Thomas, Robert D.

The case of Boca Raton, Florida, illustrates many of the
key legal, environmental and intergovernmental issues emerging
in the growth management policies of other communities. In a
1972 amendment to the city charter, the voters of Boca Raton placed
an absolute limit on population and housing by a 40,000 -unit "cap"
on development.
The Growth Cap illustrates the expansion of an issue which
began with a small group of concerned citizens who wanted to preserve
the city's "low-density" character.
The controversy opened up multi-agendas which developed in
stages. Multiple access points were available to the proponents
(environmentalists and home owners) and opponents (developers and
real estate interests) of the Cap. Due to both the pluralistic nature
of the political system and the nature of the Growth Cap, the issue
was expanded beyond the city policy agenda and came to the county
and the courts.

The purpose of this thesis is to examine the problem of
employing unidimensional deterministic scaling in a multidimensional
probabilistic world. The best known unidimensional
deterministic scaling method is Guttman scaling. The scope
of inquiry is limited to scaling with four dichotomous scale
items. As a consequence of this examination, the paper
offers two contributions to the study of scaling. First, it
identifies two paradoxes of existing unidimensional deterministic
scaling methods. Second, it suggests a general framework,
called segment analysis, from which to approach
unidimensional deterministic scaling with dichotomous scale
items.

This thesis deals with the effects of environmental,
biographical and internal structure variables on the policy
roles, intergovernmental relations and cohesiveness in decision-
making of Florida and Georgia county commissioners.
The principal data for this study were derived from a mail
questionaire survey of county commissioners. These data,
along with selected biographic and demographic data, were
drawn from a more extensive research effort by Dr. Robert D.
Thomas, Associate Professor of Political Science, Florida Atlantic
University. The findings of this study suggest that
urbanization, modernization and reforms of the internal
structure of county governments have not had a significant
effect on the perceived policy roles or intergovernmental relations
of county commissioners or on their perceived cohesiveness
in voting on county issues.

The major purposes of this study are (1) to ascertain legislators'
perceptions of intergovernmental relations for policy issues and
(2) to seek an explanation for these perceptions. The central
focus of this thesis is on the 1972 Florida Legislature.
Specifically, the focus is on the legislators' perceptions with
regard to land use and water resource problems in Florida.

This thesis was prepared to ascertain how the activities of the county,
state, and federal governments, affected the attitudes of top level
Broward County officials who have formal responsibilities in the area
of water pollution control in Broward County. Their attitudes were
determined by their responses to questions on intra-governmental and intergovernmental
cooperation in both general and specific areas. The
specific areas were: program development and/or implementation, sharing
information, sharing equipment, sharing manpower, sharing funding. The
findings showed that in both the general and specific areas, county
officials felt the intra-county relationship to be cooperative. In all
categories but that of funding, the intra-county cooperative ratings
were equal to or higher than the inter-level ratings. The high intra-county
cooperative rating was attributed to the homogeneity of the
respondents, and to their perceptions of the nature of the county,
state, and federal water pollution control programs.

The purpose of this research is to investigate the concepts
of representation and the public interest. The specific
focus is on the Chairmen of the Federal Communications Commission
from 1934 to the present.
The basic proposition states that when the Chairman was
favorable to the broadcast industry, he would espouse a Self-
Regulatory philosophy in which government regulation of the industry
was at a minimum. Two types of data were used: socioeconomic
data and the Chairmen's statements concerning the
public interest.
The Chairmen ' s perceptions of the public interest were
categorized in terms of their philosophical orientations and
the extent of government control they deemed necessary to implement
their philosophies . The two types of data were studied
in order to obtain a profile of the Chairmen and to examine
their perceptions of the public interest as they related to
their socio- economic data.
The study concluded that the Chairmen's legal training
(82 per cent are lawyers) accounted for an attitude of medition and conciliation which carried over into the way they
represented the public interest. While most Chairmen espouse
a Self-Regulatory philosophy, the more recent Chairmen perceive
the need for a stronger government with positive rule-making
powers to regulate industry.