Bolt from the Blue or Avoidable Failure? Revisiting September 11 and the Origins of Strategic Surprise

Drawing on the strategic surprise, warning-response, and foreign policy literature, this article argues that the September 11 terror attacks should be regarded as a strategic surprise and examines a number of key factors that contributed to vulnerability and inhibited vigilance. Three broad explanatory "cuts" derived from the literature—psychological, bureau-organizational, and agenda-political—are deployed to sift through the rapidly expanding empirical record in an effort to shed light on the processes and contextual factors that left the United States vulnerable to the attacks. The article aims to improve our understanding of generic processes and practices that enhance or detract from vulnerability and vigilance.     

Reviews

Vojtech Mastny, Russia's Road to the Cold War: Diplomacy, Warfare, and the Politics of Communism, 1941–1945. New York: Columbia University Press, 1979. xix + 409 pp. $16.95.

Hugh Seton‐Watson, The Imperialist Revolutionaries: Trends in World Communism in the 1960s and 1970s. Stanford, California: Hoover Institution Press, 1979. x + 157 pp. $6.95.

Egbert Jahn (ed.), Soviet Foreign Policy: Its Social and Economic Conditions. London: Allison and Busby, 1978. 160 pp. £6.50.

Stephen White, Political Culture and Soviet Politics, London: Macmillan, 1979. xi + 234 pp. £10.00 and £4.95.

Donald R. Kelley (ed.) Soviet Politics in the Brezhnev Era, New York: Praeger Publishers, 1980, vii + 269 pp. £14.25.

Morton Kaplan (ed.), The Many Faces of Communism, New York: The Free Press, 1978. x + 366 pp. $14.95.

David H. Howard, The Disequilibrium Model in a Controlled Economy, Farnborough: Lexington Books, 1980. x + 112 pp. £9.50/$20.50.

Felicity Ann O'Dell, Socialisation through children's literature: The Soviet example, Cambridge: Cambride University Press, 1978, x + 277 pp. £14.00.

Martin McCauley, Marxism‐Leninism in the German Democratic Republic. The Socialist Unity Party (SED), London: Macmillan, 1979. xix + 267 pp. £12.00.

R. W. Makepeace, Marxist Ideology and Soviet Criminal Law, Croom Helm, Barnes & Noble, 1980. 319 pp. £13.95.

Jan Tomasz Gross, Polish Society under German Occupation: The General‐gouvernement, 1939–1944, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1979. xviii + 343 pp. £11.00     

Delaying Justice(s): A Duration Analysis of Supreme Court Confirmations

Presidents traditionally have had great success when nominating justices to the Supreme Court, with confirmation being the norm and rejection being the rare exception. While the confirmation process usually ends with the nominee taking a seat on the Court, however, there is a great deal of variance in the amount of time it takes the Senate to act. To derive a theoretical explanation of this underlying dynamic in the confirmation process, we draw on a spatial model of presidential nominations to the Court. We then employ a hazard model to test this explanation, using data on all Supreme Court nominations and confirmations since the end of the Civil War. Our primary finding is that the duration of the confirmation process increases as the ideological distance between the president and the Senate increases. We also find evidence that suggests that the duration increases for critical nominees and chief justices and decreases for older nominees, current and previous senators, and nominees with prior experience on state and federal district courts .     

A Prospective Study of Mexican American Adolescents’ Academic Success: Considering Family and Individual Factors

Mexican American youth are at greater risk of school failure than their peers. To identify factors that may contribute to academic success in this population, this study examined the prospective relationships from 5th grade to 7th grade of family (i.e., human capital [a parent with at least a high school education], residential stability, academically and occupationally positive family role models, and family structure) and individual characteristics (i.e., externalizing symptoms, bilingualism, gender, and immigrant status) to the academic performance of 749 Mexican American early adolescents (average age = 10.4 years and 48.7% were girls in 5th grade) from economically and culturally diverse families as these youth made the transition to junior high school. Results indicated that while controlling for prior academic performance, human capital and positive family role models assessed when adolescents were in 5th grade positively related to academic performance in 7th grade. Further, being a girl also was related to greater 7th grade academic success, whereas externalizing symptoms were negatively related to 7th grade academic performance. No other variables in the model were significantly and prospectively related to 7th grade academic performance. Implications for future research and interventions are discussed.     

Protective Predictors of Alcohol Use Trajectories Among Canadian Aboriginal Youth

Some Aboriginal youth are at disproportionate risk of using substances and developing abuse and dependence disorders. However, not all Aboriginal youth misuse substances and limited research has examined the protective factors conferring against substance use among these youth. The present study aimed to identify protective factors related to the alcohol use trajectories from early adolescence to emerging adulthood among off-reserve Canadian Aboriginal youth. Participants (N = 330; 50.3% male) aged 12–23 were selected from cycles 2–7 of Statistics Canada’s NLSCY. Multilevel modeling was employed to identify protective factors for two constructs of alcohol use. Participation in weekly activities and optimism were found to be protective for both the frequency of alcohol use and heavy drinking trajectories. Attendance of religious services was also found to be protective for heavy drinking behaviors. In contrast, positive peer relationships were a risk factor for frequency of alcohol use, but not heavy drinking. The results provide preliminary evidence of important developmental factors to integrate into substance use intervention programs targeting Aboriginal youth.     

cultivating the edge: an ethnography of first-generation women farmers in the American Midwest

In the US, an emergent cultural icon of resistant agriculture, the agrarian heroine, attests to growing popular interest in first-generation women farmers. Drawing on practice theory, historical geographical materialism, intersubjective ethnography and feminist scholarship, this ethnography focusses on three first-generation women farmers growing organic vegetable crops for the Chicago market, with critical attention to the body, the land and their uses. By applying permaculture’s theory of ‘the edge’ anthropologically, this study explores the work these women do to cultivate relational spaces that promote fluidity, diversity and solidarity in opposition to industrial agriculture and the homogenising forces of globalisation. The portraits that emerge problematise popular representations of first-generation women farmers.