Modern Political Analysis

This sixth edition ofModern Political Analysisappears more than a decade after its immediate predecessor and in the early years of a new century and new millennium. Notwithstanding the passage of years and accompanying political events--of which the audacious terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, are surely among the most prominent--this new edition ofModern Political Analysisreaffirms enduring perspectives on the nature of politics and how contemporary political scientists analyze it. Even so, this edition, marked by the addition of a co-author (Bruce Stinebrickner) to work with the original author (Robert A. Dahl), reflects a thorough revision of what has gone before. Our treatment of influence and the nature of politics in Part I has been substantially revised and reordered to make it more easily grasped by student readers. Chapter 1 describes people in different situations of influence, ranging from those with virtually no influence over others to enormously powerful figures like Hitler and Stalin. Only after these historical accounts in Chapter 1 do we treat in more abstract fashion the central concept of influence and its relationship to politics and associated phenomena in the remaining four chapters in Part I. The four chapters that constitute Part II treat similarities and differences among the world's political systems and generally parallel the approach used in the fifth edition. However, the demise of the Soviet Union since that previous edition has reshaped the political landscape in a large part of the world and significantly increased the number of sovereign states on this planet, all of which is reflected in relevant tables and figures presented in Chapters 8 and 9. Yet our analysis in Chapter 9 confirms that earlier editions' overarching approach to the factors that facilitate democracy in national political systems has stood the test of time. In this context, we wish to thank Sunil K. Sahu, a colleague of Stinebrickner at DePauw University, and Michael Coppedge of the University of Notre Dame, a former graduate student of Dahl at Yale, for their help in revising various sections of Part II. Professor Sahu suggested many bibliographic and data sources relevant to our analysis in Chapters 6 through 9, while Professor Coppedge provided insights that assisted in the construction of the "polyarchy index" that underlies Figures 9-1 and 9-2. The two chapters that make up Part III have both been substantially revised, but in different ways. While the outline of the analysis of political participation in Chapter 10 is largely the same as in the fifth edition, we have refined and streamlined the argument in several respects and updated the bibliographic citations in light of relevant research that has become available since the fifth edition. We would be remiss not to mention our mutual friend David R. Mayhew of Yale University for his assistance in pointing us to recent important research on political participation. Professor Mayhew was Stinebrickner's Ph.D. dissertation advisor at Yale in the 1970s and is a longtime departmental colleague of Dahl, and both of us are grateful to him for his characteristically knowledgeable and timely help. Our revision of Chapter 11, which treats political evaluation, is an attempt to simplify and clarify the arguments) so as to make the main points more accessible to student readers. We conclude the book in Part IV by blending old and new material in a new chapter entitled "What Good Is Modern Political Analysis?" In that chapter we incorporate recent work by political scientists suggesting how political science can and does have applicability and relevance outside the academic world. We would also like to thank the following reviewers: Michael C. Downs, Indiana University-Purdue University; Clarissa Peterson-DePauw University; and Robert Price-University of California, Berkeley. Before we sent our manuscript toDahl, Robert Alan is the author of 'Modern Political Analysis', published 2002 under ISBN 9780130497024 and ISBN 0130497029.