Perspectives on Disconnects Between Scientific Information and Management Decisions on Post-fire Recovery in Western US

Environmental regulations frequently mandate the use of "best available" science, but ensuring that it is used in decisions around the use and protection of natural resources is often challenging. In the Western US, this relationship between science and management is at the forefront of post-fire land management decisions. Recent fires, post-fire threats (e.g. flooding, erosion), and the role of fire in ecosystem health combine to make post-fire management highly visible and often controversial. This paper uses post-fire management to present a framework for understanding why disconnects between science and management decisions may occur. We argue that attributes of agencies, such as their political or financial incentives, can limit how effectively science is incorporated into decision-making. At the other end of the spectrum, the lack of synthesis or limited data in science can result in disconnects between science-based analysis of post-fire effects and agency policy and decisions. Disconnects also occur because of the interaction between the attributes of agencies and the attributes of science, such as their different spatial and temporal scales of interest. After offering examples of these disconnects in post-fire treatment, the paper concludes with recommendations to reduce disconnects by improving monitoring, increasing synthesis of scientific findings, and directing social-science research toward identifying and deepening understanding of these disconnects

The relationship between issues and individuals’ left-right orientation

The major body of the literature about individuals’ left-right orientation assumes that individuals’ values and attitudes towards different issues will, besides other factors, determine their position in the left-right dimension. Regarding values, it is assumed that these are stable over (a long period of) time and hence, affect individuals’ left-right orientation. But as issue preferences change over time, cross-nationally and in their importance for individuals, the relationship between issues and left-right orientation is less clear. We argue and show with data from the European Social Survey (2002/03) of the Netherlands that the relationship between the opinions about or the attitude towards issues and left-right orientation is moderated by issue salience which means the importance people assign to the issues. Those which are important for them affect their left-right orientation, while they may use the latter to form an opinion about an issue which is not important for them

Credit Where It's Due? Valence Politics, Attributions of Responsibility, and Multi-Level Elections

When considering elections in multi-level contexts, scholars have typically assumed-in line with second-order election theory-that the way voters approach an election depends on their attributions of responsibility, that is, on what they see as being at stake in that election. This assumption is questionable. The formal position is not always clear, and is further blurred by parties and the media. Moreover, many voters pay little attention to politics and have little incentive to trace constitutional responsibilities. In this paper I use data from election studies in two multi-level contexts, Ontario and Scotland, to explore the nature and impact of voters' attributions of responsibility. The evidence suggests that, when called upon in surveys to do so, many voters can confidently and fairly accurately assign issues to different levels of government. Yet they do not seem to consider these attributions much at elections. There is very little indication that issues weighed heavier in the decision-making of those who regarded them as the responsibility of that electoral arena. A plausible explanation is that most voters sidestep the cognitive demands imposed by multi-level elections