A CHANGING POLITICAL AGENDA? THE STRUCTURE OF POLITICAL ATTITUDES IN BRITAIN, 1974-87

The 1970s and 1980s have been a period of flux in Western partysystems, with two apparent indicators being the success of rightwingparties and the growth of New Politics issues within electorates.Two theories have been utilized to explain these changes. Thefirst is that they are caused by shifts in popular opinion,which are reflected in elite behavior, while the second arguesthat they are the result of political elites acting indepndentlyof mass opinion. In this paper, we test these two theories usingBritain between 1974 and 1987 as a case study. Using comparablequestions from four national surveys, we find that mass politicalattitudes have changed very little over the period, althoughthere is more change evident on economic than on noneconomicissues. No support is forthcoming for the propositions thatthe British electorate is becoming more conservative or thatNew Politics issues are becoming more important. Overall, itappears that the British party political elite has moved furtherapart than has the electorate. In short, political change inBritain in the 1970s and 1980s is more elite-influenced thanmass-influenced.     

Public policy and literary culture: Publishing subsidies in Scotland

Public subsidies of publishing have a number of goals, including the extension of both international cultural activities and national cultural enterprise. The Scottish publishing industry is described and its recent history is reviewed. The activities of the publishing subsidy program of the Scottish Arts Council are enumerated. Finally, the impact of subsidies on Scottish authors and publishers is evaluated.     

Sport competition as a dynamical self-organizing system

The existence of structure in sport competition is implicated in the widespread practice of using the information gathered from a past contest to prepare for a future contest. Based on this reasoning, we previously analysed squash match-play for evidence of signature traits from among the stochastic relations between the various types of shot. The mixed findings from these analyses led us to re-analyse squash match-play as a dynamical system. Here, we extend this line of investigation with some suggestions as to how various sports might be described further within this theoretical framework. We offer some examples of dynamical interactions in dyadic (i.e. one vs one) and team (e.g. many vs many) sports, as well as some predictions from a dynamical systems analysis for these types of sports contests. This paper should serve to initiate further research into the complex interactions that occur in sport competition.     

英国职业足球近10年发展述评——经济视角

为了认识现代竞技体育家族中的新成员———电子竞技运动,运用文献法、逻辑分析法在对电子竞技运动的起源、发展脉络进行研究的基础上,开发了电子竞技运动的基本概念和分类体系。