Media Framing and Public Attitudes Toward Biofuels

This study investigates the relationship between media framing and public opinion on the issue of biofuels—transportation fuels made from plants, animal products, or organic waste. First, the paper investigates how media framing of biofuels has changed since the issue regained national prominence in the early 2000s. Through a detailed content analysis of newspaper coverage, the paper documents an increase in negative frames between 1999 and 2008, especially frames focusing on the negative economic effects of biofuels on consumers. Second, using data from a 2010 Internet survey of a random sample of the U.S. public, the paper analyzes the relative influence of these new media frames on public attitudes toward biofuels compared with other common predictors of public opinion, such as party ID, regional economic interests, and personal identity as an environmentalist. In general, the results confirm that public attitudes toward biofuels appear to be shaped by these new media frames, especially among those who indicate a high degree of attention to the media, suggesting the relative importance of framing effects on policy attitudes for environmental and energy policies in general.     

Gender Equality and Conflicting Attitudes Toward Women in Post-Communist Romania

The idea of gender equality has been and still is an exogenous concept in Romanian culture. Initially introduced and institutionalized by communist ideology after World War II along with other utopian egalitarian principles, gender equality remains to this day a somewhat alien concept in practice for the majority of the Romanian population. Nevertheless, in the early twenty-first century, with renewed economic growth and more liberal governance in Romania, the gender equality debate has intensified, and multiple advocacies now compete on the political and social arenas. The most notable actors shaping current attitudes toward women in Romania are the Orthodox Church, political parties, feminist organizations, and the media.

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European Union Space Initiatives: The Political Will for Increasing European Space Power

The European Union (EU) is the newest actor in the European space sector and is cultivating the political will to make Europe a world class space power comparable to the United States (US). The Galileo satellite system and the Global Monitoring for the Environment and Security space program are the most visible manifestations of this will. This article suggests that Europe can approach comparable space power if capabilities are considered rather than just budgets. The paper discusses the catalysts driving EU space initiatives, and assesses the EU's nascent European Space Policy and European Space Program, and EU organization and funding for space. Of importance are the asymmetric means for Europe to increase its space capabilities and the implications this has for the trans-Atlantic relationship with the US. The analysis is directed to the security, civil, and dual-use space sectors within the security aspects of EU space initiatives. This article also provides a baseline to track changes in EU space policy, organization, and funding dynamics.     

Hungry for Information: Public Attitudes Toward Food Nanotechnology and Labeling

What people think about food nanotechnology (nanofood) is under‐explored in the United States, especially outside of quantitative surveys. As such, we set out to examine public attitudes toward food nanotechnology in conversational, focus group settings in order to identify policy options for nanofood governance, and in particular, options for labeling. Through analysis of focus groups in six U.S. locations, we found that the vast majority of the participants wanted nanotechnology labels for all types of food products, and most were willing to pay a premium for labeling. Participants cited abilities to choose and avoid potential risk as the main purposes of nanofood labels. However, they recognized that labels alone do not provide much meaning and that information concerning food nanotechnology products needs to be sought and supplied beyond the label to enable informed choices. Additionally, willingness‐to‐use and risk–benefit perceptions varied according to the position and intended functions of the nanomaterials in food products.     

Self-Interest,Symbolic Politics,and Public Attitudes Toward Gun Control

Numerous studies have found that immediate and tangible self-interest has a minimal influence on public attitudes toward many policy issues. We examine public attitudes toward gun control in order to determine whether gun owners exhibit distinctive policy preferences. Our results indicate that self-interest strongly influences public preferences on gun control and that banning handguns evokes stronger self-interest effects than banning assault weapons or imposing a waiting period on purchases of firearms. We conclude by discussing why gun control evokes self-interested calculations among gun owners, the implications of our findings for self-interest theory, and suggestions for further lines of research.     

Changing Attitudes Toward Same-Sex Marriage: A Three-Wave Panel Study

Political Behavior - Opinions toward gay marriage, also known as same-sex marriage, have become dramatically more favorable in the last 20 years. Given the more accepting attitudes of...     

Attitudes towards European Integration and the Danish Common Market Referendum

The article analyses survey data on the role played by the issue of European integration in the Danish Common Market referendum 1972. Despite a 2:1 vote in favor of membership, support for supranational European integration was low; in fact, integration as an issue was considerably more salient to opponents of membership than supporters who tended to vote mainly for tangible, i.e. economic reasons. As many as one-fourth of the sample voted for membership though being highly anti-integrationist, either because of disbelief in the dynamics of integration, because of the higher saliency of tangible benefits, or because of identification with strongly pro-market parties.     

Corruption, Political Allegiances, and Attitudes Toward Government in Contemporary Democracies

Using surveys conducted in sixteen mature and newly established democracies around the globe, this study examines the effect of corruption on people's attitudes toward government. The analysis demonstrates that citizens in countries with higher levels of corruption express more negative evaluations of the performance of the political system and exhibit lower levels of trust in civil servants. However, the results also show that the negative effect of corruption on evaluations of the political system is significantly attenuated among supporters of the incumbent political authorities. These findings provide strong and systematic evidence that informal political practices, especially those that compromise important democratic principles, should be considered important indicators of political system performance. Moreover, they imply that, while corruption is a powerful determinant of political support across widely varying political, cultural, and economic contexts, it does not uniformly diminish support for political institutions across all segments of the electorate.     

