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COMPARED TO CONTEMPORARY POLITICAL SCIENCE, PHYSICS AIMS AT BEING QUANTITIVE RATHER THAN EXACT, QUOTES FACTS RATHER THAN AUTHORITIES, IS ON THE LOOKOUT FOR UNIVERSAL LAWS THAN ANALYSIS. THIS ARTICLE INTRODUCES INTO POLITICAL SCIENCE THE USE OF ALGEBRAIC MODELS RATHER THAN STATISTICS AND CALCULATIONS RATHER THAN PHILOSOPHY AND THEORETICAL METHODOLOGY.

Science walks on two legs. One leg consists of asking: How things are? This leads to observation, measurement, graphing, and statistical description. The other leg consists of asking: How things should be, on logical grounds? This leads to logical models that should become quantitatively predictive. Science largely consists of such models, tested with data. Developed science establishes not only connections among individual factors but also connections among these connections. As an illustration, I use laws about human activity I have found. But social sciences often take the lazy road of fitting raw data with a straight line or some fashionable format, unaware of the need to think and build models based on logic, as stressed by Karl Deutsch. As expounded in my Making Social Sciences More Scientific (2008) and Logical Models and Basic Numeracy in Social Sciences, www.psych.ut.ee/stk/Beginners_Logical_Models.pdf, I call for a major widening in social science methodology.

The Soviet Union annexed the Baltic states in August 1940, an act Western democracies refused to recognize. Under somewhat different circumstances, the Baltic states could have turned, instead, into satellite 'People's Democracies' like Hungary - Communist-ruled but outside the Soviet Union. The annexed Baltic states played a major disruptive role during the demise of the Soviet Union. Might the Soviet Union have survived, had it disgorged the Baltic ferment in good time? The satellite option received mention repeatedly, from as early as June 1940 to as late as 1989. Here the focus is on 1965, when three Estonian refugees proposed a compromise: Washington might encourage Moscow to turn the Baltic states into satellites, the governments of which the USA could then recognize. For the Baltic nations, the main change would have been to curtail the influx of Russians. The reactions to this proposal are reviewed, ending with the question: what do alternate histories tell us about the actual one?. © 2013 Copyright Taylor and Francis Group, LLC.

The Soviet Union annexed the Baltic states in August 1940, an act Western democracies refused to recognize. Under somewhat different circumstances, the Baltic states could have turned, instead, into satellite 'People's Democracies' like Hungary - Communist-ruled but outside the Soviet Union. The annexed Baltic states played a major disruptive role during the demise of the Soviet Union. Might the Soviet Union have survived, had it disgorged the Baltic ferment in good time? The satellite option received mention repeatedly, from as early as June 1940 to as late as 1989. Here the focus is on 1965, when three Estonian refugees proposed a compromise: Washington might encourage Moscow to turn the Baltic states into satellites, the governments of which the USA could then recognize. For the Baltic nations, the main change would have been to curtail the influx of Russians. The reactions to this proposal are reviewed, ending with the question: what do alternate histories tell us about the actual one?. © 2013 Copyright Taylor and Francis Group, LLC.

The attitudes of Western powers toward the Baltic states were in 1945-1990 steadily affected by how they perceived Baltic history: whether it even existed and if so, what did its most recent phase represent - occupation or voluntary union? The Baltic refugees were initially poorly prepared for the struggle about history, because they lacked not only English language skills but also understanding of democratic societies. Their books were printed by little-known publishers, and studies in scholarly journals were almost completely absent. A breakthrough took place in the 1960s. Major figures were Vytas Stanley Vardys, who was first to publish articles in top journals and books with major publishers, and J-nis Gaigulis, who initiated and kept going the Association for the Advancement of Baltic Studies (AABS) and its Journal of Baltic Studies. Support for scholars was strong in the Latvian exile community, while hesitant in the Estonian and Lithuanian ones. By the time of the 'Singing Revolution' the struggle for Baltic history had been won in the Western world. It had become widely accepted that the Baltic peoples and their histories existed, and Moscow's attempts to rewrite Baltic history could not take root in the West. Winning the struggle for the past helped in the struggle for the future of the Baltic peoples. © 2009 Journal of Baltic Studies.

