Gregory G. Brunk

Societal Complexity and Interest-Group Lobbying in the American States

An analysis of more than 39 thousand lobbying efforts reveals four dimensions of activity. In broad outline, the proportion of lobbyists is the same at the state and national levels. The factors are used to test the hypothesis that societal complexity is the fundamental cause of this interest-group activity. Surprisingly, no measure of complexity except state population is associated with any type of lobbying, and even population is not significantly related to two of the four factors.

Non-Work Factors and Job Satisfaction Revisited

The responses of 1473 subjects were utilized to examine the relationship between job satisfaction and extra-work satisfaction to test Wilenskys three hypothesized relationships. The current study regressed job satisfaction against the social trust of respondents, their sense of social equity, institutional confidence, and their satisfaction with governments handling of nationalproblems. These social attitudinal indices were added to factors utilized in previous research such as objective job factors, demographic variables, general life satisfaction, and their levels of social involvement. The results produced two previously unreported extra-work attitudinal contributors to job satisfaction: social trust and institutional confidence. The findings supported Wilenskys spillover theory but produced no evidence in support of Wilenskys segmentation or compensation alternatives.

Military Views of Morality and War: An Empirical Study of the Attitudes of Retired American Officers

While philosophers and religious leaders have long discussed the ethical issues involved in war, we know little about the attitudes of the military who must face these issues daily. A factor analysis reveals three organizing principles that appear to be prior to more complex traditional belief systems. The empirical analysis also reveals that a common approach to conflict among the military has largely been overlooked in the literature. We call this framework “better safe than sorry.” Its fundamental characteristics are a defensive posture and risk aversion.

Interest Groups and Criminal Behavior

The fundamental origins of legal codes are little understood. According to pluralists, laws are beneficial public goods that evolve from open political competition. An economic model sees laws as the product of selfish motivations and illegitimate lobbying pressures. These models make conflicting predictions about the role that interest groups play in promoting respect for law and the general level of criminal activity. When other obvious factors are controlled, we find that states with many interest groups have a higher level of personal crime, but a lower level of property crime. These findings suggest that the different political cultures which exist in the United States are related to how people act cooperatively and competitively in society. The findings also suggest that we should rethink our theories about the role that conflict and cooperation play in affecting popular support for legal systems.

The Underlying Structure of Ethical Beliefs toward War

Behavioralists have tended to neglect the study of ethics as unimportant to an understanding of political behavior and its various manifestations, such as international conflict. In our analysis we examine the attitudes of a sample of retired American military officers toward war and war waging issues in order to infer the more fundamental nature of the ethical constraints that are embedded within the decision making of these individuals. Three fundamental dimensions of ethical thinking are apparent. These concern constraints on the use of force as a policy tool, the legitimacy of force and force planning, and the sensitivity of individuals to the risks present in the international system. In order to justify our interpretations, we present a detailed question by question analysis of the factor weights of each survey item. Finally, we speculate on the types of ethical tensions that will arise within the military when these three fundamental factors of ethical evaluation come into conflict.

Short-run trends in united states patent activity

We examine a newly created data series consisting of the monthly number of American patents granted since 1853. An initial examination divides the series into four time periods. An analysis of short-run cycles demonstrates that the same Box-Jenkins model is not applicable to all four periods. Differences in nineteenth and twentieth century model parameters may be a result of frequent bureaucratic reinterpretations of Americas patent law during the last century, or-as many have claimed-may represent changes in the process of innovation itself over time. Our findings suggest that future researchers discriminate between two periods in their analyses. The first lasts until the late 1870s, during which time there was a very high variability in the number of patents issued. Since the late 1870s there has been a substantial decline in variability, and the amount of variance that can be explained by a simple Box-Jenkins model has increased. Still, not much variation can be explained using short-run cycles, and longer cycles appear to be both time period specific and highly unstable. The dynamics of American inventive activity are complex, and inventive activity appears to be largely driven by exogenous factors such as wars, economic conditions and changes in governmental policy, rather than by its own internal dynamics.

Swarming of innovations, fractal patterns, and the historical time series of US patents

While most of us who study intellectual and technical advancement believe that innovations tend to swarm, the details of this process are not well understood. The aggregate-level behavior of US patents is examined as a way to better infer the process that generates innovation. The amount of swarming decreases as the observational period increases, which indicates that the process of innovation is not perfectly self-similar. Instead, the effects of innovations are mostly contained within specialized areas, and do not often trigger further advances in other fields.

Empirical Investigation of Normative Discourse on War: The Case of the Donagan—Aquinas Thesis:

Quantitative and analytical social scientists increasingly have become interested in analyzing traditional normative problems. In this article we discuss the operationalization of conjectures contained in the Donagan—Aquinas thesis about the agreement of lay people and ethicists with the substantive content of the system of common morality concerning use of force. The thesis focuses on the complexity of reasoning at various levels in a claimed linkage between the golden rule, intermediate moral precepts, and just war theory. It holds that both lay people and ethicists who accept the golden rule also will accept the distinction between killing and murder; and both groups will reject pacificism, aggressive war, and amorality in favor of the moral acceptability of defensive war. However, this consensus between lay people and ethicists will break down on the more complex issues of war. The system of common morality is described as to its structure, derivation, and content, and the thesis is tested using national level survey data from five American elite groups. Most of the individuals surveyed support the principle of the golden rule and its application through just war theory regarding the moral complexities of conventional war, but the results to mutual assured destruction warfare items suggest a secular norm of negative reciprocity, which is analogous to the international legal concept of reprisal. We conclude that the Donagan—Aquinas thesis is supported regarding problems of conventional war, but its predictions — and the consensus among contemporary just war theorists — break down under the onslaught of the problems generated by nuclear weapons.

On estimating distance-determined voting functions

Abstract The distance from ones home to a proposed project site is often the important factor determining an individuals opinion whether such a project should be built. This article first discusses why regression is inappropriate to analyze such preference functions at the individual level. It then examines alternative estimation techniques, concentrating on the utility and limitations of probit. Probit is particularly useful for spatial analysis because an indifference distance, i.e. the distance from a project at which an individual is indifferent to whether it is built, can be estimated and used to map such preferences.

Norms of Professional Behavior in Highly Speclalized Organizations The Case of American Zoos and Aquariums

Three attitude dimensions are apparent among zoological managers. They concern professional ethics, organization, and responsibility toward animals. In this article, four models of the acceptance of professional norms are tested, and career-related goals are found to be the best predictors of such attitudes. Noneconomic goals seem to promote zoological professionalism, whereas entrepreneurial activities reduce support for generally accepted norms of behavior. The implications of these findings and possibilities for further research are discussed.