The Gambling Act 2005: Regulatory Containment and Market Control

The Act marks a fundamental shift from legislative to market control of gambling. While plans for Las Vegas style casinos and internet gambling sites in Britain have suffered setbacks, restrictions on the availability, advertising and stimulation of demand for gambling, enshrined in the Gaming Act 1968, have been abandoned. In their place, a new regulatory body, the Gambling Commission, has been established to take primary responsibility for ensuring that three licensing objectives are promoted. These objectives are the prevention of crime and disorder, the conduct of gambling in a fair and open way and the protection of children and the vulnerable. The Commission has been given strong and wide ranging powers to regulate gambling, but can the safeguards proposed meet the challenge presented by a gambling industry released from restraints?     

Reviews

Terry Cox and Gary Littlejohn, eds., Kritsman and the Agrarian Marxists. (Library of Peasant Studies, No. 7), London: Frank Cass & Co. Ltd., 1984, 149 pp., £18.50.

S. G. Wheatcroft and R. W. Davies eds., Materials for a balance of the Soviet national economy 1928–1930 (with foreword by Richard Stone). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985, xxiv + 467 pp., £35.00, $59.50.

I. Birman, Ekonomika nedostach. New York: Chalidze Publications, 1983, 470 pp.

Richard F. Staar, USSR Foreign Policies After Detente. Stanford, Ca: Hoover Institution Press, 1985, xxvii + 300 pp., h/b $26.95, p/b $10.95.

John J. Maresca, To Helsinki: The Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe 1973–1975. Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Press, 1985, xiii + 292 pp., £47.50.

Mark V. Kauppi and R. Craig Nation eds., The Soviet Union and the Middle East in the 1980s. Lexington, Mass, and Toronto: Lexington Books, D.C. Heath and Company, 1983, ix + 293 pp., £25.00.

Jonathan Haslam, The Soviet Union and the Struggle for Collective Security in Europe, 1933–1939. New York: St. Martin's, 1984, xii + 310 pp., $29.95.

Alfred L. Monks, Soviet Military Doctrine: 1960 to the Present. New York: Irvington Publishers, 1985, xii + 351 pp., $34.50.

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Condoleezza Rice, The Soviet Union and the Czechoslovak Army, 1948–1983: Uncertain Allegiance. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1984, xiv + 303 pp. Tables. £40.40.

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Eric P. Hoffmann and Robbin F. Laird, Technocratic Socialism: the Soviet Union in the Advanced Industrial Era. Durham: Duke University Press, 1985, viii + 228 pp. h/b £37.50, p/b £12.50.

Robert Cassen ed., Soviet Interests in the Third World. London: Sage Publications, 1985, xi + 329 pp., h/b £27.50, p/b £10.50.

Václav Havel et al., The Power of the Powerless: Citizens Against the State in Central‐Eastern Europe, Ed. John Keane, Introduction by Steven Lukes. London, Melbourne, Sydney, Auckland, Johannesburg: Hutchinson, 1985, 228 pp., £16.95.

Michael M. Boll, Cold War in the Balkans: American Foreign Policy and the Emergence of Communist Bulgaria, 1943–1947. Lexington, Ky.: The University Press of Kentucky, 1984, ix + 250 pp., £27.50.

Edward R. Girardet, Afghanistan: The Soviet War. London: Croom Helm, 1985, 259 pp., £17.95.

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David W. Lovell, Trotsky's Analysis of Soviet Bureaucratization. London: Croom Helm, 1985, ix + 82 pp., £7.95.

Katerina Clark and Michael Holquist, Mikhail Bakhtin. Cambridge, Mass, and London: Harvard University Press, 1984, xi + 398 pp., £19.95.

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Mieczyslaw F. Rakowski, Ein schwieriger Dialog. Aufzeichnungen zu Ereignissen in Polen 1981–1984. Mit einem Vorwort von Peter Bender. Econ Verlag. Düsseldorf‐Wien 1985. 269 pp. Index. DM. 38,00.

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Joan de Bardeleben, The Environment and Marxism‐Leninism: The Soviet and East German Experience. Boulder and London: Westview Press, 1985, xi + 338 pp., no price quoted.

John R. Lampe, The Bulgarian Economy in the Twentieth Century. London: Croom Helm, 1986 x + 245 pp., £25.00.

Pedro Ramet, Nationalism and Federalism in Yugoslavia, 1963–1983. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1984, xviii + 299 pp., $27.50.

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Jiri Hochman, The Soviet Union and the Failure of Collective Security, 1934–1938. Cornell Studies in Security Affairs. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1984. 253 pp. $32.95.     

Sanctioned violence: development and the persecution of women as witches in south Bihar

In South Bihar, India, socially sanctioned witch-hunting and persecution led to the deaths of 15 women in 1994 and 24 women and children in 1994. This article presents case studies to suggest that the underlying causes of this behavior are not superstition and illiteracy but are efforts to maintain women's inferior status by enforcing female economic subjugation, sexual exploitation, and the persecution of widows and independent, vocal women. In these cases, superstitious beliefs were exploited by community members with ulterior motives who compensated village witch doctors for collaborating with any accusation made against a local woman. After an introduction and presentation of the issues, the article describes the social and economic context and presents four case studies of women accused of witchcraft. The women involved were either forced to consume human excreta and then banished; raped and left for dead when five other family members were murdered, including a year-old baby; or protected through the intervention of a nongovernmental organization or a district welfare officer. The article then discusses the implications of this phenomenon for development work through a look at the power of social sanction, the role of witch doctors, the gender dimension, the power of the village headmen and the traditional administration system, and the larger motives behind the behavior. The article ends by suggesting interventions such as focusing on eliminating atrocities towards women, forming support groups, sensitizing officials, incorporating gender sensitivity in development efforts, and increasing access to health and education.     

Noam Chomsky,neoliberalism, and the new war on Iraq

This article was originally presented as an address on May 31, 2003, when Ms. Roy received the 2003 Noam Chomsky Award at the annual conference of the Justice Studies Association in Albany, New York.     

Natural Resource Production and the Risk of Conflict Recurrence

Do different types of natural resources have varying impacts on the risk of conflict recurrence? Using a classification of high-value natural resources according to their lootability and obstructability, this article develops a framework bridging research on natural resources and conflict recurrence. I find evidence for the destabilizing character of easily lootable resources that is coherent across different conflict data. Non-lootable resources show little robust effects at first sight; but when introducing a measure of obstructability, the analysis uncovers varying effects of obstructable and non-obstructable resources that interact with the mode of conflict termination. Overall, the results underline the importance of attending to the lootability and obstructability dimension of natural resources when researching post-conflict risks in resource endowed states.