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A plural society is defined as one which is ethnically diverse and whose ethnic divisions are politically relevant. Extant theories of politics in plural societies focus primarily on democratic political systems— that is, societies which, during some period of their recent political history, have been characterized by Western-style democratic political and governmental institutions. As a consequence, there has been little effort to formulate and apply analytical or theoretical frameworks which are specifically relevant to nondemocratic systems such as the Soviet Union. The principal objectives of this article are: (1) to augment, modify, and reformulate existing theoretical ideas on ethnic political behavior in plural societies so that their scope includes nondemocratic political systems; and (2) to assess the applicability of these ideas to the Soviet Union.

A discussion of the background conditions that give rise to terrorist individuals & organizations, with focus on a small ethnic group, the South Moluccans in the Netherlands, some of whose members engaged in violence & terrorism, with apparently little motivation. Examined are the theoretical connections between a society's ethnic cleavages; the development of ethnopolitical activity, especially organized violence & terrorism; & the implications of this activity for the functioning of institutions in democratic & nondemocratic societies. An attempt is also made to identify & assess the efficacy of potential responses to latent or manifest ethnopolitical activity. 63 References. Modified HA

Voters' preferences for political parties and their choices can be modeled as a set of equations with three endogenous variables: (1) the perceived distance between the voter's ideological position and that of a party; (2) the utility that the voter assigns to a party; and (3) behavior—whether or not a voter votes for a given party. Spatial models of party competition imply that (1) the perceived ideological distance between a voter and a party is a function of the perceived spatial distances between the voter's most preferred point on each electorally relevant issue and the party's position—the greater these distances, the greater the perceived ideological distance; (2) the utility assigned to each party is a function of this ideological distance, as well as the issue distances; and (3) the higher the assigned utility, the higher the probability that a voter votes for a given party, but the greater the ideological and issue distances, the lower this probability. These hypotheses are operationalized and tested with individual-level data from the 1970-1973 Dutch Election Study.

ABSTRACTRational‐choice models of voter behaviour are concerned with two basic questions: what stimulates citizens to vote, and, if a citizen votes, for whom does he/she vote? In this study, aggregate voter behaviour is modelled as a system of equations with three endogenous variables related to these questions. The parameters of this system are estimated with pooled cross‐sectional, time‐series data on the 1929–69 Northern Irish Parliamentary elections. After appropriate controls are included and within the constraints imposed by these data, evidence is found which supports the applicability of rational‐choice models to these elections. On the related issue of voter decision rules, evidence is found which supports the calculus‐of‐voting approach, an important component of many voting models (e.g., spatial models of candidate/party competition). Finally, the analysis highlights the major aspects of Northern Irish voter behaviour in these elections and can serve as a paradigm for the examination of similar electoral data from other political systems.