Conservative Networks Research Articles

Focus: Westminster: Reshuffling the reforms

Virginia Bottomley stays and Brian Mawhinney goes. The cause and effect of last week's ministerial reshuffle, in as far as it affects the health service, is easily summed up. Dr Mawhinney's promotion to the cabinet as transport secretary ensured that Mrs Bottomley continues as secretary of state for health. For the prime minister to move both the number one and two at the health department would have been taking a gamble. Mawhinney was too good to stay; Bottomley was too valuable to be moved, and it is futile to speculate if some other arrangement should have prevailed. To fill the vacancy for health minister, Mr Major chose a careerist from the Conservative party network, Scots lawyer Gerry Malone, now MP for Winchester. Married …

Ergodicity of conservative communication networks

We analyze a communication network with several types of calls. For a wide class of conservative service disciplines, we give ergodicity criteria. Exponentially fast convergence to steady state is also proved.

Developing RETRAN Input for Redundant Networks

Complex valve and instrument networks are frequently found in nuclear power plants; the complexity of such networks is often due to built-in, safety-related redundance. When developing RETRAN input to model a redundant network, it is generally assumed that the performance of such a network can be accurately represented by the performance characteristics of its individual components. This approach, however, can introduce a substantial amount of conservatism into the RETRAN calculations because a redundant network tends to outperform its components. To help utility engineers evaluate the performance of redundant networks, the Electric Power Research Institute has sponsored the development of the Plant Network Simulation (PLANETS) computer program. The PLANETS code can be used to develop both conservative and best-estimate network characteristics for RETRAN input. This paper reports that analyses have shown that the use of network inputs can significantly reduce calculated event consequences as well as provide added safety or operating margin.

The Corporate Elite, the New Conservative Policy Network, and Reaganomics

Recent analysts have traced the rise of Reaganomics to the rise of cowboy capitalists and to a "right turn" of the corporate elite. We provide a policy history of the formulation of the Reaganomics program and its insertion into the national political agenda, showing that it stemmed from policy-planning efforts of a new conservative network of policy organizations. During the 1970s, this conservative network synthesized fiscal conservatism, monetarism, and supply-side economics into a new economic program of austerity and supply-side tax incentives. We then provide an elite analysis of the structure of this policy network, showing that the inner circle and upper tier of the capitalist class supported the austerity camp as well as the traditional Keynesian moderates, while sunbelt cowboys tended to support the more conservative supply-siders. The corporate elite remains the hegemonic group within the capitalist class, working in coalition with a newly mobilized cowboy stratum.