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This paper examines homogeneity and heterogeneity in preferences for public policy, across income and education levels and party identification, and across policy domains in the US, UK and Canada. Do preferences differ across segments of the public at particular points in time? What about over time - do we observe a uniform swing across different groups (parallel publics), or does the flow of opinion differ across party, income, and education? Our data on public preferences for government spending show cross-sectional heterogeneity across sub-aggregates, but very high levels of over-time homogeneity in trends across subgroups. The structure of preference change across subgroups is fairly similar; most notably, thermostatic responsiveness to policy holds generally across the subgroups. This is especially true for broad domestic aggregates of opinion and policy. There still are some differences in feedback, particularly across education levels, as the highly educated are significantly more responsive to spending change over time. People with low and middling levels of education still do change their preferences for spending in response to what policymakers do, just to a lesser extent, at least in certain policy domains. This fits with the large and growing literature that demonstrates real differences owing to information levels. There also are significant differences across partisan subgroupings in various domains. The implications of these findings are considered in the concluding section. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A large and growing body of research demonstrates a correspondence between public opinion and policy behavior. Almost all of this research has focused on the US, however. Do similar patterns obtain in other countries? Or is the US unique? This paper represents one step towards answering these questions. We extend previous research on the dynamics of spending preferences and budgetary policy in the US, using comparable longitudinal measures of public preferences and government spending in the US, UK, and Canada. The nature and magnitude of opinion-policy connections vary across both policy functions and countries. We explore this variance here, and suggest several possible explanations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A comparative survey of activist mobilizing to secure recognition of sexual diversity in Canadian and American public school systems, and of the extent to which public policy and schooling practice have responded. Until the 1990s, only scattered jurisdictions effected any significant change, often starting with ‘safe schools’ measures. Such change, and particularly in the area of anti-gay bullying, appears more widespread in the U.S. than Canada, not at all the pattern in other sexual diversity issues. Differences arise from religious, cultural, and institutional factors, and from Canadian-American contrasts in the extent to which sexual diversity provokes high stakes debates over other issues. As on all sexual diversity fronts, dramatic variation persists across U.S. regions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A comparative survey of activist mobilizing to secure recognition of gay and lesbian relationships in Canada and the United States, and of the extent to which public policy, law, and institutional policy among private employers has moved in directions sought by such activism. Such movement as has occurred depends on developments at national, regional, and local levels of government, as well as in the courts. Shifts toward equity have come faster and more uniformly in Canada than in the U.S.. A few American states and several localities have seen marked progress, but are hampered by the relative absence of change at the federal level. Variation in outcome depends on constitutional, legal, and institutional context, on party configerations, on labour union support, and to some extent on public opinion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]