APSA is pleased to announce the next editorial team for American Political Science Review. The new team, to be located at UCLA, will begin their term on July 1, 2007. Their Editorial Statement follows. Lee Sigelman, the current APSR editor, and his team at George Washington University will conclude their term in August 2007. The transition from the Sigelman's GWU team to the UCLA team will be complete by the end of the calendar year, and the change will be reflected on the APSR masthead commencing with the first issue of Volume 102 in February of 2008.

This is an election year. I make that statement with certainty without so much as a glance at the calendar. It is always an election year, and all the more so as campaigns have stretched out into multi-year affairs and as voting has broken out in parts of the world where until recently it was but a distant dream. Reflecting these real-world developments and our own professional interests, it also is always an election year in political science. Hardly an issue of a major political science journal goes by without some consideration—and often several considerations—of elections and voting.

This issue of the Review completes the sixth and final volume to appear with my name on the masthead. Over the last six years, our readers will have noticed and will, I hope, have admired the striking graphics adorning the cover of each issue (for which I continue to express my appreciation to Rob Hauck and Steve Yoder of the APSA office). Those who have taken the trouble to read the editorial comments that have opened every issue will also know that in each instance the cover graphic has been keyed to the theme of the “lead” article in an issue. This issue is the lone exception to that pattern—an exception born of a small bit of self-indulgence on the part of the departing editor.

This issue is headed by six political theory articles that provide new evidence, as if any new evidence were needed, of the wide variety of scholarly work that passes under the label “political theory.” By my inexpert reckoning, the first of these theory articles is more or less classical, verging on contemporary; the second is more or less contemporary, verging on feminist; the third is more or less feminist, verging on modern; the fourth is contemporary, of the pragmatist persuasion; and the fifth and sixth are formal. In recognition of this variety, our cover graphic depicts an array of spices–the obvious connection being that variety is the spice of the political theory field, just as it is of our far-flung discipline more generally.

The standard explanation for the choice of electoral institutions, building on Rokkan's seminal work, is that proportional representation (PR) was adopted by a divided right to defend its class interests against a rising left. But new evidence shows that PR strengthens the left and redistribution, and we argue the standard view is wrong historically, analytically, and empirically. We offer a radically different explanation. Integrating two opposed interpretations of PR—minimum winning coalitions versus consensus—we propose that the right adopted PR when their support for consensual regulatory frameworks, especially those of labor markets and skill formation where co-specific investments were important, outweighed their opposition to the redistributive consequences; this occurred in countries with previously densely organized local economies. In countries with adversarial industrial relations, and weak coordination of business and unions, keeping majoritarian institutions helped contain the left. This explains the close association between current varieties of capitalism and electoral institutions, and why they persist over time.

Deliberative democratic theorists (in this essay, Seyla Benhabib and Jurgen Habermas) seek to resolve, manage, or transcend paradoxes of democratic legitimation or constitutional democracy. Other democratic theorists, such as Chantal Mouffe, embrace such paradoxes and affirm their irreducibility. Deliberativists call that position “decisionism.” This essay examines the promise and limits of these various efforts by way of a third paradox: Rousseau's paradox of politics, whose many workings are traced through Book II, Chapter 7 of the Social Contract. This last paradox cannot be resolved, transcended, managed, or even affirmed as an irreducible binary conflict. The paradox of politics names not a clash between two logics or norms but a vicious circle of chicken-and-egg (which comes first—good people or good law?). It has the happy effect of reorienting democratic theory: toward the material conditions of political practice, the unavoidable will of the people who are also always a multitude, and the not only regulative but also productive powers of law.

How do Americans acquire the impression that their political foes have some understandable basis for their views, and thus represent a legitimate opposition? How do they come to believe that reasonable people may disagree on any given political controversy? Given that few people talk regularly to those of opposing perspectives, some theorize that mass media, and television in particular, serve as an important source of exposure to the rationales for oppositional views. A series of experimental studies suggests that television does, indeed, have the capacity to encourage greater awareness of oppositional perspectives. However, common characteristics of televised political discourse—incivility and close-up camera perspectives—cause audiences to view oppositional perspectives as less legitimate than they would have otherwise. I discuss the broader implications of these findings for assessments of the impact of television on the political process, and for the perspective that televised political discourse provides on oppositional political views.

The cover graphic for this issue symbolizes the process of mourning, in recognition, as per our standard practice, of the theme of the issue's lead article. By unhappy coincidence, that theme is doubly appropriate, for it also marks the recent passing of Nelson W. Polsby, the editor of the Review from 1970 to 1976. A larger-than-life figure, innovative scholar, sage political commentator, indefatigable conversationalist, and beloved mentor, Nelson Polsby was truly one of a kind – sometimes cantankerous but unfailingly gregarious and never quite able, despite what sometimes seemed to be his best efforts, to disguise his essential kindness. He will be – already is – missed.

