The major purpose of this study is to analyze hazardous waste enforcement by the states as mandated by the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act of 1976 (RCRA). States' historical enforcement records from 1980 to 1990 are analyzed to determine the pattern of variations in enforcement. This study differs from previous studies on hazardous waste regulation in that it employs longitudinal data from 1980 to 1990 to analyze states' enforcement effort.

This thesis examines the critical factors leading to the 1948 decision by the United States government to extend recognition to the newly declared State of Israel. In the first of five chapters the literature on the recognition of Israel is discussed. Chapter II presents the theoretical foundation of the thesis by tracing the development of Charles Kegley's decision regime framework. Also discussed is the applicability of bureaucratic structure theory and K. J. Holsti's hierarchy of objectives. Chapters III and IV present the empirical history of this case, each closing with a chapter summary. The final chapter demonstrates the relevance and validity of the theoretical framework to the case and closes with a call for further research into the processes of foreign policy decision-making.

A participant-observer approach is utilized in a case study of Dallas, Texas, homeowners who organized to challenge city acquisition of their property for the expansion of the Fair Park State fairgrounds. From this study, a model of protest and political bias in urban politics is conceptualized. It is hypothesized that some individuals and groups are unable to place their demands, regardless of the extent of their organization and mobilization, on the governmental agenda. This inability to gain access to the decision-making arena is due to the existence of persistent and cumulative political biases. The biases are delineated as systemic, modes of operation, and ideological. Protest activity is a response by powerless groups to encountering these political biases.

The focus of the study is the way which members of the press corps in the Texas Capitol influence policy-making through their friendships with legislators and through the news stories which they write. Methods of study included questionnaires to reporters and to legislators, interviews with members of both groups, and review of news stories written about the regular session of the 64th Texas Legislature. Respondents reported that journalists were used as "expert consultants" in legislative strategy as well as in policy content areas. While informal relationships were found to have an impact on policy, published news stories were perceived as having greater influence.

This study applies Destler's institutional counterweights to Putnam's two-level analysis, substituting Liberal Institutionalism and Realism for internationalism and isolationism, in a comparative case study of the roles played by the U.S. and the EC in multilateral trade negotiations in agriculture under the aegis of the General Agreement for Tariffs and Trade during the first half of the Uruguay Round. Using game theory as an analytical tool in the process, this present study demonstrates that a clear pattern emerges in which stages of cooperation and deadlock can be easily anticipated in games of Chicken and Prisoners' Dilemma in accordance with various but predictable levels of institutional influence.

This study has attempted to explain the dramatic challenges to the existing party system that occurred in Canada and the United States in the early 1990s. The emergence of new political movements with substantial power at the ballot box has transformed both party systems. The rise of United We Stand America in the United States, and the Reform Party in Canada prompts scholars to ask what forces engender such movements. This study demonstrates that models of economic voting and key models of party system change are both instrumental for understanding the rise of new political movements.

The purpose of this study is to explore the administrative setting of the Office for Civil Rights, treating especially the functional requisites of agencies: namely, the development of a viable role within its set and the internal necessity of developing among its functionaries a degree of cohesion and sense of common purpose. This case study is designed, moreover, to challenge the naturalistic assumptions of the pluralist model of administrative theory. Chapter I develops the theme of "social engineering agencies" as a distinctively new genre of public agency in the American political setting and adumbrates the theoretical challenges which these organizations present to the conventional pluralist paradigm.

It has become something of a cliché for contemporary scholars to assert that Madison turned Montesquieu on his head and thereafter give little thought to the Frenchman’s theory that republics must remain limited in territorial size. Madison did indeed present a formidable challenge to Montesquieu’s theory, but I will demonstrate in this dissertation that the authors of the Federalist Papers arrived at the extended sphere by following a theoretical pathway already cemented by the French philosopher. I will also show that Madison’s “practical sphere” ultimately concedes to Montesquieu that excessive territorial size and high levels of heterogeneity will overwhelm the citizens of a republic and enable the few to oppress the many. The importance of this dissertation is its finding that the principal mechanism devised by the Federalists for dealing with factions—the enlargement of the sphere—was crafted specifically for the purpose of moderating interests, classes, and sects within an otherwise relatively homogeneous nation. Consequently, the diverse republic that is America today may be exposed to the existential threat anticipated by Montesquieu’s theory of size—the plutocratic oppression of society by an elite class that employs the strategy of divide et impera.