Public Risk Perceptions and the Preferences of Policy Makers

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Vogel
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Risk Perceptions ◽  
The United States ◽  
Historical Overview ◽  
Risk Regulation ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
Health Safety ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Public Risk ◽  
Public Concerns

This chapter explores changes in public opinion regarding the transatlantic politics of risk regulation, as well as the preferences of influential policy makers. Both separately and by their interaction with one another, they have had a critical impact on shaping the divergence in transatlantic regulatory stringency. The chapter presents a broad historical overview of changes in public demands for more stringent risk regulations and the willingness of policy makers to address them. During the second half of the 1980s, the extent and intensity of public concerns about a wide range of health, safety, and environmental risks increased substantially on both sides of the Atlantic. These concerns played a role in a major expansion of consumer and environmental regulation in both the EU and the United States.

Food Safety and Agriculture

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Vogel
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Food Safety ◽  
Risk Perceptions ◽  
The United States ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
Production Methods ◽  
Safety Regulations ◽  
Safety Risks ◽  
Public Risk ◽  
The 1960S

This chapter focuses on European and American policies toward the risks of food safety and agricultural production methods. A number of food safety regulations were affected by a divergence in transatlantic public risk perceptions. During the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s, public concerns about the risks of carcinogens in the food supply were greater in the United States than in Europe, while during the 1980s, the safety risks of beef hormones became highly salient in Europe, but not in the United States. In addition, the criteria used by policy makers in both the United States and Europe to assess and manage risks shifted: American regulatory officials placed increased reliance on scientific risk assessments, while European policy makers began to employ a more precautionary approach to food safety risks.

The Politics of Precaution

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Vogel
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Animal Feed ◽  
The United States ◽  
Hazardous Substances ◽  
Risk Regulation ◽  
Scientific Certainty ◽  
European Public ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Regulatory Controls ◽  
Milk Hormones

This book examines the politics of consumer and environmental risk regulation in the United States and Europe over the last five decades, explaining why America and Europe have often regulated a wide range of similar risks differently. It finds that between 1960 and 1990, American health, safety, and environmental regulations were more stringent, risk averse, comprehensive, and innovative than those adopted in Europe. But since around 1990 global regulatory leadership has shifted to Europe. What explains this striking reversal? This book takes an in-depth, comparative look at European and American policies toward a range of consumer and environmental risks, including vehicle air pollution, ozone depletion, climate change, beef and milk hormones, genetically modified agriculture, antibiotics in animal feed, pesticides, cosmetic safety, and hazardous substances in electronic products. The book traces how concerns over such risks—and pressure on political leaders to do something about them—have risen among the European public but declined among Americans. The book explores how policymakers in Europe have grown supportive of more stringent regulations while those in the United States have become sharply polarized along partisan lines. And as European policymakers have grown more willing to regulate risks on precautionary grounds, increasingly skeptical American policymakers have called for higher levels of scientific certainty before imposing additional regulatory controls on business.

Explaining Regulatory Policy Divergence

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Vogel
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
International Trade ◽  
Regulatory Policy ◽  
The United States ◽  
Business Managers ◽  
Risk Regulation ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
European Standards ◽  
Policy Shifts ◽  
The Eu

This chapter explores several alternative explanations for the divergence in transatlantic risk regulation, and discusses the policy shifts that have taken place on both sides of the Atlantic since around 1990. The United States and the fifteen member states of the EU are affluent democracies with sophisticated public bureaucracies, substantial scientific capacities, and strong civic cultures. Their regulatory officials have access to much of the same scientific expertise and there is extensive communication among policy makers, scientists, business managers, nongovernment organizations, and citizens. The chapter shows how divergent risk regulations between the United States and the EU add to the costs of transatlantic commerce and also raise the costs of international trade as some countries adopt European standards and others adopt American ones.

