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"American critics who deeply fear a "China threat" have unduly influenced government policy. "China hawks" believe China intends to push the United States out of Asia and dominate the world. Protectionists argue that China threatens American jobs and prosperity. This authoritative work examines why and how the U.S. should stabilize and improve its relations with China. It first assesses the threat posed by China, addressing such issues as military capability, Taiwan, the trade deficit, human rights and democracy. It then discusses the rationale for rapprochement between the two countries in order to achieve a stable peace. It makes the case for a fundamental shift in U.S. policy and efforts by both countries to increase their cooperation. It analyzes the benefits to the United States of this policy shift along with the potential impact on Japan, Taiwan, and both Koreas. This significant work on U.S.-China relations will be an essential resource for the academic and policy community as well as of interest to the general reader on a topic of great public concern."--Bloomsbury Publishing

This article examines the relationship between Rae's fractionalization index and the units of analysis on which it is based. It is shown that as one increases the size of the unit of analysis, the value of the index will increase. An exact mathematical relationship between the mean level of fractionalization for a given set of units and a fractionalization index based upon the aggregate voting totals for the units is established. This relationship shows that the aggregate fractionalization index overestimates the level of interparty competition in a system as measured by the mean level of fractionalization. U.S. congressional elections from 1824 to 1978 are used to indicate the importance of the overestimation by the aggregate fractionalization index.

Numerous scholars have used roll-call votes to analyze legislative behavior and the impact of party and constituency on legislative behavior. It is argued in this article that roll-call votes provide an insufficient data base on which to determine the overall impact of party and constituency because they do not indicate a legislator's degree of support for legis lation. A number of findings presented support this argument. First, although legislative analyses often require the assumption that a legislator is indifferent between two pieces of legislation voted on in a similar manner, such an assumption appears theoretically and empirically unsound. Second, even though the scaling of roll-call votes implies legislators' preferences among the bills making up the scale, the preferences inferred from this scaling are not equivalent to legislators' stated preferences. Finally, policy positions estimated on the basis of roll-call votes are not equivalent to those estimated on the basis of legislators' stated preferences. The article concludes by analyzing how conclusions about party and constituency influence are modified by utilizing legislators' stated preferences among bills in lieu of roll-call votes to estimate policy positions.

AbstractThis study deals with determining the effects on queuing models of assuming that interarrival and service times are exponentially distributed. Steady‐state expected value measures of congestion are compared for a variety of GI/G models when assuming an M/M model as an approximation. The majority of this effort involves single‐channel queues; however, some multichannel situations are also considered. In addition, effects of the exponential approximation are observed in certain cost‐optimization models.