Political Research Quarterly

Pluralism has seen a major revival in the recent theoretical literature. After years of thorough critique, a purge of sorts, and, finally, relative obscurity, political and social theorists have begun to resurrect pluralist themes, even if they often do not acknowledge the term. The argument here is that much within this resurrection—conscious or unconscious— owes something to an articulation of pluralism that existed before the postwar, liberal variant that is so often seen as the whole of political plu ralism. Theorists such as William James and Mary Parker Follett initiated an examination of pluralist themes before being interrupted, and ignored, by the postwar generation. This essay focuses first on the contemporary resurrection of the epistemological foundation of pluralist thought, what James called "radical empiricism." It then goes on to examine two key issues, central to early pluralists, that have been revived and expanded upon by recent theorists: the tension in reconciling pluralist difference with political unity, and the difficulties in designing ethics and practices of communication across the diversity endemic to pluralism.

Previous research suggests that groups increasingly dominate the se lection of federal court judges. We evaluate this conventional wisdom with longitudinal data tracing the appearance of organized interests at nearly 2,000 lower court confirmation hearings between 1945-1992. We find mixed support for the conventional wisdom. Organized interests do not appear more often before the Senate Judiciary Committee than in the past but there has been a considerable shift in the kinds of groups that testify. We also find that the incidence of controversial nominations has declined while the intensity of conflicts when they occur has increased. These changes, we suggest, reflect the evolution of differential group ac cess to the selection process as a function of shifting opportunities and incentives generated by broader political forces altering the electoral, policy, and institutional interests of the key players in the process.

In this article, we revisit the question of whether, and in what manner, attitudes regarding specific Supreme Court decisions influence subsequent levels of confidence in the Court itself. Analysis centers on the impact of the 1989 Webster abortion decision and Texas v. Johnson, the flag-burning edict released immediately prior to Webster. Using data from three Harris polls, one conducted just before the two decisions, and two conducted soon after, we design a quasi-experimental test in which data are ana lyzed using ordered logistic regression. Results demonstrate that agree ment with the rulings did affect perceptions of the Court, and that the pattern of effects is indicative of a negativity bias; that is, disagreement with one or both decisions substantially reduced confidence in the Court, but agreement with both edicts brought only a marginal gain in confi dence. Results also reveal that these effects did not decay in strength from the time of the first postdecision poll (conducted immediately after the decisions were released) to the time of the second postdecision poll (con ducted six weeks later).

This research extends our knowledge of the relationship between passive representative bureaucracy and active representative bureaucracy (Mosher 1968). We utilize data from the United States Equal Employment Opportu nity Commission (EEOC) to posit and test a theory of situational thresholds. Our theory is premised on the argument that Meier's (1993b) construct, criti cal mass, constitutes a particular example of a more general concept, situ ational threshold (Campbell 1963). We present evidence that three situational thresholds exist in the EEOC bureaucratic environment which determine the nature of the relationship between passive representativeness and active rep resentation : when a critical mass is reached; when a group constitutes a plu rality ; and when a group constitutes a majority In toto, these three situational thresholds delineate four distinct social environments in which active repre sentation transpires. Our findings strongly suggest that the relationship be tween passive representation and active representation is fundamentally different for each type of bureaucratic environment.

This study helps fill a gap in both the urban politics and campaign finance literatures by examining donation patterns for municipal elec tions in Atlanta and St. Louis. These local campaigns raised substantial amounts of money, much of it from suburban and out-of-state contribu tors. Businesses were the main contributors, but development interests were not the dominant force portrayed in the urban political economy literature. Like state and federal elections, contributors seemed to pursue an "investment" strategy by targeting incumbents and citywide offices. Multivariate analyses revealed no simple relationship, however, between candidate characteristics and the amount of campaign contributions or between the amount of money a candidate raised and outcomes in city council elections.

