BOOK REVIEWS

Book reviewed in this article: Patrick Weller and Michelle Grattan , Can Ministers Cope? Australian Federal Ministers at Work, Richmond, Hutchinson of Australia, 1981. Sol Encel , Peter Wilenski and Bernard Schaffer (eds), Decisions: Case Studies in Australian Public Policy V. Seymour Wilson , Canadian Public Policy and Administration — Theory and Environment Peter Sheldrake and Russell Linke (eds), Accountability in Higher Education C. A. Tisdell , Science and Technology Policy: Priorities of Governments Richard Pryke , The Nationalised Industries: Policies and Performance since 1968     

Improving Federalism: Drivers of Change,Repair Options and Reform Scenarios

The Academy of Social Sciences in Australia (ASSA) and the Institute of Public Administration Australia (IPAA) hosted a ‘Policy Roundtable on Federalism’ on the 17–18 May 2007 at the University of Canberra. Around 50 attended the roundtable comprising politicians, Commonwealth and state public servants, and academics. The roundtable was provided with a number of background papers including the Hollander‐Patapan article and another produced by staff of the Commonwealth Grants Commission entitled ‘Trends in Commonwealth‐State Financial Relations: a Grants Commission Perspective’. The roundtable focused not only on issues and challenges but, more practically, on options and how to make federalism work better.     

Calling Out the Persistence of Racism

In this issue New Political Science begins a new tradition, printing an extended review essay of the book that received the Michael Harrington Book Award at the most recent American Political Science Association Meeting. The Michael Harrington Award is given for an outstanding book that demonstrates how scholarships can be used in the struggle for a better world. In 2011, the award went to Michelle Alexander for her book The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in an Age of Color-Blindness. Sanford Schram, a member of the award committee, has contributed the below review.     

Innovation attributes,policy intervention,and the diffusion of computer applications among local governments

Several shortcomings of traditional diffusion research create major impediments to our understanding of the diffusion of innovations as well as to the development of effective strategies of policy intervention to facilitate diffusion. Among the criticisms of diffusion research are the selection bias of many diffusion studies and the futility of curve fitting as an adequate test of theoretical relevance. These shortcomings can be avoided by substantive and methodological changes in diffusion research. We argue that innovation attributes, together with policies associated with the diffusion of an innovation, account for significant differences in diffusion patterns. An empirical analysis of this thesis focuses on the diffusion of computer applications software in local government.This paper is part of a research project entitled Diffusion and Adoption of Computer Applications Software in Local Governments. This project is supported by a grant to the Public Policy Research Organization and the Graduate School of Administration from the Division of Policy Research and Analysis of the National Science Foundation (PRA-76-15549). The views expressed herein are those of the researchers and should not be ascribed to the National Science Foundation. The full report of this research is forthcoming in Technological Innovation in American Local Governments: The Case of Computing (New York: Pergamon).The authors wish to acknowledge the helpful comments of Robert Eyestone, Joseph Matthews, and Kenneth Warner.Authors are listed randomly to denote equal contribution.     

Meritocracy revisited

Michael Young is author of The Rise of the Meritocracy,reissued in paperback by Transaction. Among his other books is Family and Kinship in East London (with Peter Willmott).He is founder and director of the Institute of Community Studies in London. He is a past chairman of the Social Science Research Council of the United Kingdom and founder of the Open University. He is a member of Parliament as Lord Young of Dartington.     

Democracy as a coalition of cultures

Aaron Wildavsky was until his recent death Class of 1940 Professor of Political Science and Public Policy and a member of the Survey Research Center at the University of California, Berkeley. A brief appreciation of his life and work follows.     

