If the decline in military spending in the West has to be reversed, for example, many of the economic and budgetary assumptions underpinning investment decisions would have to be thrown out.

Changing the system so that benefits are denied to those convicted of a very broad spectrum of offences relating to the riots would represent a radical departure from the universalist assumptions underpinning the welfare state.

She, and others, attempt to make explicit some of the implicit mathematical assumptions underpinning modern theoretical physics and cosmology.

A range of assumptions underpinning daily debate in Washington - from the size of long-awaited Government surpluses to the prospects of shoring up Social Security - are based on the optimistic view that the next few years will look much like the last few.

Members of the Oxford Group contributed to a series of scholarly works that examined the moral assumptions underpinning the use of non-human animals, and helped to formulate a counter-position.

Similarly, if there is an entirely new situation, a return to the policies forming the basic assumptions underpinning potentially relevant rules of law, identifies the best guidelines for resolving the immediate dispute.

A foresight approach would seek to analyse and so highlight the assumptions underpinning such views.

'Galen has been examining the fundamental assumptions underpinning our understanding of the element of earth.'

The 20th century German philosopher Martin Heidegger criticized the ontological assumptions underpinning such a reductive model, and claimed that it was impossible to make sense of experience in these terms.

There are strong assumptions underpinning functionalism: 1) That the process of integration takes place within a framework of human freedom, 2) That knowledge and expertise are currently available to meet the needs for which the functional agencies are built.