Figuring out the dome

The New Millennium Experience ‐ an exhibition on the theme of time sited in a fibre‐glass dome on the Greenwich Peninsula adjacent to the Prime Meridian ‐ was the centrepiece of Millennium celebrations in Britain. From its inception in the mid‐1990s ‘the Dome’ had been controversial for several reasons, not least of which was its financial viability were it not to prove very popular with the general public. Within weeks of opening, it emerged that the Dome was financially insecure to the point of possible bankruptcy. Largely funded by the National Lottery in the first place, four extra grants from that source were required in order to keep it open during the year 2000. The Dome was regarded widely as of dubious cultural value and a drain on public resources that might have been better spent elsewhere.

This chapter of Cultural Trends does not, strictly speaking, set out to confirm or refute these common criticisms of the Dome. Instead, it aims to establish the facts and figures concerning various aspects of the project as precisely as possible. This in itself is difficult to do since, for instance, the exact value of corporate sponsorship is impossible to ascertain due to commercial confidentiality, although it was quite a small proportion of the actual funding ‐ less than 20 per cent. Further complicating matters is polling evidence of high visitor approval for the Dome which must be set against its general damnation in the media.

In effect, the chapter traces a complex process whereby an ambitious cultural project was beset by a series of seemingly intractable problems from beginning to end, including eventual disposal and future use of the site. Whether the Dome is considered an abject failure or an under‐reported success, it certainly did not meet its official targets in terms of visiting, revenue and sponsorship.     

PRESIDENTIAL APPROVAL, PARTISANSHIP AND THE ECONOMY: EVIDENCE FROM THE 1984 CONTINUOUS MONITORING SURVEY IN THE US

This paper examines several key debates in the literature onthe effects of economic performance on political support, usingthe Continuous Monitoring Survey of the 1984 CPS American nationalelection study. Box-Jenkins time-series analyses show that theelectorate operates in terms of a reward-punishment model whichis asymmetrical and sociotropic in its effects. In the modelsdeveloped party identification and economic evaluations Granger–causepresidential approval, the effects of the former being strongerthan those of the latter. Partisanship and economic evaluationsform two independent streams of influence on presidential approval,casting doubt on some revisionist interpretations in the votingliterature, i.e., that party identification is simply a runningtally of voters' judgments about party performance on economicand other issues. In addition, the results suggest that popularityfunctions which omit party identification are theoreticallymisspecified.     

Competition in UKHigher Education: Competitive Advantage in the Research Assessment Exercise and Porter's Diamond Model

The UK public sector has been exposed to competition as a means of enhancing its performance. HE institutions now compete for resources on the basis of research. In this competitive environment the crucial question is not why one HE institution is more successful than another at research but why some institutions are home to a large number of departments that are successful. The answer lies in exploring what gives competitive advantage at the level of the department, discipline and nation. Porter' three layer ‘diamond’ model of competitive advantage is proposed as a framework for this exploration. This identified four major components: factor conditions (research orientation and accumulated wealth of institution); demand conditions (demand by academy for departmental research as measured by ability to secure external income/research students); related and supporting departments (research strength of institution and presence of a relevant cluster of research‐strong departments) and departmental strategy, structure and rivalry (ability to focus departmental attention on the successful training of research students and publication in refereed journals). In a linked paper this model provided a framework to evaluate research performance in the discipline of geography (Curran, 2001).