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Focuses on the energy problems in the United States (U.S.). Significance of the Emergency Petroleum Allocation Act of 1973; Structures and functions of the U.S. Federal Energy Administration; Problems associated with the exceptions process of energy regulation.

Examines the relationship between environmentalists and scientists in the United States. Political discussion brought about by Earth Day 1990; Focus of the discussion on modern technology; Poor development of environmentalism with the scientific enterprise; Scientists' view of societal ignorance; Minimal impact of environmentalism on science; Possible influence of environmentalism on science.

The article deals with the 1973 energy crisis of the U.S. which was triggered by the inappropriate fit between the facts of energy and policy for energy. The U.S. abandoned cheap energy as a high priority and adopted secure, abundant and clean energy. Conservation came to be viewed as a source of energy along with nuclear power and synfuels. Price deregulation was the most important policy tool. The then administration of the U.S. under President Ronald Reagan, upset this consensus and substituted the marketplace as the means for maximizing supplies rather than reduce demand.

Examines the possibilities for governance and the challenges of modern synthetic technology in the 21st century in the United States. Increased divergence between the reality of American society and conceptual governance; Role of continuous innovation of complex technologies by synthesis; Increased social stress due to the unresponsiveness of the analytic model of governance.

The article focuses on risk assessment in the process of policy making and focuses on environmental health and safety protection. The concept of risk has become a key consideration in policy making in the United States over the past decade. Until recently, risks were viewed as a relatively narrow technical problem. In recent years, however, analyses of risk have become central components of many policy debates, such as concerns about nuclear waste disposal or the use of diethylstilbestrol in the food industry. These and other controversies have politicized risk assessment. Historically, it has been customary for the Congress to establish broad national goals and then assign responsibility to one or more federal agencies for conducting the activities needed to achieve them. At the same time, the major objectives of the new social regulation, including reducing the risks to human health and safety and the hazards of environmental degradation, have proven difficult to operationalize. The legislative basis for risk assessments and a framework for assessing risk have been discussed in details. Risk has been defined in the article and the effects considered, along with implications for risk management.

This study examines she role of technological variables in the decisions by Egypt, the World Batik, and the United States regarding the selection and financing of the Aswan High Dam project. Three major decision-making models-rational choice, incremental, and organizational process-are assessed according to their appropriateness for and applicability to the "technological dimension." This dimension is defined in terms of three major components-design, impact, anti management issues, Despite a tendency of the literature to associate the rational-choice model with highly technical decisions, this study illustrates the dominance of "satisficing," "muddling through," and "bounded rationality" behavior for each of the major participants. The technological dimension is found to be important, but clearly secondary to the primacy of politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on whether creative administrative rulemaking and rule adjudication can take place in a bureaucratic setting characterized by broad allocations of discretionary authority. Even the analysis of highly controversial policy issues, such as the debate over deregulation of the petroleum industry, seldom has attempted to incorporate an equity criterion. The literature assessing the policies of the Federal Energy Administration (FEA) is typical in this regard. Consensus that the FEA's mandatory fuel allocation and pricing programs were a failure rests almost entirely upon the conclusion that these rules lead to substantial inefficiencies in both the public and private sectors. With few exceptions, the distributional dimensions of FEA policies have been downplayed in analyses of oil pricing and allocation decisions. Beyond some general comments regarding the importance of equity, the decontrol debate relied almost exclusively upon economic efficiency as its evaluative criterion. This is especially ironic given the strong equity rationale for the creation of the FEA. This research responds to this orthodoxy by evaluating the performance of the FEA over the post-embargo period between 1973 and 1976, according to two criteria of equity.