In the next 30 to 40 years, past changes in fertility and mortality will lead to a significant increase in the share of the elderly. This study suggests that these demographic trends may lead to a decline in the G–7 private savings rate after 2000, compounding the impact of social expenditure pressures on the government's deficit. Moreover, public pensions may decline as a share of the consumption needs of the elderly, leading to financial pressures to reduce their consumption. The reduced burden of child support on the working population will not offset the increased burden of societal support for the elderly.

Privatization is an idea that is popular among political elites throughout the advanced industrial world. In Britain, it has been the centrepiece of Margaret Thatcher's three Conservative governments, reflected in the sale of publicly-owned industries to the private sector and in the sale of council houses to their tenants. Using survey data, this article tests two models to account for privatization policy. The median voter model argues that it was a policy demanded and initiated by voters, while the elite interests model argues that it stemmed from the government and that little popular demand existed for it. The evidence confirms the elite interests model and shows that public opinion has generally accepted the status quo on the public ownership of industry. In addition, the Conservatives have made modest electoral gains from privatization. However, voters are not consistent in their views about privatizating particular industries, implying the Conservatives may lose votes with future privatization.

This essay extends John Kingdon's work on predecision policy processes in US domestic policy to the foreign policy domain. While Kingdon's insights have significantly improved our understanding of predecision processes, further development is necessary for extension across both domestic and foreign policy domains. Kingdon's incremental evolutionary metaphor for alternative specification has to be revamped to include both gradualist and nonincremental policy types. Scholars must also make more explicit, elaborate, and thorough use of Cohen, March and Olsen's ‘garbage can’ model of decision making. To these ends, we offer a typology of policy alternatives that incorporates alternative metaphors premised on recent developments in evolutionary theory. The essay concludes by suggesting a research agenda amenable to pursuit in both national and cross-national contexts.

Frey (1987) proposed a new information policy designed to lower the utility of terrorist action. The policy is predicated on the assumption that terrorists aim to draw public attention to their cause. Therefore, the terrorists' rewards can be reduced by refraining from attributing a particular terrorist act to any one group. Faced with diminished rewards, terrorists are likely to give up violent action or to resort to tactics that put them in greater jeopardy. The present article offers a thorough analysis of Frey's proposal. It shows that the proposal derives from a too limited view of the terrorist strategy and from unrealistic assumptions about the extent to which democratic governments can control the sources and the dissemination of information. A judgment of Frey's proposal according to criteria drawn from a more comprehensive view of the terrorist strategy leads to the conclusion that the proposed policy is both impractical and counterproductive.