Gender differences in political attitudes among whites arise from a variety of sources that may vary from issue to issue. Explanations based on gender-based social roles, basic value differences, socioeconomic status, and women's autonomy are tested in this study through an examination of both compositional and conditional effects. Compositional effects occur when men and women differ on an explanatory variable. Conditional effects occur when a variable has differential effects on the policy preferences of women and men. Using data from the 1996 National Election Study, OLS regression and logit results demonstrate the complex sources of gender gaps across issue areas. Some factors such as education have more of a liberalizing effect on women, while such factors as religiosity have more of a conservatizing effect on men. Overall, issue gender gaps arise both from women's cultural role and from women's increasing autonomy from men.Nearly 20 years after feminists and political observers first called attention to the "gender gap" in voting behavior, the existence and significance of gender differences in political attitudes and behavior remain controversial. Most acknowledge, however, that women today are somewhat more likely than men to identify with the Democratic party and to vote Democratic. There is, in addition, widespread agreement that issue attitudes are among the important variables explaining gender differences in voting behavior, especially attitudes on "compassion" issues like social welfare and redistribution and issues involving the use of force such as capital punishment and military intervention (Kaufmann and Petrocik 1999;Mueller 1991;Seltzer, Newman, and Leighton 1997).But what is the source of the gender differences on these and other issues? The most provocative question about the gender gap is: What aspects of the socialization of women and their role in society lie behind these issue differences? This is the subject of this analysis. We attempt to explain the gender gap on some of the issue areas that underlie the well established gender differences in partisan and electoral choice. These issues include social welfare, the role of government, use of force, feminism, racial attitudes, and liberalism0conservatism.We would like to thank Rosalind Blanco Cook, William McLean, Matthew Vile, Dennis Gleiber, and Virginia Haysley for their invaluable research assistance, and two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments.

Interest groups' increased use of centrally managed mass communications technologies has reduced opportunities for social networking among group members. This study examines the relationship between organizational democracy, or rank-and-file participation in decision making, and two indicators of social network opportunities: existence of local chapters and extent of direct-mail usage. Control variables include membership incentives, organizational resources, group age and size, and competition with other groups for members. Multivariate analyses of two interest group survey data sets, using ordinal logit, indicate that social network organizations are no more likely to involve their members in decision making than are centralized direct-mail organizations. The variables that are significantly related to grassroots involvement in organizational decision making include purposive and solidary membership incentives as well as some organizational resources, size, and age. Implications for further study of organizational democracy are discussed.

Although most surveys show overwhelming support for old-age benefits among people of all ages, few surveys cover cost-benefit trade-offs in aging policy. Questions piloted by the American National Election Studies in 1991 surveyed attitudes not only about Social Security and Medicare expansion but also about taxes on Social Security benefits and the trade-off between increasing taxes and reducing elderly medical benefits. Path analysis is used to examine the influences on these benefit, tax, and cost-benefit trade-off items for elderly and nonelderly respondents. Attitudes toward taxes on Social Security benefits are shaped more by self-interest, and less by partisanship and ideology, than by attitudes toward benefits and cost-benefit trade-offs. Although there is some evidence of generational conflict, there is more conflict within generations than between them.

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