PART in Retrospect: An Examination of Legislators' Attitudes Toward PART

This research adds insight into the congressional reaction to the Program Assessment Rating Tool (PART) by exploring the influence of individual legislators' personal experiences and ideological position on their attitude toward PART. Specifically, the factors explored include ideological position held by legislators, level of business experience, level of campaign financing received from political action committees (PACs), years spent in Congress, seniority, and congressional chamber. The results indicate that legislators with higher levels of business experience generally were more supportive of PART and that the length of time they had served in Congress and the amount of campaign contributions they had received from PACs were negatively related to PART support. The study also provides insights into legislators' overall exposure and sentiment toward PART. The data indicates that only a small proportion of legislators clearly expressed positive or negative opinions toward PART, despite widespread exposure to the tool. These findings are important in that they contribute toward a more comprehensive understanding of the congressional reaction to PART and offer further insights into the challenges of securing congressional buy‐in for executive performance budgeting initiatives.     

Taking Threat Seriously: Prejudice,Principle, and Attitudes Toward Racial Policies

Drawing from group theories of race-related attitudes and electoral politics, we develop and test how anxiety influences the relative weight of prejudice as a determinant of individuals’ support for racial policies. We hypothesize that prejudice will more strongly influence the racial policy preferences of people who are feeling anxious than it will for people who are not. Using an experimental design we manipulate subjects’ levels of threat and find significant treatment effects, as hypothesized. We find that individuals’ racial policy attitudes are partially conditional on their affective states: individuals who feel anxious report less support for racial policies than those individuals who do not feel anxious, even when this threat is stimulated by non-racial content. More broadly, we conclude that affect is central to a better understanding of individuals’ political attitudes and behaviors.     

A European Security Policy? The Attitudes of Candidates for the European Parliament*

It has been argued that the credibility of the American nuclear deterrent is declining in Western Europe. Whether this is true or not, it seems clear that support for the NATO alliance had reached a remarkably low level among Western European political elites as the 1970s drew to a close. One possible alternative to continued reliance on the Atlantic Alliance would be for Western Europe to develop its own independent defence capabilities. Certainly, in terms of economic and technological resources, this option should be within reach of an integrated European Community. And indeed there seems to be widespread support among European political leaders for the principle of having Western Europe play a more independent role vis-à-vis both superpowers. But there is no clear consensus in favour of the increased defence expenditures that such a policy would entail. Nor is there a consensus in favour of developing a unified West European security system inside or outside the institutional framework of the European Community. Our evidence in support of these conclusions is based on interviews carried out with candidates for the European Parliament in all nine member countries during the months immediately preceding the first direct elections in June, 1979.     

Religion,Space Exploration,and Secular Society

This article concerns the efforts of Reverend John M. Stout and the Apollo Prayer League to land microfilm copies of the Christian Bible on the lunar surface during the Apollo era. The efforts of Stout, a NASA information scientist and industrial chaplain who orchestrated the years-long undertaking, underscored manned spaceflight not only as a technological and geopolitical achievement, but as a collective spiritual quest. The venture was countered at the time by the renowned head of the American Atheists, Madalyn Murray O'Hair, who insisted that religious artifacts and observances had no place on state-sponsored, taxpayer–funded missions. Stout believed that the astronauts themselves had rights guaranteed by the First Amendment. The rancorous debate between Stout and O'Hair, which was played out in the media, laid bare the innate conflict between personal religious freedom and the specter of state-sponsored religion in a secular society making its first expeditions into deep space.     

A New US-Sino Space Relationship: Moving Toward Cooperation 1

Since the late 1990's the United States has maintained a strict policy of no cooperation with China on space activities. The reasons for that are several, including the desire to inhibit the development of dual-use technology considered potentially threatening to the United States and political reluctance to work with a communist country. Increasingly, however, it has become clear that policy is not constraining China from dual-use technology development and that the policy overall may be detrimental to U.S. security interests. Therefore a policy change, from a realistic consideration of circumstances, must be considered.     

Challenges to the Sustainability of Space Exploration

NASA has an elaborate process for identifying and mitigating technical risks in its human space exploration program. However, non-technical risks—political, economic, and societal—are not captured in this process. Such risks are large in number, diverse in character, often unpredictable, and can be impossible to prevent because they are beyond the space agency's control. NASA's mission directorates are responsible for long-term strategic planning, so despite the difficulties, the Exploration Systems Mission Directorate (ESMD) must direct its attention to long-term sustainability risks and the development of mitigation plans. This article surveys long-term risk factors and, where possible, makes suggestions on mitigation approaches for consideration by ESMD and NASA's top management.     

Space Situational Awareness in Europe: The Fractures and the Federative Aspects of European Space Efforts

ABSTRACT

One part of the massive US intelligence effort to learn about Soviet missile and space programs during the Cold War was acquiring and analyzing Soviet space debris that had returned to Earth. Equally important was retrieving US fragments that had landed in foreign nations to prevent the Soviets from recovering and exploiting them. At times bitter jurisdictional battles among the interested government agencies plagued the undertaking. Additionally the Outer Space Treaty of 1967 limited the ability to obtain foreign debris in some circumstances. Despite these problems, however, the available record shows that in many cases the United States acquired and tested important Soviet fragments and also was able to retrieve its own.     

Attitudes Toward “Fracking”: Perceived and Actual Geographic Proximity

Prior surveys have sought to gauge American public opinion toward shale gas development. Research on environmental hazards has produced conflicting findings related to the role of proximity in predicting attitudes. This study analyzes how perceived and actual proximity to active shale gas development in Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Texas predicts individual preferences for moratoria. We implement a conditionally parametric probit, which accounts for geographic variation in coefficient values. Our results suggest that attitudes toward the potential benefits and risks associated with shale gas development play a larger and more consistent role in predicting preference for moratoria than proximity or other sociodemographic factors. Our methodology allows for inferences related to the extent of geographic variation in coefficient values. Our results indicate that the role of proximity in predicting preference for moratoria differs based on whether a respondent resides in an urban or rural area or within a shale play.