Book reviews

Caspian Gas. Ottar Skagen. London: Royal Institute of International Affairs, 1997, xii, 95 pp, £12.50

Ethnic Conflict in the Post‐Soviet World: Case Studies and Analysis. Leokadia Drobizheva, Rose Gottemoeller, Catherine McArdle Kelleher, Lee Walker (editors). Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 1996, xv, 366 pp, $59.95 hardback, $24.95 paperback

Contested Borders in the Caucasus. Bruno Coppieters (editor). Brussels: VUB University Press, 1996, 204 pp

The Republic of Armenia, From London to Sevres to London, February‐August 1920, Vol. III. Richard G. Hovannisian. Berkeley/Los Angeles/London: University of California Press, 1996, xx + 534, preface, illus, notes, maps, glossary, biblio, index, hardcover, £35

The Republic of Armenia, Between Crescent and Sickle: Partition and Sovietization, Vol. IV. Richard G. Hovannisian Berkeley/Los Angeles/London: University of California Press, 1996, xii + 496, illus, notes, maps, glossary, biblio, index, hardcover, £35

Historical Dictionary of Afghanistan, Second edition. Ludwig W. Adamec. Lanham, MD, USA and London, UK: The Scarecrow Press, 1997, 499 pp, chronology, bibliography, $58 hardcover

State and Tribe in Nineteenth‐Century Afghanistan. The Reign of Amir Dost Muhammad Khan (1826–1863), Christine Noelle, Curzon Press, Richmond, Surrey, 1997, 439 pp

The Hazaras of Afghanistan: An Historical, Cultural, Economic and Political Study, Sayed Askar Mousavi, Richmond, Surrey: Curzon Press, 1995, 270 pp. ISBN 0–7007–630–5

A History of Ottoman Architecture. Geoffrey Goodwin. London: Thames & Hudson, 1997, 511 pp, illus, plans, biblio, glossary, index, £27.50

Tribal Rugs. Treasures of the Black Tent. Brian W. MacDonald. >Woodbridge, Suffolk: Antique Collectors’ Club, 302 pp, illus, index, £35

Jewish Carpets. A History and Guide. Anton Felton. Woodbridge, Suffolk: The Antique Collectors Club, 1997, 199 pp, illus, biblio, index, £35

Cobalt and Lustre. The First Centuries of Islamic Pottery, Emst Grube, London and Oxford: The Nour Foundation in association with Azimuth Editions and Oxford University Press, 1996, 348 pp, illus, biblio, index, £135

China. The Silk Routes. Peter Neville‐Hadley. London and Connecticut: Cadogan Books, UK, and The Globe Pequot Press, USA, 1997, 544 pp, maps, index, £15.99/$21.95, paperback     

Nonintellectual correlates of satisfaction with acceleration: A longitudinal study

Two studies were conducted to investigate the relationship between several nonintellectual personal attributes and satisfaction with acceleration among intellectually gifted students. First, two cohorts of gifted students (top 1% in ability and separated in age by five years) who had utilized acceleration during the course of their education were surveyed at age 18 and again at age 23. Overall, no strong relationships were found between satisfaction with acceleration and the nonintellectual factors at either age. Second, similar analyses were conducted for a subgroup of subjects, using the Adjective Check List and the Study of Values. Again, few significant correlations were found; the correlations that were statistically significant were small. These findings indicate that some non-intellectual personal attributes, which are often assumed important to the selection of students for acceleration or to the evaluation of participants in accelerative programs, actually may not be appropriate for these purposes.This research was supported by grants to Camilla Benbow from the National Science Foundation (MDR-8651737 and MDR-8855625) and an anonymous service agency. Further support was provided by scholarships to Mary Ann Swiatek from Oberlin College and from the Kappa Kappa Gamma Fraternity.Received M.S. in counseling psychology from Iowa State University. Research interests include social and emotional aspects of giftedness, and social coping among gifted adolescents.Received Ed.D. in educational psychology from the Johns Hopkins University. Research focuses upon intellectual talent.     

Police research technology: Functional relations between juvenile citations and criminal offenses

In a multiple-reversal time-series design, additional plainclothes youth guidance officers were assigned to patrol and to issue juvenile warning citations in one of two target areas during school hours on weekdays. The presence and activity of these officers resulted in modest but consistent reductions in the number of criminal incidents reported in the target area. An untreated control area showed no consistent changes in the rates of criminal incidents. Issuance of juvenile citations appears to be a modestly effective crime control technology which may be implemented in a cost-efficient manner.     

Public administrators and policy legitimization: Policy analysis,politics and power

This article discusses the factors public administration faculty should incorporate into the curriculum in order to equip students to engage in the policy legitimization process. In order to produce leaders, public administration programs should emphasize the nature of the political system, an understanding of the legitimacy of subgovernments, the importance of coalition building and the psychological factors associated with policy choices.