The attitudes of Western powers toward the Baltic states were in 1945-1990 steadily affected by how they perceived Baltic history: whether it even existed and if so, what did its most recent phase represent - occupation or voluntary union? The Baltic refugees were initially poorly prepared for the struggle about history, because they lacked not only English language skills but also understanding of democratic societies. Their books were printed by little-known publishers, and studies in scholarly journals were almost completely absent. A breakthrough took place in the 1960s. Major figures were Vytas Stanley Vardys, who was first to publish articles in top journals and books with major publishers, and J-nis Gaigulis, who initiated and kept going the Association for the Advancement of Baltic Studies (AABS) and its Journal of Baltic Studies. Support for scholars was strong in the Latvian exile community, while hesitant in the Estonian and Lithuanian ones. By the time of the 'Singing Revolution' the struggle for Baltic history had been won in the Western world. It had become widely accepted that the Baltic peoples and their histories existed, and Moscow's attempts to rewrite Baltic history could not take root in the West. Winning the struggle for the past helped in the struggle for the future of the Baltic peoples. © 2009 Journal of Baltic Studies.

The Skytte Foundation states that I was awarded the Skytte Prize 2008 for 'profound analysis of the function of electoral systems in representative democracy'. What does this mean? As examples, I would highlight three relationships that qualify as laws in the strongest scientific sense. They do so because they offer a logically supported model as well as agreement with data, which gives them broad predictive ability. © 2009 Nordic Political Science Association.

The Skytte Foundation states that I was awarded the Skytte Prize 2008 for 'profound analysis of the function of electoral systems in representative democracy'. What does this mean? As examples, I would highlight three relationships that qualify as laws in the strongest scientific sense. They do so because they offer a logically supported model as well as agreement with data, which gives them broad predictive ability. © 2009 Nordic Political Science Association.

Formed in 2001, Res Publica won the Estonian parliamentary elections in 2003, and its leader became prime minister. It failed to win a single seat in the European Parliament in 2004 and was down to 5 per cent in opinion polls in 2005 when it dropped out of the cabinet. The founding chairperson of the party analyses here the causes for Res Publica's rapid rise and fall, reviewing the socio-political background and drawing comparisons with other new parties in Europe. Res Publica was a genuinely new party that involved no previous major players. It might be characterized as a 'purifying bridge party' that filled an empty niche at centre right. Its rise was among the fastest in Europe. For success of a new party, each of three factors must be present to an appreciable degree: Prospect of success = Members times; Money × Visibility. Res Publica had all three, but rapid success spoiled the party leadership. Their governing style became arrogant and they veered to the right, alienating their centrist core constituency. It no longer mattered for the quality of Estonian politics whether Res Publica faded or survived. © 2006 Taylor & Francis.

Formed in 2001, Res Publica won the Estonian parliamentary elections in 2003, and its leader became prime minister. It failed to win a single seat in the European Parliament in 2004 and was down to 5 per cent in opinion polls in 2005 when it dropped out of the cabinet. The founding chairperson of the party analyses here the causes for Res Publica's rapid rise and fall, reviewing the socio-political background and drawing comparisons with other new parties in Europe. Res Publica was a genuinely new party that involved no previous major players. It might be characterized as a 'purifying bridge party' that filled an empty niche at centre right. Its rise was among the fastest in Europe. For success of a new party, each of three factors must be present to an appreciable degree: Prospect of success = Members times; Money × Visibility. Res Publica had all three, but rapid success spoiled the party leadership. Their governing style became arrogant and they veered to the right, alienating their centrist core constituency. It no longer mattered for the quality of Estonian politics whether Res Publica faded or survived. © 2006 Taylor & Francis.

