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A study of the dimensionality of Ronald Inglehart's Postmaterialism scale reveals that measurement of the importance to people of Materialist and Postmaterialist values will be more accurate if a rating method is substituted for the ranking method. The rating method allows a two-dimensional representation of these values while the ranking method assumes a single dimension with conflicting values. Use of the rating method in an analysis of data from a national survey of Australians' attitudes to social welfare and related issues reveals that the same people hold both types of values and that there are no significant differences between Materialists and Postmaterialists.

Government spending in public education varies considerably among the different Australian states. These expenditures may range from a low of $3, 000 in Queensland to a high of over $4,000 in Victoria. An analysis of whether this is due to variances in efficiency in providing services, in the influence of special-interest groups or in citizen preferences, is carried out. Through a technique that obtains private demand functions for public goods via surveys, the researchers show that what Austalian states spend for education corresponds closely with the amount asked for by the typical voter.

A recurring problem in political analysis is to link public opinion to public policy. Public opinion has often come to mean the replies to structured questions in representative surveys, The task of connecting opinion and policy is complicated by the difficulty in interpreting replies to these surveys. The burgeoning literature on public opinion and the crisis of the welfare state has failed to provide a consistent account of what aspects of policy might be driven by public demand or vice versa. The interpretations of survey data are either misleading or highly selective. This applies to two crucial areas, attitudes towards poor minorities and opinions about state and private welfare. In order to provide a better understanding of the problems of linking policy and opinion and to offer some guiding principles for research in this area, this paper attempts to clarify some of these difficulties.

The assumption of a two-dimensional Materialist and Postmaterialist value system is supported by many people becoming Postmaterialists after achieving the Materialist goals of physical and economic security. Moreover, political practice is an attempt to reach a consensus that satisfies both types of goals. Use of the rating method may therefore be appropriate, although this method requires further study as it may suffer from the 'response set' problem.

The current pattern and places of use, the driving forces and the barriers to the 'new' environmental policy instruments (NEPIs) and also the extent to which NEPIs are replacing the old instruments, in Australia, is studied

Concern about confidence in Australian political institutions is a constant ingredient in debates about policy development. Long-established institutional practices designed to sustain trust in government have been challenged by the New Right and changing perceptions about the value and effectiveness of many institutions. The media can create negative impressions about political institutions, which can become self-fulfilling prophecies., Survey research on public confidence in political and other organisations can be used to evaluate popular endorsement of their performance. Without examining proximate factors in detail, this paper considers the [...]

ABSTRACT This paper examines the validity of predominant assumptions about popular support for the welfare state. These presuppositions include the notion that support for the welfare state varies in different [...]