I thank Michael Thies for responding to my queries and criticisms as well as
Campbell's and Pempel's. But I must briefly ask a few more questions and make a
few more comments, as his response raised as many , and more, than I had before!

1)I think I see what you are getting at by trying to find predictibility on an
independent variable, but I still have the question, if you are not trying to
explain the dependent variable [policy or policymaking] then what is the point?
You can't explain an independent variable [that's a contradiction!]. So what are
you trying to explain?

2)One reason I think you got so much flak on your previous postings is because
everyone takes it for granted that pols have formal authority to make formal
decisions in policy. The question, and I gather we all agree at least on this
part, is how much "slack" there is between that formal authority and its
enforcement/monitoring, etc. by the pols. Whether one phrases it as discovering
the extent to which pols actually exercise their formal authority given the
formal rules, or one phrases it as how much influence do pols actually have, I
think still we are not talking about different things. But if formal authority
is a constant, and there is empirical evidence of a change in the influence pols
are having on policy, then I think most of us are saying something must have
changed to give the pols more influence. I gather you say that this can't be
true if the rules haven't changed? So you either say, "show me where the rules
changed" in the sense of how formal authority has changed, or deny that any
change could possibly have taken place. Is that correct?

3)the analogy of the formal veto power of American presidents was interesting.
But if Carter exercised the veto more than Ford, then you are correct that the
formal veto power itself had not changed so it can't be the explanation. We have
to look for something that had changed other than the formal authority to
explain the variable. Doesn't this contradict your whole argument though about
pols in Japan? If the two are equivalent then looking for why pols have more
influence at time 2 than time 1 , despite having the same formal authority, is
the same as trying to find out why one President exercised veto power more than
another. No?

Best, Ellis Krauss