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Examines the proposal of the Advocacy Coalition Framework (ACF) regarding the importance of external perturbations in policy change in the U.S. Information on the strategies used by the ACF in dealing with policy change; Application of the proposal of the ACF to federal policies for offshore oil leasing; Discussion on the autogenic succession theory for policy change.

This article provides illustrations of risk communication in the case of Lloyd, Florida in 1993. When corporate managements and government regulators want to institute a new project that might produce dreaded accidents, an oft-adopted strategy is to damn the torpedoes and sail full steam ahead. A common argument in intellectual and political circles is that public concerns about technology are based largely on ignorance and misinformation, and thus that risk-related problems can be overcome by public education. Research on natural hazards as well as on technological hazards shows that people care deeply about social disruption. This is why formal risk assessments usually neglect social disruption. When risk communication is merely a one-sided propaganda tool, people withdraw their trust from experts and the systems those experts work for.

U S environmental law requires that environmental impact statements make "integrated use" of the social sciences in identifying the impacts of certain new developments, and requires that decisionmakers give "appropriate consideration" to the impacts which are identified. Despite this fact, sociological expertise is severely underrepresented in the impact statement process--not only in the final decisions, but in the impact statements themselves. This paper draws attention to the existing situation, and offers several suggestions for improving the sociological content of impact statements in the future. The paper's final section examines potential implications of increased sociological involvement in impact assessments, it concludes that there is a good deal that could be promising about improved (and genuinely "social") impact assessments. Not only could they exert an increased influence on policy outcomes, but they hold the potential to contribute to baste sociology as well. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]