Fluctuating Party Identification in Great Britain: Patterns Revealed by Four Years of a Longitudinal Study

The concept of party identification is widely used in British electoral studies, but its value as a measure of underlying links between voters and parties, irrespective of short-term fluctuations in partisan popularity, has come under increased scrutiny recently. Data from the first four waves of a longitudinal study provide evidence of substantial variability in the strength of voters' identification with the three main British political parties, suggesting the need for research into the causes of, and meanings associated with, such fluctuations.     

AIR TRANSPORTATION POLICY AND ADMINISTRATION AT THE MILLENNIUM

This article examines air transportation policy and administration at the millennium. It reviews and analyzes major problem areas and focuses on issues that have to be dealt with to streamline the policy and administration in the field as it becomes more integrated in our increasingly intermodal transportation system. The first part of the article sets the stage for the changes experienced after deregulation: It utilizes an analytical model to examine: airports; airline industry management; terrorism and security; and safety, equipment and human resources. The second part of the article focuses more specifically on a policy and administration analysis itself. It demonstrates how we have evolved into a customer model more aligned with the market place, efficiency, and risk taking; while moving away from a safer and less entrepreneurial period identified as the citizen model period. With the canage of models, we find trust diminished. Passengers, customers and citizens, become more disenchanted and cynical, to the point of organizing through elected officials to promote an airline passenger bill of rights and reform the system.     

Adolescents' moral dilemmas: The context

The purpose of this paper is to present a methodology which outlines the kinds of real-life moral dilemmas adolescents spontaneously present in open-ended semiclinical interviews. A coding procedure is introduced which delineates three aspects of these moral dilemmas, conflicts, context, and content, and an analysis is done of the category labeled context. One hundred forty-eight adolescents from two school settings were interviewed. The results show that the majority of both boys and girls in these samples describe moral conflicts in the context of a relationship, particularly involving friends. However, boys are more likely than girls to focus on the the self as the context of the moral dilemma with no other relational context present and significantly more girls than boys focus on relationships rather than self.The authors thank the Dodge, Klingenstein and Kendall Foundations for funding these studies.Her Ed.D. is from Harvard University, M.Ed. from Boston University, and A.B. from Ohio University. She was the Project Director for Carol Gilligan on a coed high-school study. Her present research interests are preservice teacher training and women's development.She is the Project Director of a longitudinal study of moral and social development in female children and adolescents and is the editor ofA Guide to Reading Narratives of Moral Conflict and Choice for Self and Moral Voice. Her Ed.D. is from Harvard University and B.A. is from Ottawa University, Ottawa, Kansas. Her research focuses on a developmental analysis of narratives of relationship in girls.Her B.A. is from Brown University and her research interests are in female development and children of alcoholics.     

How well is the United States competing? A comment on Papadakis

We contend that Papadakis's inferences regarding past and future competitiveness crises cannot be made on the basis of the evidence she has presented. We support this assertion in three ways. First, we argue that the import penetration ratio is not a reasonable measure of national competitiveness in international markets. Second, we show that conventional macroeconomic models can explain the deterioration in the trade balance during the 1980s. Third, we present data demonstrating that, as of 1990, the United States had very low unit labor costs relative to other developed countries, and had the highest level of aggregate productivity in the world.     

When Is a Gerrymander Not a Gerrymander: Who Benefits and Who Loses from the Changed Rules for Defining Parliamentary Constituencies?

Members of the British Labour party have, not for the first time, criticised the Boundary Commissions’ proposals for new constituency boundaries as gerrymandering. This represents a misuse of the term: the Commissions have produced recommended constituencies in the context of new rules for such redistributions that give precedence to equality of electorates across all seats and the boundaries of those constituencies have been defined without any reference to the likely electoral consequences. The Conservatives, who were responsible for the change in the rules to emphasise electoral equality, wanted to remove a decades‐long Labour advantage in the translation of votes into seats because of variations in constituency size, and the Commissions’ implementation of those rules has achieved that. A Labour advantage has been removed but not replaced by a Conservative advantage: in terms of electoral equality between the two, the playing field has been levelled. Labour's claim to have been disadvantaged by decisions on the electoral register is also examined; the disadvantage is probably only small.     

Fairtrade and Labour Markets in Ethiopia and Uganda

Drawing on four years of fieldwork in Ethiopia and Uganda, this paper addresses gaps in knowledge about the mechanisms linking agricultural exports with poverty reduction, the functioning of rural labour markets, and the relevance to the lives of the poorest people of Fairtrade. Statistical analysis of survey evidence, complemented by qualitative research, highlights the relatively poor payment and non-pay working conditions of those employed in research sites dominated by Fairtrade producer organisations. We conclude that Fairtrade is not an effective way to improve the welfare of the poorest rural people.