This study hypothesizes that the major barriers to expanded trade between the U.S. and Eastern Europe are systemic in nature. Using this approach, each political/ economic system is examined in an attempt to define the obstacles to foreign trade expansion, to describe the most important systemic and political factors at work, and to demonstrate how they have determined and will continue to shape the economic relationships between the U.S. and the countries of Eastern Europe. A final synthesis presents the two systems in a unified picture of the economic environment and concludes that significant trade expansion is unlikely in the near future due to basic systemic incompatibilities which impede the resolution of key foreign trade problems.

This study analyzes recent developments in U. S.- Iranian relations during the Nixon administration and attempts to portray the principal objectives of the United States and Iran vis-a-vis each other. Complex Interdependence is the model for development of the arguments. Due to the circumstances, however, the study substantially draws on Realism as well. Chapter I discusses methodology. Chapter II focuses on the Nixon Doctrine and its impact on U. S.-Iranian relations. Chapter III discusses the evolution of mutual interests between the two nations in the Gulf area. Chapter IV drawing on the previous chapters, concludes that an interdependent relation between the two nations has developed to the extent that in some areas policy of one nation would have an impact on the other, i.e., increase in the price of oil.

This study documents that external and internal forces were causes of change at VCWTP. External forces caused. Fort Worth to reorganize and introduce new management at VCWTP after 1982. These improvements led to VCWTP being selected best managed wastewater treatment plant in the nation by EPA in 1988. This study first analyzes external and internal forces responsible for changes at VCWTP. A history of plant operations also is reviewed. Personnel interviews were conducted of perceptions of employees. Finally, statistics obtained of the plant operation from 1969 to 1988 are compared with personal interviews. Five forces effect change at VCWTP; population, regulatory requirements, political conflicts, an organizational and managerial factors. Turnaround occurred as external and internal corrections were made.

This paper determines relationships between three elements of the American policy process: legislature, agency, and administrative clientele. It concerns interrelationships between these elements and their affect to agency functions. A model is constructed; revealing the policy process, illustrating behavior patterns responsible for normal functioning and failure of policies and programs. The model develops through study of a single policy area. Supplemental data are provided from a survey. The paper concludes that the process is based on legislation-- causing activity in an agency or substantial change in programs; agency actions, seated in its own organizational objectives, and resultant to internal conflicts; and by clientele behavior, determined by agency actions or inactions. This model may help predicting policy outcomes, but only after similar but more comprehensive studies.

This research incorporates a decision-making theory which defines the linkage between the public, the media, the president and the Congress. Specifically, I argue that the public holds widely shared domestic and international goals and responds to a number of external cues provided by the president and the media in its evaluation of presidential policies. Although most studies examine overall presidential popularity, there are important differences in the public's evaluations of the president's handling of foreign and domestic policies. Additionally, I am concerned with how the Congress responds to these specific policy evaluations, the president's public activities, and the electoral policy goals of its members when determining whether or not to support the president. Finally, I link together the theoretical assumptions, to examine the influence of varying levels of support among the Congress and the public, and the president's own personal power goals on the type, quantity, and the quality of activities the president will choose. Ultimately, the primary focus of this dissertation is on the sources and consequences of presidential support and the influence of such support on presidential decision-making.

The purpose of this study is to define more clearly the task of the city manager by examining the following perceptions of his role: 1) The city manager perceives himself as being an administrator, leaving the political realm to the city council. 2) The city manager is a policy-maker perceiving that his job includes providing objectives and goals for council and community. He uses his knowledge and experience to create an atmosphere within which various alternatives can be presented with full and free discussion of these alternatives. 3) The role of the city manager cannot be defined along the lines of two mutually exclusive statements. The job of the manager includes a combination of both administration and policy-making.