What does the choice of the Gettysburg Address as a eulogy for the September 11 dead reveal about public mourning in the polity that made it? Tracing the genealogy of the Address back to Pericles' Funeral Oration, this essay argues that Thucydides provides two models of public mourning: one based on the Oration alone, the other on the rituals surrounding the Festival of Dionysia. Each generates a particular patriotic perspective: one unquestioning and partial, the other balanced and theoretical. Using Plato's Menexenus to distinguish the models, the essay employs them as a lens to view two moments of American public mourning linked by the Gettysburg Address. Suggesting that 1863 saw a Dionysian approach; and 2002, one based on the Oration alone, it traces the beneficial impact of the 1863 choice for American politics, and considers the possible consequences of the 2002 reading in light of American and Athenian historical experience.

Feminist thinkers have long criticized liberal theory's public/private distinction for perpetuating indifference to injustices within the family. Thinkers such as Susan Okin have extended this criticism in evaluating the theory of political liberalism, suggesting that this theory's reliance on a public conception of citizenship renders it indifferent to the way in which the internal politics of the family can undermine equality. However, I argue in this article that the feminist concern to ensure equality within the domestic sphere can in fact be incorporated into a reconstructed account of political liberalism. Central to my strong public reconstruction is the principle of publicly justifiable privacy, according to which the public/private distinction itself must be formulated with reference to the values of free and equal citizenship. On my account, the public values of citizenship should figure prominently in evaluations of family life. This reformulation of the public/private distinction answers feminist critics who suggest that political liberalism fails to offer a politics of the personal.

What is the effect of democratic competition on the power of elites to frame public opinion? We address this issue first by defining the range of competitive contexts that might surround any debate over a policy issue. We then offer a theory that predicts how audiences, messages, and competitive environments interact to influence the magnitude of framing effects. These hypotheses are tested using experimental data gathered on the opinions of adults and college students toward two policy issues—the management of urban growth and the right of an extremist group to conduct a rally. Our results indicate that framing effects depend more heavily on the qualities of frames than on their frequency of dissemination and that competition alters but does not eliminate the influence of framing. We conclude by discussing the implications of these results for the study of public opinion and democratic political debate.

Despite the importance of local elections in the United States, political scientists have little knowledge of what shapes vote choice in most municipalities and special districts, particularly in the suburbs where a majority of Americans live. This article develops and tests models of local voting behavior using unique survey data of over 1,400 voters in 30 different suburban communities. Suburban electoral politics are dominated by a nonrepresentative group of “stakeholders,” who are highly informed and interested in local affairs. Because of this, vote choice in suburban elections ends up sharing many characteristics with larger contests (i.e., issue salience, partisanship, and candidate likeability), although their impact varies with the size and diversity of the particular community (e.g., in smaller suburbs, voters are more engaged in local politics, more likely to know candidates personally, and more likely to vote against incumbents). These findings suggest the importance of developing new theories about voting behavior in micro-electoral contexts.

We compare the behavior of voters under simultaneous and sequential voting rules when voting is costly and information is incomplete. In many political institutions, ranging from small committees to mass elections, voting is sequential, which allows some voters to know the choices of earlier voters. For a stylized model, we generate a variety of predictions about the relative efficiency and participation equity of these two systems, which we test using controlled laboratory experiments. Most of the qualitative predictions are supported by the data, but there are significant departures from the predicted equilibrium strategies, in both the sequential and the simultaneous voting games. We find a tradeoff between information aggregation, efficiency, and equity in sequential voting: a sequential voting rule aggregates information better than simultaneous voting and is more efficient in some information environments, but sequential voting is inequitable because early voters bear more participation costs.

One important legacy of republicanism is the ideal of good citizenship; a related legacy of republicanism is the equation of citizenship and masculinity. These legacies are at once strange and familiar: today, masculinity and citizenship are often conceptualized as discrete and distinctive identities, and some critics, most notably feminists, suggest that in modern democracies good citizenship and masculinity may even be contradictory ideals. The source of these conceptual paradoxes is the transformation of gender and civic discourse in the early modern period, particularly the “long eighteenth century.” Understanding the implications of these changes helps us better grasp both the relationship of gender and citizenship today, and how a more effectively engaged and meaningfully egalitarian form of democratic citizenship, for men and women, might be realized.