BOOK NOTES

Raymond J. O'DEA. A Guide to Industrial Relations in Australia. West Publishing Corporation, Sydney, 1967 Michael Baume . The Sydney Opera House Affair. Nelson, Melbourne, 1967 John A. Salmond . The Civilian Conservation Corps, 1933–1942. Duke University Press, Durham, N.C. 1967 Eugene B. Skolnikoff . Science, Technology, and American Foreign Policy. M.I.T. Press, Cambridge, Mass., 1967 A. F. Davies . Images of Class. Sydney Studies in Politics No. 6. Sydney University W. Haus and A. Krebsbach . Local Government Laws in Europe. Kohl-hammer Verlag, Stuttgart, 1967     

Families falling apart

Daniel Patrick Moynihan is the senior United States Senator from New York. He is the Chairman of the Subcommittee on Social Security and Family Policy of the Committee on Finance, and of the Subcommittee on Water Resources, Transportation, and Infrastructure of the Committee on Environment and Public Works. He is also a member of the Committee on Foreign Relations and the Senate Arms Control Observer Group. He is the author or editor of 14 books, including Beyond the Melting Pot(with Nathan Glazer) and his most recent work, Came the Revolution: Argument in the Reagan Era.     

Democracy and populism

He is currently president of the New England Political Science Association and has been a member of the Advisory Council of the National Endowment for the Humanities. His books include America’s Constitutional Soul; Taming the Prince: The Ambivalence of Modern Executive Power; Machiavelli’s Florentine Histories;and a new translation of Machiavelli’s The Prince.     

POLICY LEARNING

The Comparative History of Public Policy. Edited by Francis G. Castles Trends in British Public Policy: Do Governments Make any Difference? Brian W. Hogwood Public Policy in Britain. Martin Burch & Bruce Wood     

Welfare Reform: Assessing its Political, Economic, and Social Effects

Books reviewed: Rebecca M. Blank, It Takes a Nation: A New Agenda for Fighting Poverty Anne Marie Cammisa, From Rhetoric to Reform?: Welfare Policy in AmericanPolitics Martha Shirk, Neil G. Bennett, and J. Lawrence Aber, Lives on the Line: American Families and the Struggle to Make Ends Meet Robert M. Solow, Work and Welfare     

Book Reviews

Books reviewed in this article: Owen Hughes, Public Management and Administration: An Introduction Byong‐man Ahn, John Halligan and Stephen Wilks (eds.), Reforming Public and Corporate Governance: Management and the Market in Australia, Britain and Korea Fred Argy, Where to From Here? Australian Egalitarianism Under Threat Richard Woolcott,The Hot Seat: Reflections on Diplomacy from Stalin's Death to the Bali Bombings Bent Flyvbjerg, Rationality and Power Bent Flyvbjerg, Making Social Science Matter Denis Murphy, Roger Joyce, Margaret Cribb and Rae Wear (eds.), The Premiers of Queensland Ciaran O'Faircheallaigh, A New Approach to Policy Evaluation: Mining and Indigenous People Michael Pusey, The Experience of Middle Australia. The Dark Side of Economic Reform     

Ghastly science

as well as Professor of Urban affairs and Public Policy at the University of Delaware. He is Co-Editor of the series, Energy Policy Studieswith Daniel Rich, and Editor of Energy and Cities.Other edited work includes The Solar Energy Transition: Implementation and Policy Implications,(with Daniel Rich, Allen M. Barnett, and Jon M. Veigel).     

Book Reviews

Books review: Daniel Cohen, The Wealth of the World and the Poverty of Nations Peter J. Taylor, The Way the Modern World Works: World Hegemony to World Impasse Anton Zijderveld, The Waning of the Welfare State: The End of Comprehensive State Succor Bill Jordan, The New Politics of Welfare: Social Justice in a Global Context Leonard E. Burman, The Labyrinth of Capital Gains Tax Policy TheConstitution of Iran, Asghar Schirazi. James C. Scott, Seeing Like a State Wolfgang Reinicke, Global Public Policy: Governing without Government? Peter Trubowitz, Emily O. Goldman, and Edward Rhodes, eds. The Politics of Strategic Adjustment: Ideas, Institutions, and Interests Frederick W. Mayer, Interpreting NAFTA: The Science and Art of Political Analysis J. Nicholas Ziegler, Governing Ideas: Strategies for Innovation in France and Germany Pietro S. Nivola, Laws of the Landscape: How Policies Shape Cities in Europe and America     

