaction and commitment, are important in retaining volunteers.

This article analyses the recruitment criteria, career patterns and social hierarchies of Dutch political science. Dutch political science is highly internationalised and outward-looking. About one-fifth to one-third of most departments is non-Dutch and English language courses are common. Two MA programmes are offered solely in English, and Dutch political science was among the first comprehensively to introduce the BA/MA system. Research is also internationally oriented. Promotion is increasingly based on merit although there are few women in the higher ranks. Working conditions are generally fine and young scholars enjoy a relatively high level of autonomy and reasonable rates of pay. The major hurdle is achieving a permanent position.

In order to assess the accuracy of the figures reported in NPOs’ financial statements, I perform a digital analysis on Belgian non-profit organizations’ financial statements for accounting years 2007 up to 2012. Specifically, I compare observed frequencies for digits in the second-from-the-left position with expected frequencies based on Benford’s Law. Results based on the full sample indicate that observed frequencies strongly conform to Benford’s Law (and thus suggest a high degree of accuracy of the figures reported in NPOs’ financial statements). Nevertheless, I note statistically significant deviations from Benford’s Law (both for the entire distribution and at the individual digit level). The largest deviation is noted for zeroes in the second position (i.e., a significantly positive deviation), which can be explained based on humans’ reliance upon so-called cognitive reference points. Considering different sub-samples, I note that observed deviations from Benford’s Law are largest for the smallest non-profits and those non-profits that rely most heavily on grants and/or donations.

How do international nonprofit organizations influence political party formation in new democracies? Despite recent analyses of external influences on economic-restructuring, less attention has been paid to international assistance to political parties. Contrary to the scholarly literature stressing preexisting socioeconomic cleavages, I argue that new parties may emerge around political cleavages during rapid change; international assistance may encourage new parties to adopt organizational forms and issue areas lacking historical precedent, which are subsequently adapted to mobilize domestic public support. To demonstrate this claim, I contrast assistance by U.S. political party affiliates to parties in the Czech Republic and Slovakia, where similar revolutionary movements emerged in the name of “civil society” in 1989 but diverged, with a Western market-oriented party in the Czech Republic and populist semidemocratic party in Slovakia winning subsequent elections. The divergent paths highlight the limits to applying Western models of party organization across contexts and the need for democratic actors to be strengthened beyond founding elections.

One of the oldest chairs in government in Europe was established in 1622 at the University of Uppsala. Although it was only in the late nineteenth century that political studies in their more modern form began to take shape, there is no doubt that the Johan Skytte chair in eloquence and government owes much of its prestige to this heritage. Johan Skytte has also given his name to the Johan Skytte Prize (also known as the ‘Nobel Prize in Political Science’) awarded annually since 1995, the 2001 recipient being Brian Barry.

This article seeks to introduce the concept of political power more explicitly into the discussion of the organizational attributes of societal interests. In pursuit of this objective, it defines a set of empirical indicators of the organisational conditions of interest intermediation systems that enhance the exercise of political power. The indicators are illustrated through a comparative study of the banking sector at the European Community level and in five countries: Canada, France, Germany, the United Kingdom, and the United States. The comparison of the banking sector interest intermediation systems shows that the power of banks in Germany rests not only on their equity participation in large industrial concerns, but also on a highly developed interest intermediation system, the most integrated of the five countries. The analysis demonstrates from still another perspective the close imbrication of the state and finance in France. Finally; the article demonstrates the deep fragmentation of the US associational system, a system that has acted as a serious obstacle to banking system reform in America.

An intense scholarly and public policy debate concerns the optimal design of institutions for new democracies, particularly those facing deep ethnic or cultural cleavages. This paper surveys the main contending models that have been advanced for ethnically diverse democracies – consociationalism, centripetalism and communalism – and examines the key components of each of those models. It then explores some aspects of their application, arguing that there is much more cross-over between the models than is commonly assumed.

