Search

Scholars have made little progress in exploring the degree to which research on belief structures among Americans may be generalizable to other political systems and geopolitical contexts. The distribution and structure of mass beliefs related to nuclear security, missile defenses, and nuclear energy issues in the United States and Great Britain are analyzed using data from telephone surveys simultaneously administered in both countries. In foreign and domestic areas, the British and American belief systems vary chiefly in the central tendencies of the beliefs held but not in the structural relationships among those beliefs. Findings provide evidence for a hierarchical model of policy beliefs with differential adjustments based on situational conditions, but also raise questions about the kinds of conditions--geopolitical and institutional--that give rise to these similarities. (Contains 4 tables, 2 figures, and 8 footnotes.)

Repeated multibeam echo‐sounder surveys can provide information on developing stratigraphy over large areas and during periods when environmental conditions are known. In this study, analysis encompasses 13 time‐separated multibeam echo‐sounder surveys between 2002 and 2010 of a tidal sand ridge in a macrotidal estuary: Nash Sands, a banner bank in the Bristol Channel (UK). Over the surveyed period, Nash Sands was S‐shaped in plan‐view, with two en échelon segments separated by a channel (swatchway). Migration of these inflections along the ridge led to deposition of clinoforms up to 5° to 7° steep and 12 to 14 m tall. The clinoforms downlapped onto their substrates or onto cross‐sets formed by dunes migrating clockwise around the lower flanks of the ridge. Clinoform topsets were removed or truncated by repeated erosion and/or dune migrations over the ridge crest and replaced with packages of near‐horizontal laterally discontinuous irregular beds. Flank dune crests were oriented obliquely to nearly perpendicularly to the clinoforms in all three sets, so the clinoforms developed by oblique−lateral accretion locally. Although one area had strongly eroded in the prior decade during elevated wave conditions, the 2002 to 2010 stratigraphic development revealed a different relationship with extreme wave heights; Nash Sands generally accumulated sand during times of more extreme waves and lost sand during more quiescent conditions. Using also single‐beam survey data from 1991 to 2002 to study the ridge morphology over 19 years to 2010, the swatchway was absent in 1991 to 1992 and progressively developed as the ridge sinuosity became more accentuated. Dunes found migrating north‐west through the swatchway are potential evidence of a current caused by tidal height differences across the ridge during ebb conditions. The study illustrates how repeated sonar measurements reveal the processes and timescales that lead to the deposition of stratigraphic units. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Presents a study which investigated business interest representation in Great Britain. Alternative views of business representation in the country; Analytical approaches to business interest representation; Implications for research methods and policy process.

Examines business donations to the Conservative Party during the Thatcher era and argues that such donations cannot be treated as equivalent to the political action committee (PAC) contributions in the United States. Analysis of data collected for British largest 500 firms; Motivations behind donations; Title-envy; Common chacteristics of donors; Michael Useems influential inner circle thesis.

The article presents the author's comments on the channels used by pressure group, the Trades Union Congress, to influence public policy in Great Britain. The author says that trade-union data over the last decade has permitted an assessment of the impact of the group on the structure of group-government interaction. According to him, the structure of group-government interaction is not a tendency in a political system, but is itself partly a function of the policy-makers' choices.