Alan S. Zuckerman

Politics and Society Political Diversity and Uniformity in Households as a Theoretical Puzzle

The authors resolve a theoretical puzzle that characterizes the political preferences of members of social groups by (a) demonstrating that political homogeneity is a variable to be explained, (b) detailing how political discussions and shared attachments to political parties strongly influence its probability and arguing that political uniformity requires reinforcement and negotiation, (c) noting that the relatively low levels of shared policy preferences and political values are hardly influenced by any of the explanatory variables offered, and (d) presenting an alternative set of principles that accounts for these sometimes coherent and sometimes incoherent patterns. Finally, the authors address general themes in political analysis: the formation of political cultures and the relationship between theory and evidence in political science, themes at the heart of Harry Ecksteins contributions to theory in political science.

Political Cleavage: A Conceptual and Theoretical Analysis

Abraham Kaplan in his ‘paradox of conceptualization’ draws attention to the fundamental problem of concept-formation: ‘The proper concepts are needed to formulate good theory, but we need a good theory to arrive at the proper concepts’. On this view, concepts are neither right nor wrong but are more or less useful; their utility is determined by the twin and mutually dependent requirements of empirical precision and theoretical importance. ‘Empirical precision’ has to do with a concepts ability to ‘carve up’ the world of phenomena without unnecessary ambiguities; ‘theoretical importance’ has to do with the utility of a concept in the development of statements of wide explanatory and predictive power.

Comparative Politics: PARADIGMS AND PRAGMATISM

INTRODUCTION Students of comparative politics explain electoral behavior, political networks, political institutions, contentious politics, comparative political economies, welfare states, international-comparative linkages, and the state. Their interest in the pragmatic and causal analysis of these critical political questions defines the “messy center” of comparative politics. The first edition of this volume emphasized the fields research paradigms, placing rationality, culture, and structure in the subtitle. In the decade or so since the first edition was published, tension between these two perspectives on the field has persisted. Contrasts between research paradigms and pragmatic causal accounts provide the intellectual friction that drives much of our research. These alternative foci structure this editions themes and problems. Aiming to transcend a battle of the paradigms, Alan Zuckermans chapter advances an explanatory strategy that is one such way forward. Explanations in comparative politics, he maintains, must meet clear standards: The more that are met, the better the results. The criteria include social mechanisms (a particular form of causal mechanism) that are derived from strong theoretical propositions. Convincing explanations also require empirical evidence of the specified explanatory processes. Because the ontology of politics demands that the explanations apply to stochastic, multilevel, and endogenous phenomena, simple causal claims are insufficient. Applying social mechanisms with high prior probabilities of explanatory power and employing appropriate statistical techniques transforms the language of explanation from imprecise verbal accounts into clear and specific arguments. The results move explanation along a scale from the mistaken to the demonstrated.

A Structural Theory of Vote Choice: Social and Political Networks and Electoral Flows in Britain and the United States

The question of how social and political networks influence political behavior stands at the theoretical heart of this article. A general hypothesis details the patterns of crisscrossing and overlapping lines of division and cohesion as they relate to voting decisions: As individuals vary in their membership in mutually reinforcing social and political networks, they vary in the likelihood of persistently voting for the same political party and never voting for other parties. Analyses of panel data on British (1964-1966; 1966-1970; 1964-1966-1970; 1970-1974) and American voters (1956-1960) found supporting evidence for a series of hypotheses and empirical generalizations derived from the general proposition.

The Political Bases of Citizen Contacting: A Cross-National Analysis

This article examines a mode of political participation that frequently has been overlooked—individual efforts to obtain assistance from government officials. Using the seven-nation data set of Verba, Nie, and Kim, we develop and empirically evaluate alternatiave models of citizen contacting. Our first model draws on variations in the distribution of social and economic resources to explain the likelihood of contacting. The second focuses on differences in political ties to locate those most likely to contact government officials. We find greater support for the political ties model. Persons active in political parties and election campaigns are the most likely to engage in citizen contacting. Without political ties, few poor or uneducated persons would ask officials for assistance. We conclude by noting the more general theoretical and normative implications of our study.

Partisan Attitudes and the Vote Moving Beyond Party Identification

The study of voting has been dominated by several major research traditions—social class and social structure, party identification, and rational choice—each of which has been subject to major criticism. In this article, we develop an alternative approach to the study of electoral behavior. We view vote choice as a decisional process, and the assumptions of our model are in line with available knowledge of simple human decision making and with related theoretical approaches to the subject. In addition to accounting for vote choices in Britain in 1970 and 1974, our argument rests on relatively few and simple assumptions and provides hypotheses that account for stability and change in the votes cast by individuals and by the electorate taken as an aggregate. It also provides a proper theoretical and empirical understanding of the concept of party identification. The result is an alternative to more widely used explanations of electoral behavior.

Political Science and the Jews: A Review Essay on the Holocaust, the State of Israel, and the Comparative Analysis of Jewish Communities

The Jewish State: A Century Later. By Alan Dowty. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998. 337p.

Social Structure and Political Competition: The Italian Case

35.00. Comparing Jewish Societies. Edited by Todd M. Endelman. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. The Comparative Studies in Society and History Book Series. 369p.

A Decision Heuristic for Party Identification: New British and German Data and a New Understanding for a Classic Concept

22.95. Rubber Bullets: Power and Conscience in Modern Israel. By Yaron Ezrahi. New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux. 307p.

The Political Bases of Activism in the Israeli Labour and Herut Parties

25. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998. 307p.