What causes Indonesian to lenite word-final /k/, American English to lenite word-final /t/, and Spanish to lenite word-final /s/? This article shows that all three observed lenition patterns can be motivated using a single principle: languages preferentially lenite segments that provide relatively low informativity compared to the amount of informativity those segments carry in other languages. In a comparison of a diverse sample of seven languages from the LDC CALLHOME and CALLFRIEND corpora, Indonesian /k/, American English /t/, and Spanish /s/ are found to have the lowest informativity, predicting that they would be more likely to be affected by sound change processes. In a subsequent regression-based corpus study, low informativity predicted the propensity of word-final lenition of all obstruents in American English after phonetic and phonological factors were controlled for. This article therefore provides a partial solution to the famous actuation problem (Weinreich et al. 1968) with respect to the actuation of lenition processes.

French political science remains an enigma for the rest of our discipline. Despite its early involvement in establishing the study of politics, today it is relatively small, fraught with internal difficulties and largely unknown in the rest of the world. Notwithstanding these traits, this article argues that, over the last three decades, political science in France has institutionalized, internationalized and deepened its engagement with the public sphere. Indeed, not only are student numbers expanding, but colleagues in our discipline consistently produce original and robust data and publications. Based upon statistics and participatory observation over the last 30 years, this piece’s central claim is that although much could of course be improved, contemporary French political science is now well positioned to make more sustained contributions to our discipline as a whole. Understanding better and highlighting the positive aspects of its trajectory provide ways of striving towards this goal.

An article published in Language (Sproat 2014a) questions our findings on the Indus script and Pictish symbols published in the journals Science (Rao et al. 2009a), PNAS (Rao et al. 2009b), IEEE Computer (Rao 2010), and the Proceedings of the Royal Society (Lee et al. 2010a,b). Sproat's article does not accurately present our methods and findings, and its conclusions are based on what appears to be a misunderstanding of our proposed approach. For example, the article's results on entropic measures seem to favor, rather than contradict, the inductive hypothesis that the Indus script may represent writing. The article selects results to draw a particular set of conclusions and convey a specific viewpoint. In light of these issues, we stand by our original findings.

Post–materialist values (PMVs) in Northern Ireland are less widespread than in most European countries. This is in accordance with Inglehart's argument that PMVs are less likely to arise among groups that have spent their formative years in physical and economic insecurity. However there has also been an increase in PMVs since the early 1970s which has continued steadily into the 1980s when the cohort which spent its formative years in the ‘Troubles’ entered the voting population. To explore this phenomenon, this article examines the Eurobarometer data from 1982 to 1991. Voters for four political parties (two Nationalist and two Unionist) are compared. It was found that voters for the Nationalist parties were significantly more likely to be post materialists. It was also found that Sinn Féin, a militant Nationalist party, attracted the highest percentage of post–materialists. Two explanations are offered: (1) the post–materialist index is unsuitable for use in Northern Ireland, and (2) the value change was driven by forces other than the experience of physical and economic security.

Supporters of representative democracy tend to be critical of referendums. They argue that referendums give citizens more responsibility for political decisions than they have either the capacity or the competence to take. Moreover, they argue that referendums may undermine representatives' accountability. In this article, these arguments about responsibility and accountability are analyzed in the light of normative theories of democracy, especially the theory of deliberative democracy. Furthermore, different institutional forms of referendum are analyzed. Particular attention is paid to the following aspects: the extent to which governments control the use of referendums, how referendums interact with parliamentary decision making, and whether referendums are advisory or binding. It is argued that sometimes governments indeed use their control over referendums to avoid taking stands on difficult issues. More importantly, however, current forms of government‐initiated referendums tend to weaken the accountability of the representatives, at least when interpreted in terms of liberal and deliberative democracy, and to distort parliamentary deliberations. Since delegation is a necessity in modern democracies, referendums should not undermine the mechanisms of representative democracy. In addition to the issues of citizens' capacity and competence, this viewpoint should be taken into account when designing referendum institutions.