Synopsis

Beaches and dunes of the open coast form one of the globe’s longest ecological interfaces, linking the oceans with the land. These systems are of great importance to society as prime sites for housing and recreation, buffers against storms, and providers of fisheries and mineral resources. By contrast, their unique ecological attributes and biodiversity are much less recognized. In this chapter, we provide a synthesis of the key ecological features and functions of beaches and dunes, outline the main elements of their faunal biodiversity, examine human threats and their biological consequences, and sketch some salient issues in management to achieve conservation of these unique ecosystems. It is apparent that the range of ecosystem goods and services is broad, but nutrient cycling, water filtration, and the provision of habitat and prey for a diverse range of animals are often the key ecological traits. Contrary to common perceptions, beaches and dunes contain a diverse and unique set of species, many of which are found nowhere else. In addition to the complement of highly adapted invertebrates, many wildlife species (e.g. birds, turtles, fishes) are dependent on beaches and dunes for nesting and feeding, and they use these habitats extensively. Human pressures on sandy shorelines and their biodiversity are numerous. Coastal squeeze is, however, the most pervasive, trapping beaches and their biota between the pressures of development from the terrestrial side and the consequences of climate change from the marine side. Beaches are also naturally malleable habitats whose interlinkages, including the exchange of organisms, with the abutting dunes and surf zones are essential to their functioning. Unfortunately, human actions intended to arrest the dynamics of beach habitats, such as seawalls and dune stabilizations, run counter to these natural dynamics and generally produce negative environmental outcomes. These present a set of formidable management challenges when the primary goal is to conserve intact ecosystems and biodiversity, calling for more systematic approaches in conservation design and implementation for beach and dune ecosystems.

Presidential elections in America always carry some suspense. Even when the outcome is pretty well foretold and the evening is just going to confirm confident prognostications, presidential elections are history-making events, their importance clear to all while they are going on.

THE 2004 MANDATE?

So it was on November 2, 2004. George W. Bush, seeking a second term in the White House, was leading in most of the polls. But the lead was not large and two polling organizations actually had Bush's opponent, John Kerry, ahead. So there was plenty of suspense on the election night telecasts.

As the evening wore on Bush captured Florida – the site of the bitter 2000 recount – and by a margin larger than expected. And, with results coming in more slowly, he pulled out to a lead in Ohio, a lead that ultimately held up through confusion and controversy. The rest of the nation was so predictable that it was clear to electoral vote counters, amateur and professional alike, that Ohio was the game and that winning it was winning reelection.

In legislatures, we care about individual votes because we want to understand why members vote as they do. We care about aggregate outcomes because they become public policy. The task of this chapter is to come to terms with the aggregate, to ask how mandates affect which side wins and loses, and how the strength of the winning coalition affects the content of the proposals that become law.

Our opening assumption is that change at the individual level surely heralds some kind of change in aggregate outcomes. But aggregation of individual behaviors into institutional outcomes leaves room for diminution, for exaggeration, and for subtle transformation of the individual impetus in the vote. Thus, we expect to see mandate in-fluences in the institution, having seen them in votes, but it is by no means obvious that they will be the same as what we have already seen.

Our task in this chapter is threefold. First we look at aggregate evidence of voting in Congress to see whether the patterns of individual movement in response to mandate perceptions leave their mark on aggregate voting outcomes. This analysis treats the institution as simply an aggregate of its members. Then we pursue institutional theories for a more sophisticated understanding of how both election results and, independently, their perceived meaning, translate individual into institutional change. And, last, we return to the measures of aggregate change to see if they are responsive to the time-varying signals of the meaning of the previous election.

We confess. We are sinners. According to the gospel of political methodology, one should never let method determine choice of topics to investigate. The prohibition is so sensible that it needs no explanation. And yet this is exactly what we did. In the spring of 1997, four of us sat around a table in a seminar room in Minneapolis and asked the question, “What would be a good application of the duration modeling techniques that we had been studying together?”

In a few minutes of conversation, we spun a story about observing members of Congress faced with a Washington consensus that the election just passed had carried a voter mandate. We asked what the reaction should look like and, because this was a methods course and we are social scientists, how we could model it. Although we may not have known it then, the question of the impact of perceived mandates had been investigated before. Importantly, however, the tools used and assumptions made were blunt. Scholars asked if the year following a mandate was different from the year that preceded it, concluding that it was not. The duration model, in contrast, focused on a temporary response that had run its course, as we now know, by midyear – and lost most of its force well before that. In this case, the tool matters.