Abstracts

s Vol. 2, no 1 (2010), p. 3-5. <http://acirm.cedram.org/item?id=ACIRM_2010__2_1_3_0> Centre international de rencontres mathématiques U.M.S. 822 C.N.R.S./S.M.F. Luminy (Marseille) France cedram Texte mis en ligne dans le cadre du Centre de diffusion des revues académiques de mathématiques http://www.cedram.org/ Actes des rencontres du C.I.R.M. Vol. 2 no 1 (2010) 3-5

BURKE, BRISTOL, AND THE CONCEPT OF REPRESENTATION. By James Conni~.
One of the most important approaches in political theory in recent years has been conceptual analysis. Two of the weaknesses of this approach are its neglect of the social context of a thinker's work and its fail'ure to consider the relationship between a given concept and the thinker's work as a whole. Such is the case with most attempts to explain Edmund Burke's theory of representation. A careful review of the political conditions of eighteenth-century England and Burke's theory of the English constitution reveals that Burke does not support representation without responsibility. Burke does indeed see representation as a form of trusteeshipy but as a defensive trusteeship. Burke argues that the representative's job is to protect his constituents from executive misrule rather than to exercise authority himself. He further holds that, while the representative ought not to be instruced, he is subject to review and dismissal by his electors for any reason they choose.
RECOGNITION AND PRODUCTIVITY AMONG AMERICAN POLITICAL SCIENCE DEPARTMENTS. By David R. Morgan and Michael R. Fitzgerald.
An index of scholarly productivity for American political science departments is developed for the period 1964 to 1973. The top fifty department are presented and compared with a common measure of departmental prestige. It was also shown, using multiple and partial correlation techniques, that productivity scores are modestly associated with certain departmental and institutional characteristics, particulary the size of the department faculty and number of library volumes. THEORIES OF COLLECTIVE GOODS REEXAMINED. By Jeff rey A. Hart and Peter F. Cowhey. This paper reexamines collective goods' theory in order to demonstrate three sets of problems facing scholars seeking to employ it for political analysis. First, major theorists about collective goods actually employ widely differing definitions of a collective good. Each of the four major definitional criteriajoint supply, nonexcludability, indivisibility of benefits and impossibility of appropriation -can lead to a very dfferent conclusion from the others about the likelihood that self-interested individuals will contribute to a collective effort.
Second, theorists like Samuelson and Olson not only employ very different definitions, they also make a number of questionable assumptions in their models, or overlook logical major possibilities for collective behavior. It is therefore difficult to rely on their models for prediction of political behavior. Third, the models are more difficult to operationalize for empirical analysis than currently recognized. Problems of various-sized units, transaction costs, and technological change must be considered.

CONFLICT REDUCTION IN THE POST-ELECTION PERIOD: A TEST OF THE DEPOLARIZATION
TFiESIS. By Allan J. Cigler and Russell Getter.
Using panel data from the 1972 SRC presidential study, the article examines the often assumed notion that voters in the post-election period change their attitudes in a manner having a depolarizing effect upon the political climate. The findings indicate that depolarization is not an automatic response of the American electorate in the post-election period.
Though most respondents did experience some change in attitude toward one or both candidates after the election, there was no evidence of a widespread &dquo;bandwagon&dquo; effect for the winner or a &dquo;sympathy&dquo; effect for the loser. In terms of comparative candidate evaluation, no pattern of depalarization emerged, with less than half of the respondents rating the candidates closer together in the post-election period. The authors suggest that many of the widely held assumptions concerning attitude change in the post-election period should again be examined within the context of more recent elections, since the findings of this study are inconsistent with previously accepted generalizations.
FEDERAL CATEGORICAL AID TO CITIES : WHO NEEDS IT VERSUS WHO WANTS IT. By Alan L. Saltzstein.
The amount of federal categorical aid to cities is analyzed to assess the importance of the need for aid and the interest in and efforts expended in acquiring aid by members of the city government, A survey of attitudes and practices of city managers and city council members in twenty cities is used to measure attitudes and practice. Indicators of social and economic need proved to be unrelated to aid acquisition, while council members' attitudes and efforts by the city manager were significantly related. Differences in the relative explanatory power of different kinds of aid suggests that newer aid programs like L.E.A.A. may be acquired more in response to community interest than are other forms of aid. Motivated by a need for greater attention to local-level political life in communist states, the author seeks to discover the real and/or potential issues which participants in sub-national politics identify for their locality. Employing interviews of people's council deputies to obtain attitudinal data, the author draws intra-national comparisons among four &dquo;counties&dquo; (judete) in Romania. This research suggests that political participants in local communist politics have ( 1 conflicting ideas as to what the most important local problems are and (2) contradictory evaluations of local governmental organs. Moreover, data imply that local problems (as opposed to nationally decreed goals) are the foci for the attention of sub-national political actors, while they disagree over both the priority of local problems and over which activities of local government are most commendable.

