International Political Science Review

This paper identifies some of the political mechanisms that help to explain why the relationship between IMF-supported stabilization programs and other economic adjustments related to the problems of external debt service and political violence are, at best, indirect. A cross-sectional pooled time series (35 Third World countries, 1974-86) is used to test the proposition that low political capacity indirectly increases frequency of protest demonstrations, political strikes and riots when governments attempt to adjust to rising debt service costs without disturbing the political status quo. The data analysis supports the proposition. The burden of external debt service does not directly affect these forms of political violence. Prior IMF-supported stabilization programs have a coincidental impact on increasing domestic political strife to the extent that weak governments use IMF conditionality to justify introducing austerity measures they would have to implement with or without IMF assistance.

Addressing international relations in Australia through the eyes of the scholar rather than the policymaker, this paper presents a partial and personal contribution to a growing sociology of knowledge of the discipline in general and in one country in particular. It outlines the centrality of a power politics realism to the Australian discipline, the central element of which has traditionally been the identification of "threats" and "protectors." From this historical introduction the paper moves to discuss one major change that is coming about in the nature of Australian threat perception, the essence of which is a growing sense of economic, as opposed to politico-strategic, vulnerability in an increasingly unpredictable economic order. The 1980s have seen the search for national economic well-being become as—if not more—salient an issue as is the search for politico- strategic security for scholars of international relations in Australia.

It has often been suggested that participation in politics has an "educative" effect on the outlook of the participants (cf. Pateman, 1970). This claim is examined with particular reference to basic attitudes toward civil liberties utilizing data from the Attitudes Toward Civil Liberties in Canada project. The central finding of the paper is that a person's values and level of participation interact in a fashion consistent with the educative-effect hypothesis. Statistical models are presented showing that the role of basic values in making judgements about civil liberties issues varies (in both degree and kind) with the extent of political involvement, just as with education. Close examination of the relative importance of political involvement and education reveals that while education is the more important of the two in promoting support for civil liberties, participation has an important additional effect among those who are highly educated.

This paper reviews psychological research concerned with the relationship between broad factors of social and political attitudes and preferences for different types of humor. Conservatives, compared with liberals, were found to dislike jokes that are overtly sexual and aggressive, although there are signs of a recent reaction against "sexist" jokes among liberal youth. Within the sphere of nonsense humor, conservatives were intolerant of jokes that failed to provide resolution of incongruous elements. Such results confirm the hypothesis that conservatives seek emotional control and cognitive closure compared with liberals, who are comfortable with more abandoned self expression and thought processes.

The historical view of political humor in America maintains that the humor adheres to democratic theory and practice, viz., its dimension boundless, its character egalitarian, its substance encompassing and its expression open. In short, the position embraced both by the popular and academic cultures is that the humor is unrestricted and removed from taboos. A perusal of its content, however, suggests the contrary. Political humor reflects the nexus of power relationships and is sharply bounded by an ideology on the one hand and by corporate structure on the other. The primary focus is rather on the political official as the flaw in the system while the system itself and its underlying theory remain unexamined within the culture of humor.

This paper attempts to categorize political humor using four criteria: target, focus, acceptability, and presentation. These are applied to examples of the humor of Bob Hope, the Gridiron dinner, Harry Shearer, and Lenny Bruce. Four types of political humor relating to authority emerge: supportive, benign, undermining, and subversive.