William H. Flanigan

Nationalization of the American Electorate

The conceptual meaning of and the empirical evidencefor the nationalization of the American electorate is explored. Two conceptually distinct dimensions of nationalization are identified: nationalization in terms of a convergence in the level of partisan support across geographical subunits of the electorate, and nationalization in terms of a uniformity of response by geographical units to political forces. Empirical estimates for both types of nationalization are derived for the American electorate for the period from 1842 to 1970. Unlike previous scholars, we find no trend toward increasing nationalization of the vote. Possible reasons for this lack of nationalization of the vote are suggested.

Patterns of Political Violence in Comparative Historical Perspective

The causes and consequences of political violence have become major topics of research in an era of history beset by seemingly continual warfare, revolution, and other violent acts of every description. The study of political violence has drawn upon theoretical perspectives and forms of analysis from all the social sciences. The Report of the National Commission on the Causes and Prevention of Violence, for example, includes among its authors historians, economists, sociologists, psychologists, and anthropologists as well as political scientists. In this article we shall consider political violence from a broad comparative and historical perspective in an effort to discern patterns of political violence through the years; to identify some of the economic conditions that are associated with violence; and to examine a few major political effects of violence. The article is divided into three main parts. Part I describes the incidence of warfare and of domestic political violence in sixty-five countries during the period 1800-1960; Part II investigates relationships between acts of political violence in these countries and several economic variables; and Part III examines connections between domestic political violence and attempts to introduce and maintain democratic regimes.

Alchemist’s Gold: Inferring Individual Relationships from Aggregate Data

IT IS AN ARTICLE of faith for social scientists that substantive considerations should guide the choice of research topics and dictate the selection of analytic tools, never the reverse. Most scholars share a certain disdain for colleagues who learn a new statistical technique and then apply it willy-nilly to every set of data within reach. Although we would not want, in general, to quarrel with the venerable maxim that technique should be the slave and not the master of substance, exceptions exist. In the Middle Ages a tremendous amount of scientific and creative energy was invested in the attempt to transform base metals into gold-surely an activity of great substantive interest but, ultimately, no payoff. On the other hand, vast new areas of scientific achievement were opened when someone built a better telescope and turned it on the stars or when cathode ray equipment, developed for other purposes, led to the discovery of X-rays. As Thomas Kuhn (1962) notes, increased precision in instrumentation is usually undertaken to test hypotheses under an existing paradigm. Yet these technical advances in measurement occasionally lead to surprising anomolies that open up entirely new substantive areas. This point has an analogue in the development of the voting behavior field within political science. Without a doubt, interest

Rejoinder to Dykstra and Kousser

In our article “Alchemist’s Gold”, we tried to make three main points. First, a large number of models of individual behavior can fit observed ecological patterns, and these models entail different assumptions about the nature of the individual relationship within and across the ecological units. This topic has been most impressively developed by Gudmund Iversen (1981). Second, there is nothing in the ecological data or the various types of ecological analysis that informs the researcher about how to choose among the many dissimilar models. All the models are compatible with the ecological data, and we have no way of knowing whether a particular inference about individual behavior is quite accurate or extremely misleading. Because of the inherent ambiguity over the unobserved individual behavior within ecological units, we made a third point of recommending techniques for reducing the amount of uncertainty surrounding estimates.

The Conduct of Inquiry in Social Science History

My purpose here is simple—if not particularly lofty. I intend to characterize in general terms the activities that we engage in when we do social science history research, to describe somewhat abstractly how we conduct inquiry in social science history. This examination of our scholarly activities is provoked by several convictions: First, the philosophy of science—even an epistemology of social science history to the extent that there is one—is by and large not helpful to the conduct of inquiry. Second, the efforts in philosophy (and elsewhere) to conceptualize the conduct of inquiry in philosophy using examples from the physical sciences seem especially inapplicable to social science history. Third, when we do become self-conscious about what we are doing, we concentrate on methods and techniques of data collection and analysis and we create the impression that our scholarly research is fully described by technical decisions and activities.

Western European and Anglo-American Party Systems A Dimensional Analysis

This article first reviews the major directions which the spatial analysis of party systems has taken. An easily performed technique for dimensioning parties-in-the-electorate in a social space is then introduced and applied to fourteen Western European and Anglo-American party systems.

Partisan Realignment: Voters, Parties, and Government in American History

Critical elections realignments and party systems identifying realignments - correlational analysis identifying realignments - a reassessment the deterioration of electoral alignments partisan realignment and control of state governments Congress and partisan change the dynamics of partisan change prospects for partisan politics.