Relationships between characteristics of teachers and teachers' assessments of sources of information

The Researchers' primary purpose was to explore relationships between (a) urban area secondary school teachers' assessments of thirty three sources of information apt to influence their practice and (b) specific characteristics of these teachers. A sample of 245 teachers, or 61% of the set contacted, participated. Qualitative and quantitative analyses of data offered by the respondents were carried out. Both predictable and perplexing outcomes of the data analyses were documented. The Researchers concluded: a) That demographic profiles of teachers can be discerned which are related to assessments of various information sources; and b) that teachers' needs for information can be linked to preferred sources of information. They were unable to explain why variables like years of teaching experience, sex, and age were related significantly to teachers' assessments of sources of information.     

DIFFERENTIAL RATES OF RURAL-URBAN DELINQUENCY: A Social Control Approach

Official statistics and numerous sociological studies indicate that rural areas generate lower rates of delinquency than do urban areas. This study attempts to explain these differential rates by drawing on the social control theory of Hirschi. Questionnaires were administered to a rural and an urban juvenile detention center population to investigate both extent of delin-quency involvement and degree of commitment to five institutional orders: family, church, school, peers, and formal authority. As hypothesized, the rural sample reported significantly less delinquent activity than the urban sample. Control theory also received support from the data. A strong inverse relationship was found between commitment and delinquency. When intro-duced as a control variable, commitment specified the original relationship between locality and delinquency. The specified relationships were strongest for rural youth with high commitment and for urban youth with low commitment.     

GOVERNMENT STRUCTURAL POLICIES AND THE AUTOMOBILE INDUSTRY

Structural policy has two elements: rules of competition and concentration in the marketplace, and deliberate attempts to structure industrial sectors. Historically, Europe, Japan, and the U.S. have pursued quite dissimilar structural policies, reflecting their differing perceptions of the national interest, different international imperatives, and different conceptions of the role of the state. The automobile industry offers sharp cross-country comparisons of structural policy at i t s most vigorous. In this paper, the successes and failures of U.S. antitrust activity toward the automobile industry are considered in comparison to the relative absence of such policies abroad. Similarly, governments' attempts to develop internationally competitive automobile industries in Europe and Japan contrast with the domestic regulatory orientation in the U.S. This historical analysis suggests the current need for reorientations in national structural policies in order to deal effectively with internationalized markets, firms, and competition in the automobile and other industries today.     

Cross-National Perspectives for Aiding Policy Choice

The field of public policy analysis, centered about practical choices, is being extended by this journal to include useful comparisons among nations or other political units, as well as borrowing or lesson-drawing. This extension should remain close to the practical orientation of the field, rather than seeking to contribute to those disciplinary theories that lack practical usefulness in the short term (several decades). Implications of this admonition are spelled out in the form of a list of suggested topics for articles in this journal.     

Interstate Banking: Current Status and Unfinished Agendas

In 1986, most of the centuries-old barriers against interstatebranch banking fell. By the end of the year, thirty-seven stateshad passed legislation authorizing some form of interstate branchbanking. Moreover, two federal judicial decisions had clearedthe way for interstate banking by restricting state regulatoryauthority over interstate branch banking when it is conductedeither through a shared-use automatic teller machine or by a"nonbank bank." These developments have dramatically changedthe nature of the business of banking, creating an entirelynew legislative agenda for states. High on the list of the itemsthat states must now consider are regulatory and tax parityamong competing financial institutions; multiple taxation offinancial institutions that do business in several states; taxavoidance by out-of-state banks; and out-dated jurisdictionalstandards.     

Usable information for policy: An appraisal of the U.S. Global Change Research Program

The U.S. Global Change Research Program (USGCRP) was established in law in 1990 (P.L. 101–606) with a mandate to provide policymakers with usable information. The law gave a White House Committee on Earth and Environmental Sciences (CEES) responsibility to implement the program with respect to its policy mandate. In 1994 CEES was replaced, in part, because it failed to provide usable information. This article, documenting the development of the program's policy mandate and CEES implementation of the USGCRP, finds a performance shortfall. The shortfall is attributed to a breakdown in the legislative process, participant perspectives, and the structure of post-World War II science policy. The purpose of the article is to explain the CEES performance shortfall in hope that its successor can improve USGCRP performance with respect to its legal mandate based upon the lessons of experience.     

Reaganism,pluralism, and the politics of pesticide regulation

A key priority of the Reagan Revolution was an attack on the system of health, safety, and environmental regulation that arose in the 1970s. This article evaluates Reagan's regulatory reforms through the lens of one particularly important case study, the regulation of pesticides. This case will be used to explore two issues: (1) an empirical question about the magnitude of policy change achieved by the Reagan administration in the area of environmental regulation; and (2) a conceptual and theoretical question about the dynamics of subgovernments or issue networks, and their relationship to policy change. The analysis reveals that while the Reagan administration has produced important changes in both policy style and substance, in comparison to the changes that occurred around 1970, they have been relatively modest. Reagan's reform efforts failed largely because the President only controls a subset of the relevant components of the policy regime. Environmental interests were strongly entrenched in regime elements beyond Reagan's immediate control - in particular Congress, the courts, and the ruling public philosophy - and were thus able to thwart many of Reagan's initiatives.