Explaining Petroleum Policy in Britain and Norway, 1962-90

Petroleum policy in Britain and Norway provides comparativists with an opportunity to study policy formation, stability, and transformation on a cross-national basis. This study explains why British and Norwegian officials decided to intervene in the North Sea, why offshore policy in the two countries went through periods of stability and change, and why they adopted similar offshore systems in the 1960s and 1970s but diverged markedly in the 1980s. We develop an explanatory framework using insights from state-centric, group politics, rational choice, and institutional models of policy-making. The framework identifies three decision-making contexts in which petroleum policy-makers operate simultaneously: an oil context, a domestic political context, and an international context, Each context establishes objectives for policy-makers, indicates an acceptable degree of government intervention, and narrows policy options. Rational decision-making within each context, however, may yield conflicting results. These must be worked out through intrastate and/or state-society bargaining. The decision-making contexts in Britain and Norway produced similar policies in the 1960s and 1970s, but the similarities hid deeper differences. Norwegian officials consistently favored state intervention offshore, and Norwegian interest groups successfully lobbied the state for offshore favors, while British officials intervened more reluctantly and paid less attention to societal interests. Differences in decision-making contexts finally produced a major divergence in offshore policies in the 1980s when the Thatcher government dismantled the state's offshore participation policy.     

Achieving a negotiated compensation agreement in siting: The MRS case

Theoreticians claim that negotiated compensation plans could overcome local resistance to nuclear waste (or other less than desirable) facilities, and the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982 gives the Department of Energy considerable flexibility to negotiate with and compensate states in which it locates waste storage. DOE's monitored retrievable storage (MRS) proposal is the first attempt under the NWPA to site nuclear waste operations, and both DOE and one local community tried the negotiated compensation approach with some success. State and regional leaders chose to oppose the project rather than to negotiate, however. The limited experience to date suggests that local reluctance to negotiate is a generic weakness of the compensation approach to siting and must be given greater attention.     

Interpersonal Sensitivity, Romantic Stress, and the Prediction of Depression: A Study of Inner-City, Minority Adolescent Girls

The role of interpersonal sensitivity in the relation between romantic stress and depression was examined in 55 adolescent girls from an inner-city high school. Depression, interpersonal sensitivity, and chronic and episodic romantic stress were measured at two time points, 6 months apart. Interpersonal sensitivity was found to moderate the longitudinal relation between romantic stress (both chronic and episodic) and depression. In contrast, interpersonal sensitivity did not potentiate depressive responses to non-romantic interpersonal stress, suggesting particular importance of stress in the romantic domain for adolescent girls. Results indicate that girls' sensitivities to romantic relationship stress should be specifically addressed in depression prevention and intervention programs.Received her PhD from the University of Southern California. Research interests include the influence of romantic relationship factors, such as romantic stress and dating violence, on the development of depression during adolescence.Received her PhD from the University of California, Los Angeles. Research interests include the interplay between adolescent depression, personality disorder symptoms, and interpersonal variables including adjustment in friendships and romantic relationships.Research interests include cognitive and interpersonal factors in adolescent depression.     

The relative electoral impact of central party co-ordination and size of party membership at constituency level

Over the past decade, clear evidence has been produced showing that effective constituency campaigning in British general elections can lead to better electoral performance. This evidence has challenged the received wisdom that only national campaigning is significant and that efforts at local level are meaningless rituals. Denver et al. have focused on the role of the national parties in strengthening local campaigns in target seats; Seyd and Whiteley, by contrast, have stressed the importance of local party membership. This article attempts to assess the relative electoral impact of national party co-ordination and constituency party membership and suggests that the impact of these two factors varies by party.     

Pricing Outputs: A Case Study in Law Enforcement

This paper discusses the advantages and limitations of economic evaluation as a measurement methodology within the Australian government's outcome and output framework including preliminary benefit–cost analysis of Australian Federal Police investigations. The results suggest that the Australian Federal Police is returning over $5 to the community for every dollar invested in fraud and drug investigations. It is concluded that benefit–cost analysis is a useful tool for comparing the price of an output to the value of an outcome. The method has limitations. Not all outcomes will admit of easy assessment and the information may be difficult to collect. However, the use of surrogate measures and extrapolation of results may overcome most of these limitations.     

Gender cleansing justice

Review essay of Susan Moller Okin,Justice, Gender, and the Family (New York: Basic Books, 1991, 216 pp., £9.95 (paper) ISBN 0465-037-038.     

From Goddess Spirituality to Irigaray's Angel: The Politics of the Divine

This article argues that the act of conceptualizing a female divine, whether by socalled low-brow Goddess Spiritualists or high-brow French philosophers, rather than being a mere spiritual exercise, has enormous political significance for feminisms. In particular, I demonstrate that Irigaray's concept of the sensible transcendental, by refiguring a god which is both male and female, transcendent and immanent, theorizes a potential dissolution of the binary logic which forms the basis of western philosophy. The second half of the article looks at the complex role of the angel in Irigaray's theory of the divine in order to demonstrate that, as a result of having misinterpreted the angel's position, critics have failed to recognize the significance and relevance of Irigaray's sensible transcendental for feminist politics.