For parties of unequal seat shares (si), the widely used effective number of parties (N = 1/Σsi2) offers an equivalent in equal-sized parties, but it needs a supplement to express the imbalance in actual shares. This is akin to supplementing the mean with the standard deviation. A suitable 'index of balance' is b = -log s1/log p, where S1 is the largest share and p is the number of seat-winning parties. It can range from 0 (utter imbalance) to 1 (perfect equality of all parties). In most individual countries, the median balance is between 0.4 and 0.6, and the worldwide median balance is close to 0.50 for any number of seat-winning parties except 2, in line with a simple logical model. Independent of electoral systems used, a rule of conservation emerges: the median product of the largest party's fractional share and the square root of the number of seat-winning parties is conserved: s1p0.5 = 1. The worldwide median for 603 elections is within 2 percent of 1.00. © 2005 SAGE Publications.

For parties of unequal seat shares (si), the widely used effective number of parties (N = 1/Σsi2) offers an equivalent in equal-sized parties, but it needs a supplement to express the imbalance in actual shares. This is akin to supplementing the mean with the standard deviation. A suitable 'index of balance' is b = -log s1/log p, where S1 is the largest share and p is the number of seat-winning parties. It can range from 0 (utter imbalance) to 1 (perfect equality of all parties). In most individual countries, the median balance is between 0.4 and 0.6, and the worldwide median balance is close to 0.50 for any number of seat-winning parties except 2, in line with a simple logical model. Independent of electoral systems used, a rule of conservation emerges: the median product of the largest party's fractional share and the square root of the number of seat-winning parties is conserved: s1p0.5 = 1. The worldwide median for 603 elections is within 2 percent of 1.00. © 2005 SAGE Publications.

The Nagayama triangle represents the conceptually allowed area when the vote or seat shares of the second-running contestant are graphed against the shares of the top contestant. This research note points to various uses of this tool in the study of Duvergerian processes.

Lijphart's (1999) analysis maps countries along two dimensions of democratic institutions: 'executives-parties' or 'joint-power', and 'federal-unitary' or 'divided-power'. My 'meta-study' maps the methodology of Lijphart's mapping: the nature of indices (inputs or outputs), their logical interconnections, their susceptibility to institutional design ('constitutional engineering'), and their suitability for expressing the intended underlying concepts. Strikingly, the joint-power indicators are highly correlated and mostly logically connected output measures, which are not susceptible to institutional design, while the opposite is true for the divided-power dimension. For this dimension most indices are expert estimates of inputs, marginally correlated, yet subject to institutional design, limited by size dependence. Surprisingly, the parliamentary-presidential aspect of institutional design does not affect the picture. The connection between cabinet life and the number of parties is even stronger than found by Lijphart. Interest groups and central bank independence fit his dimensions empirically but less so logically. In sum, institutional design may be more difficult than sometimes assumed, but offers hope.

Lijphart's (1999) analysis maps countries along two dimensions of democratic institutions: 'executives-parties' or 'joint-power', and 'federal-unitary' or 'divided-power'. My 'meta-study' maps the methodology of Lijphart's mapping: the nature of indices (inputs or outputs), their logical interconnections, their susceptibility to institutional design ('constitutional engineering'), and their suitability for expressing the intended underlying concepts. Strikingly, the joint-power indicators are highly correlated and mostly logically connected output measures, which are not susceptible to institutional design, while the opposite is true for the divided-power dimension. For this dimension most indices are expert estimates of inputs, marginally correlated, yet subject to institutional design, limited by size dependence. Surprisingly, the parliamentary-presidential aspect of institutional design does not affect the picture. The connection between cabinet life and the number of parties is even stronger than found by Lijphart. Interest groups and central bank independence fit his dimensions empirically but less so logically. In sum, institutional design may be more difficult than sometimes assumed, but offers hope.