Suchergebnisse

Cover -- Half Title -- Title Page -- Copyright Page -- Table of Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Editor's Introduction -- Part 1: American Politics: Abolitionists, Political Parties, Industrial Policy, and Bill Clinton -- Introduction to Part 1 -- 1. A World of Difference: The Public Philosophies and Political Behaviors of Rival American Cultures -- 2. A Cultural Analysis of the Role of Abolitionists in the Coming of the Civil War -- 3. Are American Political Parties Pretty Much the Same as They Used to Be in the 1950s, Only a Little Different, or Are They Radically Different? -- 4. Industrial Policies in American Political Cultures -- 5. At Once Too Strong And Too Weak: President Clinton and the Dilemma of Egalitarian Leadership -- Part 2: The Legal Sphere: Egalitarian Changes in Tort Law, Civil Liberties, and Nomination Criteria -- Introduction to Part 2 -- 6. From Individual to System Blame: A Cultural Analysis of the Historical Change in the Law of Torts -- 7. The "Reverse Sequence" in Civil Liberties -- 8. Exchange Versus Grants: The Buck Case as a Struggle Between Equal Opportunity and Equal Results -- 9. Robert Bork and the Crime of Inequality -- 10. Change in Political Culture -- Part 3: Studying Organizations: Bureaucracy, Responsibility, Leadership, and Information Bias -- Introduction to Part 3 -- 11. Introduction: Administration without Hierarchy? Bureaucracy without Authority? -- 12. A Cultural Theory of Responsibility -- 13. A Cultural Theory of Leadership -- 14. A Cultural Theory of Information Bias in Organizations -- Part 4: Conclusion: In the University -- Introduction to Part 4 -- 15. The Rise of Radical Egalitarianism and the Fall of Academic Standards -- 16. From Political Economy to Political Culture, or Why I Like Cultural Analysis -- 17. Teaching and Talking: A Seminar on Cultural Theory -- Bibliography -- Index

This article provides a framework and offers strategies for theorizing and generalizing about risk assessment and regulation developed in the context of an on‐going comparative study of regulatory behavior. Construction of a universe of nearly 3,000 risks and study of a random sample of 100 of these risks allowed us to estimate relative U.S. and European regulatory precaution over a thirty‐five‐year period. Comparative nested analysis of cases selected from this universe of ecological, health, safety, and other risks or its eighteen categories or ninety‐two subcategories of risk sources or causes will allow theory‐testing and ‐building and many further descriptive and causal comparative generalizations.

Much attention has been addressed to the question of whether Europe or the United States adopts a more precautionary stance to the regulation of potential environmental, health, and safety risks. Some commentators suggest that Europe is more risk‐averse and precautionary, whereas the United States is seen as more risk‐taking and optimistic about the prospects for new technology. Others suggest that the United States is more precautionary because its regulatory process is more legalistic and adversarial, while Europe is more lax and corporatist in its regulations. The flip‐flop hypothesis claims that the United States was more precautionary than Europe in the 1970s and early 1980s, and that Europe has become more precautionary since then. We examine the levels and trends in regulation of environmental, health, and safety risks since 1970. Unlike previous research, which has studied only a small set of prominent cases selected nonrandomly, we develop a comprehensive list of almost 3,000 risks and code the relative stringency of regulation in Europe and the United States for each of 100 risks randomly selected from that list for each year from 1970 through 2004. Our results suggest that: (a) averaging over risks, there is no significant difference in relative precaution over the period, (b) weakly consistent with the flip‐flop hypothesis, there is some evidence of a modest shift toward greater relative precaution of European regulation since about 1990, although (c) there is a diversity of trends across risks, of which the most common is no change in relative precaution (including cases where Europe and the United States are equally precautionary and where Europe or the United States has been consistently more precautionary). The overall finding is of a mixed and diverse pattern of relative transatlantic precaution over the period.

ObjectiveCultural Theory (CT) has attracted significant attention across the social sciences and is increasingly being used in survey research. We assess the construct validity of three CT survey operationalizations to help interpret and improve these measures.MethodsA coding protocol for face and content validity of survey items was developed with input from several CT scholars and applied independently by two of authors of this article. Convergent, discriminant, and predictive validity of these items were assessed using survey data.ResultsWe find that these measures generally lack face and content validity but have reasonably good convergent, discriminant, and predictive validity.ConclusionWhile these measures can continue to be used to predict attitudes and behaviors that CT hypothesizes will vary with culture, scholars interested in testing CT's basic claims in survey research should seek to improve their face and content validity, which will also allow better tests of convergent, discriminant, and predictive validity.