Direct-broadcast satellites and cultural integrity

Electronic and mass media create counterweights to established authorities. Ithiel de Sola Pool is professor of political science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. A fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, he is also a member of the following: American Political Science Association; Council on Foreign Relations; American Association for Public Opinion Research and American Sociological Association. He is the author of Satellite Generalsand editor of Handbook of Communications. [Deceased]     

Book Reviews

Books reviewed: Governance, Politics, and the State. Jon Pierre and B. Guy Peters. The Real Worlds of Welfare Capitalism. Robert E. Goodin, Bruce Headey, Ruud Muffels, and Henk‐Jan Dirven. Local Voices, National Issues: The Impact of Local Initiative in Japanese Policy‐Making. Sheila A. Smith, ed. Two Tiers or Two Speeds? The European Security Order and the Enlargement of the European Union and NATO. James Sperling, ed. Organizing Women in Contemporary Russia: Engendering Transition. Valerie Sperling. Remaking New Zealand and Australian Economic Policy: Ideas, Institutions, and Policy Communities. Shaun Goldfinch.     

Eco‐citles and red green politics

Jay Gould: The Enemy Within: The High Cost of Living Near Nuclear Reactors. New York: Four Walls Eight Windows, 1996.

Don Fitz, ed.: Dioxin: The Orange Resource Book (A special issue of Synthesis/Regeneration), 1995.

David Abram: The Spell of the Sensuous. New York: Pantheon Books, 1996.

Sheldon Krimsky and Roger Wrubel: Agricultural Biotechnology and the Environment: Science, Policy and Social Issues. Urbana/Chicago, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1995.

Jeremy Rifkin: The End of Work: The Decline of the Global Labor Force and the Dawn of the Post‐Market Era. New York, NY: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1995.

Roy Morrison: Ecological Democracy. Boston: South End Press, 1995.

Andrew Rowell: Green Backlash: Global Subversion of the Environment Movement. New York, NY: Routledge, 1996.     

BOOK REVIEWS

Book reviewed in this article: Barry Hughes , Exit Full Employment: Economic Policy in the Stone Age. Peter Sheehan , Crisis in Abundance. Royal Institute of Public Administration, Policy and Practice: The Experience of Government. Clifford Pearce , The Machinery of Change in Local Government 1888–1974. P. B. Beaumont , Government as Employer—Setting an Example?. A.F. Davies , skills, Outlooks and Passions: A Psychoanalytic Contribution to the Study of Politics. Andrew Parkin and Allan Patience (eds). John Power , Helen Nelson (eds), The Regional Administrator in the Riverina, Roger Scott , Northern Ireland, The Politics of Violence. John Dixon , Australia's Policy Towards the Aged.     

Germany and the new Europe

where he directs the Europe-America and Global Security Projects. He has been Director of Studies of the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London and taught on the faculty of Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. He served the first Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and was staff member for Western Europe on the National Security Council. This article is a condensed version of his forthcoming book, America, Germany and the Future of Europe.     

The rationalization of democracy: Liberal,elitist, and corporatist conceptions of democracy∗

Charles Murray, Losing Ground: American Social Policy, 1950–1980 (New York: Basic Books, 1984).

On Bureaucratic Discourse: A Radical Feminist Analysis of the Role of Public Administration in Late Capitalism

Jean Baudrillard, In the Shadow of the Silent Majorities . . . or the End of the Social and Other Essays, trans, by Paul Foss, Paul Patton and John Johnston (New York: Semiotext(e), 1983), 123 pp.

Jean Baudrillard, Simulations, trans. by Paul Foss, Paul Patton and Philip Beitchman (New York: Semiotext(e), 1983), 159 pp.

Omar Cabezas, Fire from the Mountain: The Making of a Sandinista, translated by Kathleen Weaver with a foreword by Carlos Fuentes and an afterword by Walter LaFeber (Crown Publishers, Inc.: New York, 1985), pp. 233.