The Promise and Threat of America in Australian Politics

From early days the United States has had a curious and very entertaining career in Australia as a kind of storehouse of ideas to be raided, a powerfully justifying precedent to be invoked or a dreadful example with which to shame the thoughtless. (Cited in Churchward 1979, p. xxv)     

COMPACTNESS AND ELECTORAL BOUNDARY ADJUSTMENT: AN ASSESSMENT OF ALTERNATIVE MEASURES

Spatial compactness has been proposed as a suitable criterion for assessing whether electoral boundaries reflect partisan interests. Although several different measures of spatial compactness have been developed, only limited efforts have been made to compare and evaluate them in the context of electoral redistricting. This paper assesses alternative spatial compactness measures and applies conceptually appealing measures to the provincial ridings proposed by British Columbia's Royal Commission on Electoral Boundaries (1988).     

PREFERENCES FOR RURAL LAND SEVERANCE POLICIES: AN EMPIRICAL ANALYSIS

The increasing demand for residential land in rural Ontario has generated a widespread interest in land severance activity and policy. This paper examines resident preferences for alternative land severance policies using a paired comparison experiment. The analysis identifies those severance policies most preferred by township residents and characterizes groups of residents with similar preferences. Differences in policy preferences are more closely associated with residents' property size, income, and length of residence in the area than with whether they are farmers, countryside non-farmers, or village dwellers.
La demande croissante d' espace résidentiel en Ontario rural est responsable pour l' intérêt grandissant envers le phénomène de détachement en parcelles et les politiques qui s'y rattachent. Le présent article examine les préférences des résidents d' un township ontarien envers différentes politiques de parcellement au moyen d' une méthode comparative. L' analyse des résultats identifie quelles sont les politiques de parcellement préférées et détermine des groupes de résidents qui ont des préférences semblables. Les différences au niveau des préférences des résidents en matière de politiques de parcellement sont plus particulièrement reliées à la grandeur des propriétés, le revenu, et la durée de résidence dans la région plutôt qu'avec leur statut résidentiel tel qu'exploitant agricole, habitant rural non-fermier, ou villageois.     

“Britain's Spiritual Life: How Can It Be Deepened?”: Seebohm Rowntree,Russell Lavers,and the “Crisis of Belief”, ca. 1946–54

This article examines the response of two social investigators in the early post-World War II period to the apparent secularization of British society. It explains how an unpublished survey that the two men carried out, along with the work of other Christian and non-Christian commentators in this period, expressed the hope that religious influences would be strengthened through secular institutions, including communal organizations, workplaces, and the military. A revival of Christian belief, in some form, was seen as a bulwark against communism in the context of the Cold War in which the Soviet regime was seen to present a threat to the "Christian civilization" of the West. The "spiritual life of the nation" was synonymous with the "national character," and for the information and opinion on which their study was based, Seebohm Rowntree and Russell Lavers turned to those who they believed were in a position to influence the "national character."