Reviews

Scribe, Griot and Novelist: Narrative Interpreters of the Songhay Empire by Thomas A Hale. University of Florida Press, Gainesville (Florida, U.S.A.), 1990. xiv plus 313 pp. including notes, bibliography and index. £23.06. Hardback.

General History of Africa VII. Africa under Colonial Domination 1880–1935 (abridged edition) edited by A. Adu Boahenforthe UNESCO International Scientific Committee for the Drafting of a General History of Africa. UNESCO (Paris), University of California Press (Berkeley) and James Currey (London), 1990. xxi plus 387pp. including illustrations, bibliography and index. £4.95. Paperback.

South Africa: Constitutional Development ‐ A Multi‐disciplinary Approach by Donovan Marais. Southern Book Publishers, Johannesburg, 1989. 315pp. Notes and index. R37.50. Paperback.

Transport Planning for Third World Cities edited by Harry T. Dimitriou. Routledge, London, 1990. xxii plus 432pp. including figures, tables, notes, bibliography and index. £40.00. Hardback.

The Founder: Cecil Rhodes and the Pursuit of Power by Robert I. Rotberg with Miles F. Shore. Oxford University Press, New York, 1989. xxii plus 800pp. including maps, illustrations and bibliography. $35.00 and £25.00.

The Development of the Executive underthe Nigerian Constitutions, 1960–81 by J.D. Ojo. Ibadan University Press, Ibadan, 1985.189pp.

Cultural Forces in World Politics by Ali A. Mazrui. James Currey, London 1990.262pp. R46.60. Paperback.

Urban Markets ‐ Developing Informal Retailing by David Dewar and Vanessa Watson. Routledge, London, 1990. xii plus 154pp. £30.00. Hardback.

State‐Administered Rural Change: Agricultural Cooperatives in Kenya by Björn Gyllström. Routledge, London and New York, 1991. xvii plus 319pp. including figures, tables, appendices, notes, bibliography and index. Hardback.

The African Frontier: The Reproduction of Traditional African Societies. Edited and with an introduction by Igor Kopytoff. Indiana University Press, Bloomington and Indianapolis. 1987. vii plus 288pp. including maps, notes and index. R70.15. Hardback.

Studies in the Economic History of Southern Africa. Volume Two: South Africa, Lesotho and Swaziland edited by Z.A. Konczacki, Jane L Parpart and Timothy M. Shaw. Frank Cass & Co. Ltd., London, 1991. xvii plus 290pp. including maps, figures, tables, notes, bibliography and index. £35.00 Hardback. £19.50 Paperback.

Incentives and Agriculture in East Africa by Mats Lundahl. Routledge, London, 1990.223pp. Hardback.

African Agriculture: The Critical Choices edited by HA Amara and B. Founou‐Tchuigoua. UN University Press, Tokyo and Zed Books, London, 1990. 227 pp. Paperback.

A History of Agriculture in West Africa: A Guide to Information Sources by S.C. Saha. Studies in African Economic and Social Development, Volume 6, The Edwin Mellen Press, New York and Lampeter, Wales. 136pp. $49.95. Hardback.

Ethnographic Decision Tree Modelling by Christina H. Gladwin. Sage University Paper Series on Qualitative Research Methods Vol.9. Beverly Hills CALSage, 1989.96pp. $6.50. Paperback.

Samora Machel: A Biography by lain Christie. London: Panaf 1989. 181pp including photographs, bibliography and index. Paperback.

Mozambique: Norwegian Assistance in a Context of Crisis by Grete Brochmann & Arve Ofstad. Fantoft: Christian Michelsen Institute, 1990. vii plus 173pp. including tables, bibliography and index. Paperback.

Self‐Employment for Disabled People: Experiences from Africa and Asia by Malcolm Harper and Willi Momm. International Labour Office, Geneva, 1989. viii plus 85pp. Swiss Francs 15. Paperback.

Technology, Gender and Power in Africa by Patricia Stamp. Ottawa, Ontario, International Development Research Centre, 1989. x plus 185pp. Paperback.

The Devils are Among Us: The War for Namibia by Denis Herbstein and John Evenson. Zed Books Ltd., London, 1989. ix plus 202pp. including maps, photographs, bibliography, glossary and index. Paperback.

Zimbabwe: A Model for Namibia? A Comparison of Events in Zimbabwe‐Rhodesia 1979–1980 with the Situation in SWA in 1989by Ted Sutton‐Pryce. Academica, Pretoria, 1989. vii plus 77pp. including photographs and acknowledgements. R12.50 plus VAT. Hardback.

