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All the U.S. states create residential property tax abatement policies that provide important benefits for a rapidly growing older population. These policies vary sharply, and we seek to explain variation in their generosity. We employ regression in conjunction with a cross-sectional data set of the 50 states focused early in the current decade. Several variables prominent in explaining cross-state variation in other public policies exert only modest effects on these programs. Rather, the primary influence is a positive one for a cultural orientation toward government helping a broad swath of the citizenry. We attribute this unusual pattern of explanatory factors to (1) abatement programs' older target populations; (2) their tax expenditure status; and (3) their tendency to be categorized as economic development rather than social programs. This explanatory pattern holds theoretical importance inasmuch as it provides few constraints on the growth of at least some programs serving older citizens. Keywords: Residential Property Taxes, Senior Tax Relief, State Senior Residential Property Tax Abatement, State Tax Policy, Tax Abatement. Todos los estados de la Union Americana establecen politicas de reduccion de impuestos para las propiedades residenciales que dan beneficios importantes para la poblacion, en rapido crecimiento, de adultos mayores. Estas politicas varian bruscamente y buscamos explicar la variacion en su generosidad. Empleamos una regresion conjuntamente con datos transversales de 50 estados y enfocados en el principio de la decada actual. Diversas variables que explican la variacion entre estados en otras politicas publicas solo ejercen efectos modestos en estos programas de reduccion de impuestos. En cambio, la influencia mas importante es una positiva para la orientacion cultural relacionada con la ayuda del gobierno para una amplia porcion de la ciudadania. Atribuimos este diseno inusual de factores explicativos a: (1) la poblacion objetivo de adultos mayores de estos programas de reducciones; (2) al estatus de los adultos mayores en los programas de reducciones y (3) a la tendencia de que la reduccion de impuestos para las propiedades residenciales sea categorizada como desarrollo economico en lugar de programas sociales. Este patron explicativo mantiene una importancia teorica dado que provee pocas restricciones para el desarrollo en el futuro de al menos algunos programas de ayuda a la ciudadania de adultos mayores., We examine the bases for variation in the residential property tax advantages that states grant to older adults. Such abatements either reduce elders' taxes in comparison with other residential property [...]

The United States faces a rapidly growing population of elderly citizens. To learn more about their prospects, we engage in three tasks. First, we develop and operationalize a five-dimensional concept, 'state elderly friendliness,' that facilitates assessing various political, economic, and social aspects of state environments that influence the well-being of elderly persons. Second, we rank states on the five dimensions of this concept. We find large differences both within states across various dimensions and across states on individual dimensions. Third, we demonstrate that differences in states' ranks on our dimensional scales are associated with sharp variations in particular societal outcomes of importance for the well-being of various segments of the elderly., The United States is an aging society, and a number of attentive publics are increasingly concerned about meeting the needs of elderly persons. (1) One important source of this concern [...]

The American Society has witnessed animated discussions on the equality of opportunity, appropriateness of affirmative action and distributive justice. The debate about affirmative action is difficult to resolve because of the difference in intelligence levels. Egalitarianism can help avoid a preference for inequalities among people only by battling with inconsistency and cognitive social disequilibrium.

Our aim is to draw a set of distinctions among types of goods which has significant implications for theories of distributive justice. We begin by providing a general account of two sets of properties--fungibility and nonfungibility, divisibility and indivisibility--and argue that goods can be distinguished according to these criteria. Further, we contend that these distinctions entail complications for structural principles of distributive justice (i.e., principles such as maximin that distribute payoffs to positions). As an example we consider James Fishkin's discussion of structural principles, arguing that Fishkin's view that (i) value, structure, and assignment are independent holds only to the degree that the goods considered are fungible and divisible, (ii) structural principles face difficulties beyond those which Fishkin identifies and addresses with his principle of nontyranny, since structural principles cannot accomodate highly nonfungible, indivisible goods, and (iii) these difficulties can be managed through the application of a value-sensitive proviso. We then show that two important goods, medical care and advanced education, are highly nonfungible and indivisible and thus support the distinctions drawn earlier. Finally, we specify the nature of complementary contributions as well as coordination problems between structural principles and the value-sensitive proviso in their application to distributive justice issues.

Relying on culture as an important explanatory variable is regarded with skepticism by many contemporary political scientists. Yet, doubts about culture's usefulness rest in large part on false perceptions of various sorts. These misunderstandings relegate an important explanatory variable to the social science scrap heap. Accordingly, the author engages in three tasks. First, selected prominent arguments for culture's lack of explanatory usefulness are discussed. Second, it is demonstrated how at least one conceptualization of culture, Mary Douglas and Aaron Wildavsky's grid-group theory, overcomes aspects of these difficulties and contributes to explaining institutional form and political change. Third, it is argued that grid-group theory contributes significantly to both institutional analysis and rational choice theory. Grid-group theory augments each of these latter two approaches and, more important, reveals complementary aspects, linking these modes of analysis together as mutually supportive elements of a more inclusive explanatory scheme.

An attempt is made, to emphasise the distinctive designs of American and Swedish tax regimes, which are expected from their mass and political cultures. Unique contributions, are made to the procedures through which policy is designed, by the culture and social structure.

Drawing on Douglas-Wildavsky grid-group theory, the article shows how changing social circumstances prompt distinctive patterns of shifting cultural allegiance and intercultural coalitions which in turn distinguish three lengthy eras of American political development. The resulting portrayal of American political development is more complex than the oscillation between two poles depicted by Hirschman as well as McClosky and Zaller, for the characterization employed has three poles in two dimensions. But this more complex portrayal better explains the changing character of American political life across eras. The conclusion focuses on what I regard as the two most significant implications of this view, showing that: (1) contrary to widespread opinion, the most recent era of political development affords egalitarians an insecure position on the American political stage, and (2) this conception of political change reveals deeper insights about political life by distinguishing rival, culturally constrained rationalities.

Offers an overview on several books about political science. `The Dynamics of the Arms Race,' edited by David Carlton and Carlo Schaerf; `The Analysis of Foreign Policy Outputs,' edited by William O. Chittick; `Uncontrollable Spending for Social Services Grants,' by Martha Derthick; `A Study of Future Worlds,' by Richard A. Falk.

The primary purpose of this paper is to introduce an alternative, grid-group theory, to the conventional liberal-conservative continuum for understanding the structure of mass belief systems. We also examine the potential advantages of this alternative in explaining preference formation with a series of exploratory empirical comparisons of the relative strengths and weaknesses of grid-group theory and the conventional measure of political ideology. While certain data limitations make our results tentative, we conclude that political ideology retains the advantage of parsimony as the single most powerful predictor of mass attitudes across a range of social and economic issues. But grid-group theory allows us to unpack distinct social logics that are conflated in a unidimensional model. These logics not only tell us more about the bases for persons' attitudes, they offer an explanation for the shifting structure of political conflicts and coalitions. Thus grid-group theory helps us explain who holds which 'core values' and why. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]