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The responses of 1473 subjects were utilized to examine the relationship between job satisfaction and extra-work satisfaction to test Wilensky's three hypothesized relationships. The current study regressed job satisfaction against the social trust of respondents, their sense of social equity, institutional confidence, and their satisfaction with government's handling of nationalproblems. These social attitudinal indices were added to factors utilized in previous research such as objective job factors, demographic variables, general life satisfaction, and their levels of social involvement. The results produced two previously unreported extra-work attitudinal contributors to job satisfaction: social trust and institutional confidence. The findings supported Wilensky's spillover theory but produced no evidence in support of Wilensky's segmentation or compensation alternatives.

Adopting a particular non-linear perspective resolves numerous paradoxes about collective political behaviour. Self-organized criticality occurs if the sensitivity of individuals or groups to each other's actions increases with the passage of time, and, therefore, sudden changes may occur as cascades. In this way scandals, betrayals, miscalculations and other seemingly insignificant actions can sometimes cause cabinet dissolutions, strikes, riots, electoral landslides, wars and a multitude of other phenomena that, until now, have seemed to have had nothing in common.

Rational models generally predict that only a few people should vote in most elections. A major reason why turnout is so high today is because of the numerous positive messages which citizens are routinely given about the value of their vote. A month after discussion of a model of rational participation, individuals were found to be more negative toward the institution of elections. A major reason for voting continued to be the feeling of duty to participate; subjects who felt no moral obligation would not go to the polls even if they were very interested in an election.

Abstract. Some prominent economists have argued that the structure of a nation's economic life – capitalist or socialist ‐ helps to shape its political institutions. Though its importance seems self‐evident, scholars have not yet integrated this idea into the literature of empirical democratic theory. Drawing on previous work, we formulate four propositions about the relationship between economic structure and political democracy. Economic structure does in fact mould political forms, but not in a simple, linear fashion. Rather, it does so in a more complex, non‐linear manner, a relationship we label the ‘mixed‐economy’ model. This relationship survives and flourishes in the face of extensive challenges. Its implication is simple: democratic political practice reaches a maximum under moderate amounts of public direction of economic affairs, but suffers at the extremes of both unfettered capitalism and socialism.