This study has as its central focus an investigation into the existence and nature of the apprenticeship norm in the United States Senate. Over its history, the Senate has been frequently portrayed as a body guided by rather restrictive, informal rules of behavior for its members. The apprenticeship norm has been identified by some as the most important of these rules; contributing to the Senate's centralized and conservative policy orientation. More recently, however, it has been argued that the Senate has become a more decentralized and fragmented body within which the apprenticeship norm is no longer important. The present study offers for the first time an empirical test of the existence and nature of the apprenticeship norm for selected sessions of the Senate for the time period 1940-1976. The frequency of performance of various types of floor activity by members of the Senate were correlated and regressed with years of service in the Senate as well as with other background characteristics of Senators to test both for the existence of the apprenticeship norm as well as to identify its relevance relative to other potential explanations of Senate floor behavior. Several definitions of apprenticeship were advanced and tested.

This thesis compares Thailand',s relations with the United States and China from 196541975, The realist as-sumes that the structure of power in the internationall system determines overall relations between states' First, this study describes the power situation in southeast Asia in 1965, The next steps are concerned with the study of Thai-U, S. relations and Thai-Chinese relations, The thesis finds that Thailand's relations with the United States and China are determined by the structure of power. When a major power like the United States changes its policies to accommodate China, Thailand, which is a small country, turns to be more friendly with China, These attitudes correlate with the realist assumption,.

The purpose of this investigation is to review the first four years of municipal government operation under the Administrator-Director form of government in Fort Smith, Arkansas. The basis of this investigation is the reconstruction and review of the political forces and circumstances operating in Fort Smith, Arkansas, and their impact on the Administrator-Director form of government. In addition to the above, an examination of the progress made by the current Administrator-Director form of government will be undertaken.

"The Texas Failure sets forth the thesis that environmental problems are essentially a product of political decisions and that in Texas the political system has failed to respond to environmental problems because it is dominated by polluter-oriented special interests. The argument advanced is that polluter-oriented interests are well protected by state politicians in both the legislature and regulatory agencies of state government. The thesis is organized around an analysis of such political factors as ideology, leadership, decision making and law as they relate to a political consideration of Texas environmental conditions."-- leaf 1.

The purpose of this study is to analyze the impact of the civics curriculum on the political attitudes and behavior of R. L. Turner High School students. The impact of the civics curriculum is determined by analyzing the ability of the curriculum to achieve some of the most commonly avowed objectives of civic education. If the objectives of the civics curriculum are being attained, the political attitudes and behavior of students who have completed the course should be different from those of students who have not completed civics--provided, of course, that relevant intervening variables are held constant.

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.

This paper examines United States arms transfer policies as they have been applied to Peru since the end of World War II and analyzes the role of these policies in achieving the goals of the United States as delineated by Luigi Einaudi et al. in their Arms Transfers to Latin America: Toward a Policy of Mutual Respect. The paper traces the course of recent U.S.-Peruvian relations, with special emphasis on Peru's arms acquisitions since 1968. The author concludes that, while U.S. arms transfer policies have undoubtedly strained U.S.-Peruvian relations over the past decade, the refusal of the U.S. to provide advanced weapons to Peru will prove to be in the best interests of the United States in the long run.

"This report concludes that the evidence from the analyses seems to support the following propositions in regard to Texas electoral behavior. (1) The 1956 election year was a critical election year in Texas. (2) A pattern indicative of an underlying economic liberalism-conservatism was present in Texas voting patterns from 1944 through 1956, but not after. (3) The Mexican-American and German counties experienced political realignment in 1956 which continued through 1972. (4) The counties affording the most support to the liberal faction shift continuously. (5) The Texas electorate had been in a state of flux since 1956. To date no pattern other than the ethnic group realignment has stabilized. (6) Party-competition in gubernatorial elections has been increasing since 1962. (7) Ralph Yarborough has been the only liberal candidate for a major statewide office to draw support in a high and uniform degree across the state. (8) Ralph Yarborough's base of support has completely shifted since 1952. (9) The Farenthold vote was most closely aligned with that of Donald Yarborough. (10) Socio-economic factors have stronger relationship to Republican, liberal Democratic candidates, and major third party candidates than to conservative Democratic candidates. (11) All evidence form these analyses points to personalism and candidate …

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.