This article explores the negative campaign messages made by presi dential nomination candidates on their opponents. Using a compilation of national and state media accounts of candidate attack activity from the 1992 Democratic nomination race, we seek to answer the questions -- are the intermediated attacks made by presidential nomination candidates random events or are they predictable consequences of measurable vari ables ? Moreover, when candidates attack, who is their likely target? We find that intermediated candidate attacks can be predicted based on a number of conditions. Among these conditions are competitive position ing, reward factors and media-related conditions. Moreover, the general foci of attacks appear to be limited to attacking those who are competi tively in the top tier. Attacks vary both in their frequency and in their nature depending on the competitive stage of the campaign. The system atic evaluation of these opponent-focused negative messages and their role in candidate strategy and voter evaluation is important for under standing presidential nomination politics and strategic communication in elections in general.

The conversion of continuing party activists to new policy positions plays an important role in the process of partisan change. Although a number of scholars have shown that conversion among continuing activ ists at the aggregate level contributes to overall ideological change within the parties, political scientists have devoted little attention to the factors associated with attitudinal conversion among individual activists. In this article, we develop a model of the individual-level conversion process and test it using panel data on the abortion attitudes of a national sample of continuing party activists. The results indicate that a number of factors distinguish those activists who convert as their parties' ideological posi tions change from those activists who do not. These factors include an activist's candidate preferences and general ideological orientations, the religious and political groups to which an activist belongs, the types of incentives that motivate an activist's political activity, and the political environment in the party in an activist's home state.

Recent literature has provided some evidence that the presence of di vided government does not affect the amount of significant legislation passed by Congress and enacted into law (Mayhew 1991). In this article, I argue that although there may not be a difference in the absolute num ber of bills passed during unified and divided periods, there nevertheless may be an important difference in the formation of coalitions¹ during divided and unified periods. Specifically, I argue that party unity votes that favor the dominant party ² are more likely to form on final votes of passage during periods of unified government. I use regression analysis and probit analysis to determine if there is empirical support for this hypothesized difference in coalition formation. I find that the presence of unified government significantly increases the likelihood that a bill will pass through Congress with a party unity vote favoring the dominant party The estimates are statistically significant for both the House and the Senate.

This article uses two measures of state party ideology—a 1994 survey of state party committee members and a content analysis of state party platforms between 1990 and 1996—to determine variation between states in interparty ideological differences. These interparty ideological differ ences are compared to David Mayhew's scale measuring the historical presence of traditional party organizations in the American states. As hy pothesized, there is a strong tendency for states with histories of tradi tional party organization to have less ideologically polarized parties than those states without such traditions. This association holds up when we control for state-level measures of education, income, mass polarization, electoral competition, and party control. State environments that histori cally encouraged or discouraged the formation of traditional party orga nizations help explain variation in patterns of party activism in the contemporary era.

This study assesses the effects of U.S. involvement in international cri ses on the domestic popularity of American presidents for all major classes of voters. Using a time series analysis of monthly presidential approval and crisis involvement between 1953 and 1994, and controlling for eco nomic conditions and structural features of presidential popularity, it is apparent that crisis activity does increase the president's popularity, albeit by a very small margin. This result holds for both overall approval levels and within each president's "ruling coalition" of partisans as well as inde pendent voters; opposition party voters generally do not "rally 'round the flag." The small rally effect for crisis activity diminishes, however, when the U.S. president uses force, and when the Soviets are not involved. Furthermore, the rally effect actually seems to depend on the level of presidential response to a crisis; higher levels of response would account for rally effects. Taking the analysis one step further, it is revealed that outcomes of international crises (that is, how the U.S. fared) generally do not affect presidential popularity, even when examined with various lags. The investigation concludes with suggestions for further research on link age politics.

Political action committees normally use contributions as a reward or inducement for access or favorable roll-call votes. In extreme cases, how ever, PACs may reduce funding as part of a punishment strategy. The roll- call vote on the North American Free Trade Agreement in the House of Representatives provides an interesting test case for the strategy of pun ishment. Organized labor was clearly against NAFTA and threatened to reduce support to proponents of the agreement. If a punishment strategy is followed by interest groups, we would expect to find it in this case. Ordinary least squares regression is used to examine labor PAC contribu tion strategy. We find that labor followed a short-term punishment strat egy against Democratic supporters of NAFTA.