Understanding Public Support for British Membership of the Single Currency

There has been much public debate about whether a referendum on British membership of the European single currency could be won despite opinion polls showing a widening gap between those opposed to membership and those in favour. However, academic research provides little insight into why British attitudes towards the Euro vary at an individual level, and hence what factors might be crucial in a referendum campaign. Existing studies suggest, among other things, that British political parties can shape voters' preferences on important public policy issues. We explore this and other explanations using data from recent Eurobarometer and British Elections Study surveys. We find that general evaluations of the EU, British national identity and concerns over the democratic character of EU governance are stronger predictors of support for the single currency than which party a person supports. However, we also find that the influence of these factors varies with a citizen's level of information about the Euro, which suggests that the supply and use of information might be crucial in a referendum campaign.     

Adolescent psychiatric inpatients: Characteristics,outcome, and comparison between discharged patients from a specialized adolescent unit and nonspecialized units

We have recently studied the outcome of school-aged children treated in day hospital and inpatient psychiatric units using four operationally defined preadmission child and parent/family variables as predictors of outcome. Our studies have provided considerable support for these preadmission variables singly and/or in combination in predicting poor outcome in school-aged children in these hospital settings. The present study describes the prevalence of these variables and their ability to predict outcome in two groups of adolescent psychiatric inpatients in the same hospital: one group placed on a specialized adolescent unit and one group placed on other inpatient psychiatric units. The findings indicate that overall there is a lower prevalence of the preadmission variables in the adolescent group compared to the school-aged inpatient group. In the adolescent group, only the preadmission variable of severe aggressive/destructive behavior predicted poor outcome. There appears to be a greater prevalence of severe behavioral disturbance in the group of adolescents discharged from the specialized adolescent unit compared to adolescents discharged from other psychiatric units, and an associated poorer outcome in the former group. Possible reasons for these findings and their implications for the hospital-based evaluation and treatment of aggressive and severely disturbed adolescents are discussed.This paper was presented in part at the 144th annual meeting of the American Psychiatric Association, May 1991.Received M.D. from Albert Einstein College of Medicine. Research interests are outcome of youth treated in psychiatric programs, aggression and conduct disorder, and children of substance-abusing parents.Received M.A. in psychology from the New School for Social Research. Research interests are psychobiology, affective disorders, and metabolic regulation.     

How to Succeed at Increasing Spending Without Really Trying: The Balanced Budget Amendment and the Item Veto

Congressional efforts at budgetary reform generally contain procedural impediments designed to limit profligate spending. In particular, the line-item veto and the balanced budget amendment are intended to limit the ability of legislators to pursue their constituents' interests through pork-barrel politics at the expense of the broader public interest. However, assuming that legislators remain motivated by local constituent interests, we argue that these reforms will promote unexpected results. The supermajorities requires by the line-item veto and the balanced budget amendment include incentives for log-rolling that promote – and may indeed increase – pork-barrel spending.