THE COURTS AS A SOURCE OF REGULATORY REVITALIZATION: EXTERNAL AGENDA SETTING AND EQUAL EDUCATION PROGRAMS

The authors examine the relationship between the courts and HEW's Office for Civil Rights (OCR), to illustrate the effects of legal efforts to generate more vigorous agency enforcement. Opponents of racial and sex discrimination in public schools won a series of suits against OCR after it had ceased to effectively implement anti-discrimination legislation. As a result of court decisions, OCR has had its discretion over how it will carry out its legislative responsibilities curtailed.     

The Political Economy of Acid Rain

Over the past decade, acid rain has been transformed from arelatively unnoticed area of scientific inquiry into a majorenvironmental issue of regional, national, and internationalconcern. What is acid rain, why has it acquired such relativelysudden political prominence, and what are the prospects forthe adoption of policies addressing this issue? These questionsillustrate how the regional cleavages inherent in transboundaryair pollution problems have fractured the political coalitionswhich supported earlier environmental legislation. Understandingthe basis for that transformation, which requires informationfrom the natural and physical sciences as well as insights intothe economics and politics of the acid rain issue, is centralto developing an appreciation of the constraints on policymakingfor air quality management in the United States.     

Risk assessment in the policy-making process: environmental health and safety protection

This article examines the extent to which differences exist in the relative degree of discretion permitted by the statutory mandates under which health risk assessments are conducted as a basis for regulatory action. Attention is focused on the Environmental Protection Agency and the Food and Drug Administration, because they are the lead federal regulatory agencies on most environmental health matters. The statutes are found to define risk, consider effects, identify target populations, and use benefit-cost analysis in a flexible way. But the burden of proof of risk typically is assigned in a more direct and stringent fashion. Overall, however, agencies are found to have substantial discretion in the manner in which risk assessments are incorporated into the policy process. A number of examples of efforts to reduce this flexibility are outlined and their implications for the future of the analysis of risks are delineated.     

Energy conservation policy in the united states and Sweden: Comparing research and development responses

This study assesses the comparability of public sector responses to energy conservation research and development (R&D) in the United states and Sweden. Using the evaluative criteria of policy objectives, organizational structure, and funding, the extent to which the institutional context for R&D either constrains or fosters conservation as an element of each nation's energy policies is examined. Sweden, unlike the United States, appears to have been successful in achievement consensus primarily through an open, deliberative process of mutual partisan adjustment regarding where specific allocations should be made in the energy R&D budget for optimal conservation results. To a great extent, it is within these differing institutional contexts of policy uncertainly that the content of specific energy conservation policies and strategies should be evaluated.     

Acid Rain Policymaking and Environmental Federalism: Recent Developments, Future Prospects

Acid rain controls are one of the more salient policy issuesfor contemporary environmental federalism. Agenda prominence,however, does not guarantee agreement on the components of aregulatory program. Depending on how many tons of emissionsreduction one wants, when one wants them, and how one permitsemitters to achieve compliance, a control program's costs canvary by billions of dollars annually. This article providesa summary of significant state and national policy initiativesas well as an examination of the barriers and incentives forsuch action.     

Augmenting human cognition to enhance strategic,operational, and tactical intelligence

The unprecedented increase in the volume and velocity of data collected by open source and classified platforms is simultaneously disrupting and transforming the intelligence enterprise. This article posits a technology-based approach for augmenting human cognition by leveraging high-performance computing and artificial intelligence applications to enhance the intelligence enterprise’s capability to identify, synthesize, and act on the key intelligence-relevant information elements embedded in those data. Adapting AI to the intelligence enterprise and national security decisions more broadly thus facilitates rapidly bringing to bear the essential human element of interpreting context and intent amid an otherwise insurmountable cascade of data.