Political Culture and State Development Policy

Economic development has become a prominent issue for stategovernments. Nevertheless, states vary in the economic policiesthey choose. Two general approaches to the issue are discussed:the maintenance/attraction strategy and the creation strategy.Factor analysis allows us to gauge state effort on these twocriteria. Regression analysis shows that political culture isan important factor in predicting which approach a state chooses,with traditionalistic states favoring the maintenance/attractionstrategy, and moralistic states favoring the creation alternative.Other predictors of state policy choices include the conditionof the economy and the diffusion of innovations. Also discussedis the interaction of political culture with other relevantvariables in shaping state policies.     

Small City Autonomy in the Federal System: A Study of Local Constraint and Opportunity in California

How severe have been the restrictions on the autonomy of localgovernments, as state and federal mandates and grant programsproliferated in the 1970s? This study of mandate and grant impactsin nine, small California cities suggests that local controlhas not been reduced as much as the recent literature of federalismargues. Municipal officials in these communities perceived arange of effects according to program areas. Clean water standardswere negatively viewed, while state planning mandates actuallyserved to further local goals. Most of the cities did not hesitateto compete for grants, despite their many strings. Based onthe "hard case" of small cities—which are relative newcomersto grant and mandate programs, and generally change-resistantin attitude—this study points out some positive localgovernment impacts of federal-and state-local entanglements. ¹ As associate investigator of the project on which this paperis based, Joan Hogan of the Institute of Governmental Affairs,University of California at Davis, contributed significantlyto the research.     

Genetic markers in human bone: I. Deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) analysis.

Deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) was isolated from a number of spongy and compact human bone tissue specimens, and the yield was estimated on a "per milligram of starting tissue" basis. DNA was, in addition, isolated from a number of corresponding blood and bone tissue specimens. Spectrophotofluorometry and ethidium bromide visualization on minigels were used to estimate the quantity and degree of degradation of DNA. The DNA from several blood-bone pairs is shown to give concordant restriction fragment length polymorphism (RFLP) typing results by two different typing protocols with five different single-locus probes. DNA from several additional blood-bone pairs is shown to give concordant results for human leucocyte antigen (HLA)-DQ alpha phenotypes following polymerase chain reaction (PCR) amplification and hybridization to specific allele-specific oligonucleotide (ASO) probes, and for the variable numbers of tandem repeats (VNTR) length polymorphisms 3' to the human apolipoprotein B (APOB) gene following PCR amplification with specific primers and analysis of the products by electrophoresis and ethidium bromide visualization.     

Social Choice and the Grammar of Rights and Freedoms

The techniques of social choice and game theory are increasingly being used to analyse concepts in political theory. Although these techniques may prove invaluable for teasing out contradictory formulations, puzzles and problems with traditional concepts, formal writers often begin their analysis with simplistic intuitive accounts rather than building on earlier traditions in analytic political theory. This is no more obvious than with the social-choice and game-theory analysis of rights and freedoms. This paper reviews these approaches and demonstrates that by ignoring the grammar of rights and freedoms, social-choice and game-theory analysis goes wrong from the very beginning. Formal writers need to take more account of the history of their subject, as developed in the analytic theory tradition.     

World Risk Society and War Against Terror

I interpret the 'war against terror', declared following September 11 2001, as adopting concepts drawn from the work of Ulrich Beck, as a projection of world risk society. Despite its global character, war against terror is constructed through outmoded vocabularies of national security and sovereignty, within which the reasoned negotiation of risk is marginalized. This exclusion contributes to the intensification rather than reduction of terror and terrorism. In so doing the moment of violence inscribed within the concept of the political resurfaces in the constitution of war against terror, Homeland Security, and the identities and anxieties that they reproduce. Contrary to Slavoj Žižek's claim that risk society is incapable of resolving the dilemmas that it exposes, Beck's approach cuts across established ideological and methodological boundaries, anticipating key transformations of discourse required to address the prevailing global predicament through the vocabularies and logic of cosmopolitan risk, rather than those of absolute security, terror and war.