Exploring Aggregate vs. Relative Public Trust in Administrative Agencies that Manage Spent Nuclear Fuel in the United States

Trust is a key component of democratic decision‐making and becomes even more salient in highly technical policy areas, where the public relies heavily on experts for decision making and on the information provided by federal agencies. Research to date has not examined whether the members of the public place different levels of trust in the various agencies that operate within the same policy subsystem, especially in a highly technical subsystem such as that of nuclear energy and waste management. This paper explores public trust in multiple agencies operating within the same subsystem, trust in each agency relative to aggregate trust across agencies that operate within the nuclear waste subsystem, and trust in alternative agencies that have been suggested as possible players in the decision‐making process. We find that trust accorded to different federal agencies within the nuclear waste subsystem varies. The variation in trust is systematically associated with multiple factors, including basic trust in government, perceptions about the risks and benefits of nuclear energy/waste management, party identification, and education. These findings have significant implications for research on public trust in specific government agencies, alternative policy entities, and for policy makers who want to design robust and successful policies and programs in highly technical policy domains.     

Receiving information about rice seeds on mobile phones in eastern India

This article examines how farmers use mobile phones to obtain information about rice varieties in eastern India and investigates if this contributes to rice varietal replacement. The findings show that farmers located farther away from the market were more likely to pay for the calls. Moreover, about 26% of the farmers who had to pay to receive calls purchased seeds of at least one rice variety that they had never planted before, while less than 16% of farmers who received no calls did so. Regression results confirmed that paying charges to receive rice varietal information is associated with varietal replacement.     

Shorter notices

The Economics of Development: An Annotated List of Books and Articles Published. 1958–1962. By Arthur Hazlewood, London Oxford University Press, 1964. Pp. xii, 104, 12/6.

Libya : Its Oil Industry and Economic System. By Abdul Amir Q. Kubbah, The Arab Petro‐Economic Research Centre, Baghdad, Iraq, 1964. Pp. 274. 45/‐.

Levels of Economic Activity and Public Expenditure in India. By K. Mukerji, Gokhale Institute of Politics and Economics, Poona, Asia Publishing House, London. 1965. Pp. xvi, 140. 55/‐.

Leading Issues in Development Economics. Selected Materials and Commentary. By Gerald M. Meier, New York, Oxford University Press. 1964. Pp. xiii, 572. 35/‐.     

On new rules for destroying old countries

The attacks on 11 September 2001 were not a major security threat to the United States, but they did create the political conditions for the implementation of an aggressive agenda by the Bush administration to assert U.S. dominance over the global control of oil and to establish an arc of military bases to contain China. Responding to Gowan, this article suggests that bid is unlikely to succeed because the concentration of military strength in the United States is paralleled by a concentration of financial strength in East and Southeast Asia. Though its Asian allies have been more supportive of the U.S. invasion of Iraq than their European counterparts, growing economic integration along Asia's Pacific coasts is likely to lead to a reduction in capital inflows to the United States and thereby aggravate the consequences of its high current accounts deficits and its low rates of domestic savings. The Bush administration's conservative social policies and anti-foreigner zeitgeist is also sapping the competitive edge of the U.S. economy in new technologies.