The Transatlantic Shift in Regulatory Stringency

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Vogel
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
The United States ◽  
Life Cycles ◽  
Policy Outcomes ◽  
Political Systems ◽  
Government Officials ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
Health Safety ◽  
Regulatory Decision ◽  
Protective Regulations

This chapter discusses how within political systems, there are important linkages among many health, safety, and environmental risk regulations. Their public issue life cycles overlap and they often follow parallel or convergent political trajectories. Each regulatory decision or non-decision has distinctive and multiple causes, and no single theory can adequately account for all the policy outcomes that have taken place in both Europe and the United States since 1960. The chapter then establishes an explanatory framework that focuses on the role and interaction of three factors: the extent and intensity of public pressures for more stringent or protective regulations, the policy preferences of influential government officials, and the criteria by which policy makers assess and manage risks.

scholarly journals Public Risk Perceptions of Handgun Use in the United States

2017 ◽  
Vol 13 (3) ◽  
pp. 124-133
Author(s):  
Jenna Tyler ◽  
Abdul-Akeem Sadiq
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Risk Perceptions ◽  
The United States ◽  
Public Risk

scholarly journals Internationalization Trends in French Higher Education: An Historical Overview

2015 ◽  
pp. 28-30
Author(s):  
Guillaume Tronchet
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
United States ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
The United States ◽  
Internationalization Of Higher Education ◽  
Historical Overview ◽  
Policy Makers

For many policy makers in France, internationalization of higher education is a new subject. But people have short memories. They have forgotten—or simply do not know—that French universities were pioneers and leaders in internationalization between the end of the 19th and the middle of the 20th century, before being outshone by the United States and some other countries in Europe. Faced with today’s challenges of globalization, it is time for French universities to reclaim their own history.

scholarly journals Introduction to the Special Issue: Soft Power of Civil Society in International Relations

2012 ◽  
Vol 13 (4) ◽  
pp. 473-476
Author(s):  
TAKASHI INOGUCHI
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Public Opinion ◽  
Civil Society ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Soft Power ◽  
The United States ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Policy Makers

This special issue focuses on the role of civil society in international relations. It highlights the dynamics and impacts of public opinion on international relations (Zaller, 1992). Until recently, it was usual to consider public opinion in terms of its influence on policy makers and in terms of moulding public opinion in the broad frame of the policy makers in one's country. Given that public opinion in the United States was assessed and judged so frequently and diffused so globally, it was natural to frame questions guided by those concepts which pertained to the global and domestic context of the United States.

Expansion of Groundnut ringspot virus Host and Geographic Ranges in Solanaceous Vegetables in Peninsular Florida

2011 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 34 ◽  
Author(s):  
Craig G. Webster ◽  
William W. Turechek ◽  
H. Charles Mellinger ◽  
Galen Frantz ◽  
Nancy Roe ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
The United States ◽  
Vegetable Production ◽  
Viral Pathogen ◽  
Geographic Ranges ◽  
First Report ◽  
Geographic Spread ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Production Areas ◽  
Solanaceous Plants

To the best of our knowledge, this is the first report of GRSV infecting tomatillo and eggplant, and it is the first report of GRSV infecting pepper in the United States. This first identification of GRSV-infected crop plants in commercial fields in Palm Beach and Manatee Counties demonstrates the continuing geographic spread of the virus into additional vegetable production areas of Florida. This information indicates that a wide range of solanaceous plants is likely to be infected by this emerging viral pathogen in Florida and beyond. Accepted for publication 27 June 2011. Published 25 July 2011.

The Relations Between the Navy and the Foreign Service

1939 ◽  
Vol 33 (2) ◽  
pp. 283-291
Author(s):  
Clark H. Woodward
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
The United States ◽  
Government Agencies ◽  
National Defense ◽  
International Affairs ◽  
Proper Position ◽  
Foreign Service ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
National Emergency ◽  
The Relationship

In the conduct of foreign policy and the participation of the United States in international affairs, the relation between the Navy and the Foreign Service is of vital importance, but often misunderstood. The relationship encompasses the very wide range of coördination and coöperation which should and must exist between the two interdependent government agencies in peace, during times of national emergency, and, finally, when the country is engaged in actual warfare. The relationship involves, as well, the larger problem of national defense, and this cannot be ignored if the United States is to maintain its proper position in world affairs.

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