Suchergebnisse

The authors study the representation of the U.S. suburb projected by movies and trace the development of these suburban images from the early movies of a century ago through the 1990s, noting how films have influenced and reflected public discourse on suburbs. Suburbs have evolved, becoming more varied and complex, more self-sufficient and more interdependent, the dominant mode of U.S. residential living, and the most widely embraced path to the "good life." Yet postwar intellectuals have long dismissed the bourgeois utopia as inauthentic consumption centers and conformity factories. Moviemakers have taken these critiques to heart, initially with friendly satires and later with aggressive, often vicious attacks.

A norm that members of the US Supreme Court sometimes seem to invoke on important constitutional questions -- unanimity in rendering a decision -- is analyzed in the case of the White House tapes case (United States v. Nixon [1974]). Conceptualizing this case as a two-person, nonzero-sum game played between President Nixon & two Nixon appointees to the Supreme Court (Justices Burger & Blackmun) the strategies, outcomes, & preference ranking of the players are described. The unique equilibrium solution to the normal-form representation of the White House tapes game is shown to be Pareto-nonoptimal -- there exist nonequilibrium outcomes which are better for both players. A metagame-theoretic explanation of why the players did not choose strategies associated with a Pareto-optimal outcome -- based on Nixon's threat not to comply with a Supreme Court decision that was not "definitive" -- is offered. In light of the analysis, the application fo game theory to the explication of historical events & the analysis of policy issues is discussed. 4 Figures. AA.