This study examines the possible effect of the president's vote totals in states on Presidents Carter's and Reagan's support among senators. Using senators' Congressional Quarterly (CQ) presidential support scores as the dependent variable, this paper hypothesizes that Carter and Reagan's support is significantly and positively related to their electoral success in that Senator's state for the years 1977 through 1988. Several control variables are included to help explain support. There is qualified corroboration for the hypothesis that senator's presidential support scores are significantly and positively related to the president's electoral success for specific administrations and for specific-party senators, although not for the original hypothesis that aggregated the period 1977 to 1988.

There is some controversy which centers around the question of whether a particular government policy or program may be Judged successful. This dissertation takes the position, with due respect to the difficulties of such a task, that policy success can be evaluated and that it is important that such evaluations be made. Traditionally, health care in the United States has been delivered by the solo medical practitioner on a fee-for-service basis. A relatively new concept in the health care delivery system combines group practice with prepayment for services. These types of practices were designated as Health Maintenance Organizations in 1970 by the Nixon Administration.The major question of this dissertation is whether or not the HMO policy of the federal government has been a success. Along with this question the primary focus of this dissertation is upon the development and evolution of the federal HMO program.

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.

The focus of this thesis is Greece after the 1967 Colonels' Coup. After an analysis of American responses to military coups among allies since 1949, the Greek situation is explored in depth. Emphasis is given to Congressional and Executive infighting and bureaucratic interpretations of policy. The two presidents who dealt with the Colonels are studied for personal reaction. Sources include the New York Times and its Index, the Department of State Bulletins, current Greek history books, Congressional Hearings and other documents relating to Greece. Major conclusions are that Congressional- Executive infighting produced a meandering non-policy toward Greece, and there was a difference in Johnson's and Nixon's reaction with the latter being more pragmatic verbally but less effective factually.

This study develops and empirically tests a model of the determinants of federal spending for crime-fighting policies. An inter-disciplinary approach to building the model is utilized that merges ideas from budgeting, policy analysis and criminology. Four factors hypothesized to impact federal spending for the administration of justice are operationalized as eight variables and tested using ordinary least squares regression analysis on time series data. The factors hypothesized to impact federal spending in this area are economic constraints imposed on government spending, the ideological makeup of Congress and the president, the actual crime rate, and the public's attitude toward crime. Five of the eight variables demonstrated statistical significance at the.10 level or better.

Early voting studies before television predominance determined that mass media had a "limited effect" on American voting behavior. This work reassesses the limited-effects notion. The thesis is that the mass media do have significant impact on voting decisions. A trend study, the work utilizes the Center for Political Studies national presidential election surveys 1952-1976, and multiple regression analysis to examine the impact of media, social, and political variables on the dependent variable, time of voting decision.

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.

The incidence of sexual assault inundates the courts with many cases each year. Given the unique nature of the crime, judges and juries are faced with an array of different scenarios to which they are required to make fair, justifiable and consistent decisions. I examine child sexual assault cases of Dallas County 1999-2005, I look at both legal and extralegal factors including case characteristics, institutional characteristics and characteristics of the defendants and the victims. First, I examine the impact of the independent variables on sentence length using regression analysis to determine influences on sentencing for judges and juries. Second, I examine the same factors using Probit analysis to determine which characteristics make a life sentence more probable for those decision-makers.

The focus of this investigation is the relationship of the United States Supreme Court's functional performance to its environment. Three functions of courts are noted in the literature: conflict resolution, social control and administration. These functions are operationalized for the United States Supreme Court. Hypotheses are developed relative to the general performance of these three functions by all courts. Box-Jenkins time series analysis is then used to test these hypotheses in relation to the performance of the United States Supreme Court. The primary analysis rests upon a data set that includes all non-unanimous decisions of the Supreme Court from 1916 to 1986. A supplemental analysis is conducted using all formal decisions for the 1953 to 1986 period. The results suggest that intellectual resources, legal resources, modernization, and court discretion are significant influences on the functional performance of the United States Supreme Court. Future research must consider these influences in the development of a general theory of courts.