Reviews and resources

Throes. Conceived and performed by Doorika. The Vineyard Theater, New York City, October 14, 1994.

Visiting Hours. An installation by Bob Flanagan in collaboration with Sherrie Rose. The New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York City, September 23‐December 31, 1994.

‘Aberrant Motion1–4.’ Videos by Cathy Sisler. Available through Groupe Intervention Video, Montreal, Quebec, H2T 1S6. Phone (514) 271–5506; Fax (514) 271–6980.

Converging Realities: Feminism in Australian Theatre by Peta Tait. Currency Press, Sydney, in conjunction with Artmoves, Melbourne, Australia, 1994. Released in the United States by Cambridge University Press, 1994.     

Non‐tariff measures and United States' imports of CBERA‐eligible products

Trade coverage ratios are calculated to assess the 1991 incidence of non‐tariff measures (NTMs) on imports of products eligible for duty‐free treatment under the United States’ Caribbean Basin Economic Recovery Act (CBERA). Overall, 16 per cent of all CBERA‐eligible products were found to be covered by one or more NTM. Corresponding figures for all eligible products exported from individual beneficiaries range up to 40 per cent. Much higher trade coverage ratios are found for individual product groups. NTMs constitute important deterrents to US imports of CBERA‐eligible products. Heavy reliance on NTMs counters the intent of the CBERA, namely to extend preferential treatment to exports from Caribbean Basin countries.     

Federal Aid to Local Governments in the West: An Irony of the Reagan Revolution

Despite the fact that the Reagan election was viewed as a power shift toward the West, the decade of the 1980s produced cruel disappointment. The region was generally left out of the economic recmery of the nation because of the bust in the agricultural and mineral industries. These state and local gmernments which sufferfrom high costs and low resources were particularly dependent on the national gmernment at the very time when the Reagan Administration was cutting federal aid and transferring power to the states. Unlike Nixon's New Federalism which helped the state and local governments of the West, Reagan's policies caused their relative position in federal aid flows to deteriorate. Although the Reagan revolution in cutting domestic programs was viewed as the embodiment of western rugged individualism, the region lost in terms of federal aid to small rural local governments.     

Government policy and citizen passion: A study of issue publics in contemporary America

This article describes the findings of a program of research exploring the cognitive and behavioral consequences of passionate concern about government policy issues. American citizens vary a great deal in terms of the personal importance they attach to their attitudes on particular policy issues. Citizens whose policy attitudes are especially important to them are likely to think frequently about those attitudes, to perceive competing candidates as being relatively polarized on the issue, and to form presidential candidate preferences on the basis of those attitudes. Also, policy attitudes that citizens consider personally important are highly resistant to change and are therefore especially stable over long periods of time. The American public appears to be structured into many small issue publics, each composed of citizens who are passionately concerned about a single issue. Most Americans fall into very few issue publics, the particular ones being determined by each individual's unique self-interests, social identifications, and cherished values. The implications of these findings for the workings of democracies are discussed.     

On the Design of Equalizing Grants

This article considers the design of grants to offset fiscaldisparities. We define a fiscal disparity as a condition inwhich towns must levy a different tax rate in order to providethe same level of public services. We consider ways of measuringdisparities, as well as ways of allocating grants to alleviatedisparities. In order to focus the presentation, we concentrateon lump-sum grants for unrestricted use from a state governmentto general purpose local governments within that state. We concludeby presenting an example of a grants formula for the state ofNew Jersey which meets our specifications.