The Failure of the Centralised State: Institutions of Self‐Governance in Africa edited by James S. Wunsch and Dele Olowu. Westview Press, Boulder, San Francisco and Oxford, 1990. viii plus 334pp. including tables, notes, bibliography and index. Paperback.     

Talcott Parsons on full citizenship for African Americans: retrospective interpretation and evaluation

In this essay in the Thinking Citizenship Series, Lidz evaluates the contributions of Talcott Parsons for thinking about citizenship and race relations in twentieth century America.     

Preparation for the Practice of law—the Views of the Practicing Bar

The competence of the practicing bar has been subjected to substantial criticism in recent years. Since law schools have a virtual monopoly over access to the bar and licensure is granted without further training, legal education has been a particular focus of attack and reform efforts. Yet there has been little systematic study of what skills and knowledge are important in the actual practice of law or the relevant contributions of legal education. This study of practicing lawyers in Chicago examines the nature of the competencies important to the practice of law and the sources lawyers credit for contributing to their development.
Practitioners cite a broad range of skills, many of them not unique to the practice of law, with their importance varying by the predominant legal specialty practiced. The data further indicate that law schools play but a part in the development of skills and knowledge important to the practice of law and that experience, both prior and subsequent to graduation, plays a significant role. The evaluation of law schools' contributions is related to opportunities for further training, particularly in the context of law firm practice. There is, however, a strong general view that law schools rather uniformly concentrate on some skills to the exclusion of others and that the former are not necessarily those that lawyers think are most important to the practice of law.     

Are Americans underinvesting in their children?

He has written widely on the Economics of health care. Among his books are The Economics of Physician and Patient Behavior; Economic Aspects of Health; How We Live;and The Health Economy.     

Problem boys in young adulthood: Teachers' ratings and twelve-year follow-up

In an earlier paper we reported that teachers' ratings of child guidance clinic children were associated with the children's global adjustment in young adulthood. Teachers' ratings, especially the peer relations measure, far surpassed other data sources in predicting general adult mental status. Other sources were developmental history, social history, family information, and psychiatric and psychological evaluations. The purposes of the present investigation were to evaluate mother-son reliability on adulthood information, and to determine whether teacher-rated behaviors of clinic boys predicted specific adult behaviors or were only globally related. Interviewed separately when sons were young adults, mothers and sons closely agreed on sons' adult behavior, with mothers somewhat underreporting sons' negative behaviors. The major finding was that one teacher-rated item,fails to get along with other children, was closely associated with a wide spectrum of adult behaviors. This was not due to the peer relations indicator serving as a global statistic reflecting general childhood impairment. It was also found that composite scores of childhood and adulthood bad conduct were significantly related to each other.Data collection was funded by NIMH Grant #MH-23441-02A1, and by the William T. Grant Foundation, Loretta K. Cass, Principal Investigator. The authors bear sole responsibility for the data analyses and interpretation presented here.Received Ph.D. from University of Oklahoma. Current research interests are in prediction of adult mental status from childhood indexes.Received Ph.D. from Washington University. Current research interests are in life history research, particularly alcoholism and schizophrenia.Received B. A. from Washington University.     

Goats or wolves? Private sector managers in the public sector

Public administration reforms have propagated the use of private sector management skills in the public sector, and an increased openness to managers with a private sector background. This has created a debate between those who think private sector experience improves public institutions by bringing core managerial values such as results orientation, efficiency, or openness to innovation, and those who argue that private sector experience can damage core public sector values, such as impartiality and equity. Despite the abundant anecdotal evidence, broad empirical evidence on the effects of private sector experience on public managers' values remains limited. Using data from a survey among central government top managers in 18 European countries, we show that public managers with private sector experience have, as expected, more core managerial values. Yet, unlike the conventional view, core public values do not suffer.     

The effects of new public management on the quality of public services

Have New Public Management (NPM) reforms in public organizations improved the quality, efficiency and effectiveness of the delivery of public policies? NPM reforms, understood as a style of organizing public services towards the efficiency and efficacy of outputs, have been controversial. They have been accused of importing practices and norms from the private sector that could collide with core public values, such as impartiality or equity. Yet, with few exceptions, we lack systematic empirical tests of the actual effects that NPM reforms have had on the delivery of public services. In this introductory article, we summarize a special issue devoted to cover this gap. And, overall, we find that neither the catastrophic nor the balsamic effects of NPM reforms are confirmed, but the success (or failure) depends on the administrative, political and policy context those reforms take place.