INFLUENCING THE SELECTION OF JUDGES: THE VARIETY AND EFFECTIVENESS OF STATE
BAR ACTIVITIES. By Charles H. Sheldon.
Canon Eight of the ABA's Code of Professional Responsibility urges the bar to assist in improving the legal system by participating in the selection of qualified judges at the state level. This article reports the variety of activities and methods used, and the perceptions of leading state bar officials regarding the effectiveness of their endeavors. The most widely used activity is judicial rating polls by bar membership made public prior to an election. Participation in nominating commissions, investigation and recommendation by a special selection committee, endorsement by the Boards of Governors, and rating polls of candidates by bar membership transmitted to the appointing authorities constitute the roster of formal methods. Six states have no official activities designed to influence judicial recruitment. Contrary to previous reports, the influence of the bar varies from the least impact on gubernatorial appointments, to an increasing influence over nonpartisan elections, legislative selection, and partisan elections, ; its greatest impact is on Merit Plan systems.
CONSTITUENCY RESPONSE TO CONGRESSIONAL BEHAVIOR: THE IMPACT OF THE HOUSE JUDICIARY COMMITTEE IMPEACHMENT VOTES. By Gerald C. Wright, Jr.
Voters' low awareness of issues and candidates has led to the common view that policy actions of candidates are not important factors in congressional elections. This may, however, be due as much to scarce information as to voter apathy. To see if voters do use issue information when it is clearly available, this study examines the 1974 electoral repercussions of the nationally televised votes cast by members of the House Judiciary Committee concerning the impeachment of Richard Nixon. Deviations of the vote from predictions based on long-term factors indicate that pro-impeachment votes had a small positive effect among Republicans and no consistent effect among Democrats. Our major finding is a clear negative effect among those on the Committee who consistently opposed impeachment. Of the four losing loyalists, each would probably have won their reelection had they supported Nixon's impeachment. The results show that if voters are given reasonable information about the candidates on a salient issue, then they are responsive to issues in subpresidential elections.

RELIGIOUS FORCES AND &dquo;MORALITY&dquo; POLICIES IN THE AMERICAN STATES. By David Fairbanks.
This paper is an analysis of the determinants of liquor and gambling regulations in the American states. The religious basis of anti-liquor and anti-gambling movements is reviewed and indicators of religious influence are correlated with Guttman scale measures of liquor and gambling laws. The hypothesis developed by Thomas R. Dye in Politics, Economics and the Public which links efforts to regulate morality to rural, stable, homogeneous populations also is tested. A partial correlational analysis shows that religious influences exert a stronger impact in determining the restrictiveness of liquor and gambling regulations than do the measures of economic development examined by Dye. The paper's conclusion is that economic models designed to account for interstate variations in spending policies are of limited use in the analysis of non-fiscal policies such as those pertaining to the regulation of public morality.

LEGISLATIVE INFORMATION SYSTEMS : A REVIEW AND ANALYSIS OF RECENT EXPERIENCE.
By John A. Worthley. American as well as foreign legislatures are currently turning to modern technology to meet legislative information needs. These efforts appear to be having considerable impact on the policy-making function of the legislatures as well as on their institutional development.
This article reports recent legislative information systems experience, develops a framework for analysis, and suggests that the legislative experience with modern information systems has been both cautious and consequential. In particular, legislatures appear to have resisted the rush to computers until mechanisms for controlling the impact were established. Evidence to date indicates that information system development can significantly strengthen the legislature's policy-making capacity and representative functions. The movement toward modern legislative inforrnation systems portends a need for increased monitoring of the phenomenon and its impact.