This study has as its central focus an investigation into the existence and nature of the apprenticeship norm in the United States Senate. Over its history, the Senate has been frequently portrayed as a body guided by rather restrictive, informal rules of behavior for its members. The apprenticeship norm has been identified by some as the most important of these rules; contributing to the Senate's centralized and conservative policy orientation. More recently, however, it has been argued that the Senate has become a more decentralized and fragmented body within which the apprenticeship norm is no longer important. The present study offers for the first time an empirical test of the existence and nature of the apprenticeship norm for selected sessions of the Senate for the time period 1940-1976. The frequency of performance of various types of floor activity by members of the Senate were correlated and regressed with years of service in the Senate as well as with other background characteristics of Senators to test both for the existence of the apprenticeship norm as well as to identify its relevance relative to other potential explanations of Senate floor behavior. Several definitions of apprenticeship were advanced and tested.

This study tests hypothesized causal relationships between predictor variables and voter turnout. Attention is focused on the psychological and attitudinal dimensions of turnout. Using data from the 1980 National Election Study of the Center for Political Studies, recursive and nonrecursive causal models are constructed to test the effects of election specific factors, social psychological factors, and rational choice based factors on voter turnout. Self-reported turnout is used as the primary dependent variable in all models. Validity tests support use, despite acknowledged limitations.

The objective of this study is to describe and analyze the management of communal conflict in the Middle East, focusing on the Kurds. To this end, an effort is made to examine (1) the means that have been used to manage the Kurdish conflict by Middle Eastern countries; (2) the degree of success or failure of applied measures and (3) possible explanations for the first two questions.