Integration of policy analysis into the public administration curriculum requires that students be equipped with an in-depth understanding of both the political environment and the political process. This is true because public administrators are deeply involved in the stages of policy development, adoption, and implementation; activities which reach beyond the narrow confines of program management and into the realm of politics. Consequently, public administrators serve in a variety of capacities: as policy advocates, program champions, or as defenders of client interests. It is in these roles that public administrators move into the political arena. Policy analysis activities provide the discipline with the opportunity to move beyond an emphasis on a narrow concern with simply “managing” government and into the realm of policy choice, policy advocacy, political power and the exercise of leadership.

Public administration as a discipline, and teaching faculty in particular, face the challenge of increasing the relevance of the master's degree to policy leadership. Astrid Merget, past president of the National Association of Schools of Public Affairs and Administration, expressed this need for increased emphasis on policy leadership training quite eloquently in 1991:

“Our vision of the holder of a master's degree in our field is that of a leader, not merely a manager or an analyst. But we have not been marketing that vision.”⁽¹⁾

Merget attributes partial responsibility for the low public esteem of government service to the attitudes, teaching, and research activities of public administration faculty who have failed to link the “lofty” activities of government (environmental protection, health care, the promotion of citizen equality) with public administration. Accordingly, the academic standard of “neutrality” governing teaching and research acts as an obstacle to teaching the fundamentals of the goals of public policy. This professional commitment to neutrality places an emphasis on administrative efficiency at the expense of policy advocacy. The need, according to Merget, is to reestablish the linkage between policy formulation and policy management. Such a teaching strategy will enhance the purposefulness of public administration as a career. Failure to do so will relegate public administration programs to the continued production of governmental managers, not administrative leaders.

The integration of policy analysis into the public administration curriculum affords the discipline with the opportunity to focus on policy leadership and escape the limitation associated with an emphasis on program management. Teaching policy analysis skills cannot, and should not, be divorced from the study of politics and the exercise of political power. This is true because politics involves the struggle over the allocation of resources, and public policy is a manifestation of the outcome of that political struggle. Public policy choices reflect, to some degree, the political power of the “winners” and the relative lack of power by “losers.” The study of public policy involves the study of conflict and the exercise of power.

Teaching public administration students about the exercise of power cannot be limited to a discussion of partisan political activities. Public administrators serve in an environment steeped in the exercise of partisan and bureaucratic power.⁽²⁾ It is practitioners of public administration who formulate, modify and implement public policy choices. Such bureaucratic activity is appropriate, provided that it is legitimated by the political system. Legitimacy can be provided to public administrators only by political institutions through the political process.

Teaching public administration students about policy analysis and policy advocacy necessitates an understanding of the complexities associated with the concepts of policy legitimacy and policy legitimization.     

The Engagement Pendulum: Australia’s Alternating Approach to Irregular Migration

This paper examines the Australian federal government’s use of regional engagement to stop irregular migration. It shows that Australia’s policy elites have long debated whether regional cooperation is useful or necessary for stopping irregular migration. The debate among policy elites bears little relationship to the academic and ideological controversy over Australia’s “engagement” with Asia. Rather, this controversy is defined by pragmatism and operates akin to a pendulum, with an action–reaction cycle occurring where governments seek alternative approaches to what they perceive as the failures of their predecessors. This paper shows that the governments who have championed Asian engagement have been no more willing to seek a regional approach to irregular migration than those who seem to downplay engagement. Differing perspectives on regional cooperation is an important and largely under-examined aspect of Australia’s broader national debate about irregular migration. Given the significance of this issue to Australian politics, it also serves as an important case study in the wider context of Australia’s relationship with and attitudes towards the Asia-Pacific.     

The Role of Philanthropy in Local Government Finance

Nonprofit organizations thrive on the altruism of citizens, and actively court donors for major gifts. Yet individual gifts to government agencies are often unexpected, sporadic, and initiated by the donor. This article introduces the phenomenon of private giving to local governments and tests hypotheses regarding the expected forms of giving to public agencies. Results indicate that philanthropy is and will likely remain a minor and highly variable source of revenue, making it an ill‐suited replacement for broad‐based tax revenue. However, deliberate government efforts to provide a suitable environment for private donations appear to succeed in attracting more gifts per capita.     

Irish Potatoes and British Politics: Interests, Ideology, Heresthetic and the Repeal of the Corn Laws

The Repeal of the Corn Laws in 1846 remains one of the most fascinating events in the history of political economy. A parliament securely controlled by the party of agriculture, which was the main beneficiary of protection, abolished protection. Explanations have included the hegemony of Manchester School economics; class conflict; the effectiveness of the Anti-Corn Law League; the personality of Sir Robert Peel; and evangelical religion. We aim to see why the standard ideas from political economy (Chicago and/or Virginia) seem to fit our case so poorly. We use the Aydelotte dataset on rollcalls in the Parliament of 1841–7, augmented from primary sources, and the letters and memoranda of the principal actors.