G. R. Boynton

The Development of Public Support for Parliament in Germany, 1951–59

Systems theorists introduced the concept of ‘support’ to permit explanations of political stability and instability. Yet most attempts to verify the existence of a relationship between support and stability empirically have dealt with wellestablished political systems, and have relied on data collected at one point in time. This paper reports an initial effort to examine the growth of support for a new political regime using a series of sample surveys providing data on changes in the level of support over time.

The Structure of Public Support for Legislative Institutions

Research on relationships between legislators and their constituents generally has proceeded from the point of view of demand inputs. This paper views legislator-constituent relations from the viewpoint of supportive attitudes toward the legislature, rather than focusing on demands made upon it. Based upon interview data from a household probability sample of adults in Iowa, this study maps the structure of legislative support in major social and political strata of the Iowa population. Likert-type attitudinal items reflecting public support for the legislature are factor analyzed, and respondents factor scored. Analysis of variance is used to assess relationships between legislative support and 1) standard indicators of social strata: occupation, income, education and size of place; and 2) indicators of political stratification: political knowledge and political participation.

Perceptions and Expectations of the Legislature and Support for It

In this study, based on a random household probability sample of 1,001 Iowa adults, the basic hypothesis is that congruence between perceptions and expectations about the legislature leads to high support for the legislature, and incongruence between perceptions and expectations leads to low support for the legislature. Data from the Iowa sample provide tentative confirmation of this hypothesis. Congruent and incongruent groups on each of ten factors were compared on their levels of legislative support. For each factor, the congruent group had a higher mean support score than did the incongruent group, although in only five cases was this difference satistically significant. The results do suggest that support for the political system, or some subsystem of it, is dependent to some extent upon congruencies in the mass public between expectations and perceptions of the system.

The Decay of Support for Monarchy and the Hitler Regime in the Federal Republic of Germany

Public support for the existing institutions of government depends in part on public perceptions of the alternatives. This assertion will not come as news in those parts of the world where changing the regime is a regular part of political life. In France, for example, where regimes have been numbered to distinguish them from each other, it is common knowledge that public evaluations of the Fourth Republic depended on comparisons with the Third, that especially in its early years the Fifth Republic was frequently judged by comparison with the Fourth, and that in particularly sophisticated circles these more or less contemporary regimes have been frequently compared with the First and Second Republics.

An Analysis of Consociational Democracy

This is a formal analytical assessment of Arend Lijpharts argument in The Politics of Accommodation that the structure of politics found in the Netherlands results in accommodation among elites and in democratic stability. The analysis leads to the conclusion that accommodation and stability will result only under certain specific conditions; one of these is a decrease over time in the number of political problems to be solved, and another is a moderation in the views of the various groups.

Models of the economy implicit in public discourse

The interdependence of the U.S. and the world economy has been a central problem in politics during the 1980s. The politically cognizant have had to become economically cognizant. This paper examines news reports about the economy to determine what may be learned from the news media. A macroeconomic model is developed which is consistent with the statements found in the news reports. The connectedness of economic relationships as presented is estimated. The focus of attention in the news stories is reported. An upper bound on learning is assessed.

When Senators and Publics Meet at the Environmental Protection Subcommittee

The hearings of the Senate Environmental Protection Subcommittee on reauthorizing the Clean Air Act of 1987 are analyzed and contrasted with Senate hearings of other committees to show how these hearings fit into the societal debate on clean air. The discourse of the hearings is analyzed by examining the language of the talk and by analyzing the style of argument. The discourse in these hearings is shown to be distinctive by comparing it with other hearings. The argument of the paper is that this distinctiveness is the result of the type of communication possible in electronic/mass media communication.

The senate agriculture committee produces a homeostat

Agricultural policy making between 1960 and 1973 is examined drawing on Herbert Simons conception of procedural rationality. The basic structure of current agricultural policy evolved during the period studied. The paper suggests that policy and policy making interact narrowing the search for a law until it achieves a combination of provisions that is an equilibrium. The computational ‘routines’ used in calculating consequences of provisions of legislation are extracted from the text of committee hearings and analyzed as a system of inequalities. The paper also discusses what satisficing means in this policy making process.

SOUTHERN CONSERVATISM: CONSTITUENCY OPINION AND CONGRESSIONAL VOTING

The author of this paper seeks to explain the consistently conservative record of Southern Democrats in Congress. V. 0. Key attributed this conservatism to the low level of voting by the more liberal working class in the South and the much higher voting rate of the more conservative middle class. The present author offers two additional explanations: the unusual distribution of attitudes in the South as compared to the rest of the nation, and the conservatism of the Southerners most likely to communicate with Congressmen. George Robert Boynton is a member of the Department of Political Science, University of Iowa, Iowa City.

Traveling Together on the Information Superhighway: Conversations About Politics, Language, and Distance Learning

Distance learning is on the horizon. Modern communications, following its exponential trajectory through telephone, telegraph, radio, film, television and computer networks, continues to transform education. Technology assisted learning promises a higher quality product, at lower cost, to larger numbers of people. Universal public education, as it approaches the 21st century, is at the threshold of a quantum leap forward.