A doctoral program in the policy sciences

The complex nature of policy problems requires innovative approaches to problem analysis and a new social science interdiscipline focused on policy processes. The Policy Science Program at SUNY Buffalo is designed to advance this field and to train hybrid Ph.D.'s as research-scientists/practitioners. These new policy science professionals will augment policymaking organizations as policy analysts, evaluation researchers, knowledge brokers, research feedback disseminators, process monitors, and consultants. Their training must include research methodology, analytic approaches, orienting conceptual schemes from systems theory, social sciences, and specific problem domains, and operating skills. The curriculum includes both academic and field-training aspects.Though the program is oriented toward the applied sciences, it is an attempt to mold a version of the new combination of revised social science paradigms and analytic approaches identified by Dror as the Policy Sciences.     

The Impact of Economic Performance on Electoral Support in Sweden, 1967–1978*

This article investigates the impact of macroeconomic conditions on aggregate political support for governing parties in Sweden over the period 1967–1978. After reviewing survey evidence on the relative salience of economic and fiscal issues to the Swedish electorate, a novel, dynamic model of political support is presented. The model incorporates the ideas that voters evaluate economic performance relatively rather than absolutely, and that governments' mass political support is based on their cumulative performance records. The empirical results supply estimates of the impact of unemployment, inflation, the real income growth rate and the income effects of direct tax and transfer policies on political support. The evidence suggests that the responses of political support to reasonable movements in macroeconomic conditions are large enough to give economic management a pivotal role in electoral shifts.     

A death due to ethchlorvynol abuse. A case report

A fatal case of ethchlorvynol abuse is reported with blood and tissue determinations.     

A pilot survey of courses in technology transfer offered at selected colleges and universities in the United States

This survey was developed to determine the nature of the programs and courses intechnology transfer now in existence in the United States. A pilot study approach was used, without operationalizing a definition, to avoid excluding possible technology transfer activities. Results indicate twenty colleges and universities offering courses in a wide range of academic settings including engineering, business, psychology, sociology, political science, environmental studies and agriculture. With the majority of respondents, technology transfer is studied as a combination of the history of science and technology, management, information science, and communication. In this sense, it appears to be an interdisciplinary study with a strong direction toward communication protocols, and management skills as primary outcomes.