Recent work in political economics has examined the positive relationship between legislative size and spending, which Weingast et al. (1981) formalized as the law of 1/n. However, empirical tests of this theory have produced a pattern of divergent findings. The positive relationship between seats and spending appears to hold consistently for unicameral legislatures and for upper chambers in bicameral legislatures but not for lower chambers. We bridge this gap between theory and empirics by extending Weingast et al.'s model to account for bicameralism in the context of a Baron–Ferejohn bargaining game. Our comparative statics predict, and empirical data from U.S. state legislatures corroborate, that the size of the upper chamber (n) is a positive predictor of expenditure, whereas the ratio of lower-to-upper chamber seats (k) exhibits a negative effect. We refer to these relationships as the law of k/n, as the two variables influence spending in opposite directions.

Even as he recommends it as the extra-constitutional solution to the inefficiencies and insufficiencies of legislative constitutionalism, Locke's Second Treatise is far more aware of the dangers of executive prerogative than the more optimistic accounts in the recent scholarship have appreciated, making Locke pessimistic about the permanent sustenance of legislative constitutionalism. This pessimism stems from Locke's recognition that the people are far too constitutionally passive for the vigilance essential to ‘umpire’ well the necessity of executive action outside the laws. In fact, liberalism itself can contribute to such passivity: the people are content to allow an executive to act with a significant degree of discretion outside the laws so long as those actions do not interfere with their short-term interest in security and prosperity. Understanding Locke's pessimism regarding popular vigilance casts into new light his argument for a legislative constitutionalism based on fundamental laws that establish a clear separation of powers. Such fundamental laws provide legislative elites with the constitutional ‘signals’ by which they can alert the otherwise slumbering people about an executive intent on usurpation and tyranny.

Civil war settlements create institutional arrangements that in turn shape postsettlement politics among the parties to the previous conflict. Following civil wars that involve competing nation-state projects, partition is more likely than alternative institutional arrangements—specifically, unitarism, de facto separation, and autonomy arrangements—to preserve the peace and facilitate democratization. A theory of domestic political institutions as a constraint on reescalation of conflict explains this unexpected relationship through four intermediate effects—specifically, the likelihood that each institutional arrangement will reinforce incompatible national identities, focus the pursuit of greed and grievance on a single zero-sum conflict over the allocation of decision rights, empower the parties to the previous conflict with multiple escalatory options, and foster incompatible expectations of victory. The theory's predictions stand up under statistical tests that use four alternative datasets.

Politics reflects a seemingly incontrovertible condition—any imaginable human population is diverse across multiple, overlapping dimensions including material interests, moral and ethical commitments, and cultural attachments. Such diversity means, in turn, that disagreement and conflict are unavoidable. Under these circumstances politics largely consists in contests over the contours of shared institutional arrangements. Given that there almost always are a number of ways to institutionalize social interaction, any population occupying the circumstances of politics must determine which institutional form or arrangement to rely on in any particular domain. The “priority” of democracy, on our account, derives from its usefulness in approaching this crucial task. This priority derives from features that are, in our view, unique to democracy, namely a level of reflexivity that distinguishes it from other ways of coordinating ongoing social interaction. As we demonstrate, much of the literature on social institutions tacitly and improperly privileges a quite different component of our institutional arrangements, namely markets. We show that once one clarifies the premises and argumentative strategies common to this literature, it simply is not possible to sustain the privilege it accords to markets. In fact, we argue that the analytical models and explanatory strategies that institutionalists deploy actually sustain our case for the priority of democracy.

Traditional studies of political participation assume an electoral environment in which voters decide between two White candidates, and find Latino citizens less politically engaged. Given the growth in the number of Latino candidates for office over the past 20 years, this article tests whether ethnicity impacts Latino voting behavior. I argue that the presence of a Latino candidate mobilizes the Latino electorate, resulting in elevated voter turnout and strong support for the co-ethnic candidates. Although some research provides a theoretical basis for such a claim, this article brings together a comprehensive body of empirical evidence to suggest that ethnicity is salient for Latinos and provides a coherent theory that accounts for the empowering role of co-ethnic candidates. Analysis of recent mayoral elections in five major U.S. cities reveals that Latinos were consistently mobilized by co-ethnic candidates.

Leo Strauss's greatest project was his attempt to resurrect classical political philosophy by reawakening the quarrel between the ancients and the moderns. This essay illuminates Strauss's view of that quarrel by considering a crucial stage in the development of his understanding of the most important differences between ancient and modern political philosophy. Strauss's critique of Hobbes in The Political Philosophy of Hobbes culminates in a striking comparison of Hobbes's distinctively modern approach to political philosophy with the approach of Plato and Aristotle. By examining Strauss's critique of Hobbes's “new political science,” this essay brings out the view of the deficiencies in modern political philosophy that led Strauss to conceive of the possibility of a genuine return to classical thought.