Hypotheses: The structure of domestic political institutions and levels of policy resources condition the willingness of leaders to use conflict involvement to manipulate domestic audiences.

Method: Probit analysis of 294 militarized interstate disputes during the period from 1955 to 1976.

Results: Domestic structures have a significant effect on the propensity of leaders to use foreign policy as a vehicle of their personal political ambition.

Explanations of national decisions to use force have traditionally neglected the possible contribution of domestic political processes or institutions. "Domestic political variables," as Levy (1988, 79) observes, "are not included in any of the leading theories of the causes of war; instead, they appear only in a number of isolated hypotheses and in some empirical studies that are generally atheoretical and noncumulative." One reason for this neglect is that realism, arguably the dominant theoretical tradition of those who study international conflict, asserts that the primary factors determining foreign policy are found at the systemic level, often indicated by the distribution of military and economic power (Morgenthau 1967; Waltz 1959, 1979). In the realist view the distribution of power imposes a structure that constrains foreign policy elites to such an extent that domestic political considerations are relatively unimportant in shaping their policy choices.

In recent years, however, the effect of domestic factors on state foreign policy has generated substantial research generally focused on two areas. The first stems from the broadly based empirical finding that while democracies are just as war-prone as other types of states (Small and Singer 1976; Chan 1984; Weede 1984), they simply do not engage each other in conflicts of sufficient severity to be counted as international wars (Maoz and Abdolali 1989).

Second, and coinciding with the research on regime type and war, is a renewed interest in diversionary theory. In its simplest form, diversionary (or scapegoat) theory argues that leaders of nation-states use foreign conflict involvement to divert domestic attention from internal problems (see Blainey 1988 and Levy 1989 for critiques). While the initial exploratory analyses yielded few significant results (Rummel 1963; Tanter 1966; Wilkenfeld 1972), recent studies using different research designs have found a modest link between leader popularity and the diversionary use of force (Ostrom and Job 1986; James and Oneal 1991; Morgan and Bickers 1992).

This paper seeks to expand our theoretical and empirical knowledge of the relationship between domestic politics and foreign policy by specifying the relationships among domestic variables and their consequent effects on foreign policy. In particular, I focus on the effect of domestic structures and systemic forces on the response of leaders to military threats from abroad. Following a discussion of the interrelationships among domestic and international sources of foreign policy, I evaluate their explanatory power using a set of 294 militarized interstate disputes that occurred between 1955 and 1976.

Hypotheses: (1) effective govemance hinges critically on traditions of civic engagement; (2) political culture fundamentally drives economic performance and democratic stability.

Method: Reanalysis of two data sets: (1) the first includes information collected by Putnam (1993) on a variety of political, economic and social indicators for the 20 Italian regions; (2) the second includes comparable information collected by Inglehart (1990) for the industrial democracies.

Results: We find little evidence to indicate a systematic relationship between political culture and political and economic performance.

Ever since Max Weber, many social scientists looked at the 'right' cultural attitudes and beliefs as necessary conditions ('prerequisites') for economic progress, just as earlier theories had emphasized race, climate, or the presence of natural resources. In the 1950s, newly fashioned cultural theories of development competed strongly with the economic ones (which stressed capital formation), with Weber's Protestant Ethic being modernized into David McClelland's 'achievement motivation' as a precondition of prog- ress and into Edward C. Banfield's 'amoral familism' as an obstacle. According to my way of thinking, the very attitudes alleged to be preconditions of industrialization could be generated on the job and 'on the way,' by certain characteristics of the industrialization process.

GIL's attention to the robustness of their estimates contrasts sharply with the studies evaluated in Jackman and Miller (1996). Their analysis departs from recent treatments in another way. In contrast to Inglehart (1990), for example, who examines the seven different components of culture that we discuss, GIL restrict their attention to just two: postmaterialism and achievement motivation. They find that only achievement motivation affects growth, which serves as the basis for their conclusion about the importance of culture. In this sense, their work stands as a key amendment to recent studies with their emphasis on norms of trust, satisfaction, participation, and the like and signals a return to earlier work, exemplified most notably by McClelland's studies of need for achievement (1961; 1963; McClelland and Winter 1969). Given the exclusion of the former norms from GIL's analysis, along with their reported nonresults for postmaterialism, we take it that they regard achievement motivation as the only "cultural" value affecting economic growth. This narrows the field a good deal.

While there is thus much to recommend their paper over previous work, GIL's conclusion is ultimately unconvincing, on both theoretical and empirical grounds. We address these areas in turn.

In this Keynote Dialog, three outstanding scholars addressed the potential impact of the Internet on our lives: Manuel Castells (Professor of Sociology and of City and Regional Planning at the University of California, Berkeley), Amy Bruckman (Assistant Professor in the College of Computing, Georgia Institute of Technology) and William Davidow (Founder and Partner, Mohr, Davidow Ventures). I begin by presenting an edited transcription of each of their opening statements, then turn to a synthesis of their arguments, and conclude with the key challenges and questions these arguments pose for future research.

The first section of the entry looks closely at the philosophical roots of the American declaration and the rights that it put forward, while the second section considers the declaration from a comparative perspective. The first part looks at the relationship between Jefferson’s ideas and those of political philosopher John Locke, while the second part considers the relationship between the American declaration, the English Bill of Rights that preceded it, and the French declaration which came after it. Next, an argument is made about universality and particularity with regard to basic rights, especially noting the language employed by the American founders. Finally, and closely related to the universality debate, the argument is put forth that—while the American Revolution represented a great leap forward with regard to the idea of basic human rights—the founders also left much work to be done, particularly in terms of applying those rights to an ever-expanding circle of individuals and groups.

In the first section of this article, the discussion focuses on a secular conception of human rights, as outlined by Ronald Dworkin. The second section considers Michael Perry’s objections to Dworkin’s theory of secular sacredness, whereas the final section presents my rebuttal to Perry’s questions, quoted above, about the idea of human rights being a fundamentally religious one. Although both Dworkin and Perry suggest that human rights are based on sacredness, I argue that human dignity actually provides the foundation and that—contrary to existing theoretical work on this subject—sacredness and dignity should not be treated as synonyms.