Reviews

Taras Hunczak, ed., Russian Imperialism. From Ivan the Great to the Revolution. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 974. 396 pp. $ 17.50.

Jaan Pennar, Ivan I. Bakalo, and George Z. P. Bereday, Modernization and Diversity in Soviet Education; with Special Reference to Nationality Groups. New York: Praeger, 1971. 400 pp. $ 20.00.

Ralph S. Clem, ed., The Soviet West: Interplay between Nationality and Social Organization. New York: Praeger, 1975. 161 pp. $ 15.00.

Jozo Tomaseyich, War and Revolution in Yugoslavia, 1941–1945. The Chetniks. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1975. 508 pp. $ 20.00.

William O. Oldson, The Historical and Nationalistic Thought of Nico‐lae Iorga. Boulder, Colorado: East European Quarterly. Distribution by Columbia University Press, New York, 1973. 135 pp. $ 10.00.

Bennett Kovrig, The Myth of Liberation; East Central Europe in U.S. Diplomacy and Politics Since 1941. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1973. 360 pp. $ 11.50.

Robert A. LeVine & Donald T. Campbell, Ethnocentrism: Theories of Conflict, Ethnic Attitudes and Group Behavior. New York: John Wiley, 1972. 310 pp. $ 12.00.     

Transfiguring the golem: technicism,human relations technology,and the human project

The original Minnowbrook perspective is described as part of a broader human relations technology movement in which the organization of human activity could be accomplished without the negative features of bureaucracy—routinization, rationalization, depersonalization, mechanization, computerization. But, the problem is really not bureaucracy, it is technicism—the technological imperative. The article contrasts masculine and feminine perspectives on organizations and the implications of this contrast for wars between nation-states, human and organizational communication, and human relations technology. In this technicism era, public administered institutions are the best bet to hold together the fabric of society.     

The ASEAN free trade area and the construction of a Southeast Asian economic community in East Asia

In October 2003, ASEAN leaders decided to establish an ASEAN Economic Community (AEC) by 2020. An AEC is presented by advocates as a logical step following the completion of the ASEAN Free Trade Area (AFTA) by ASEAN6 in 2003. Adopting a critical political economy approach inspired by the work of Mitchell Bernard and Robert W. Cox, this article argues that the decision to launch AFTA and an AEC are motivated primarily by the desire to transform Southeast Asia into an investment site and a production base for the world market within East Asia, in competition with China. AFTA and a future AEC are decisions taken within the structural context of an East Asian region characterised, among others, by the organisation of Japanese production and the developmental state.     

When the center can hold: The primacy of politics in shaping Russian democracy

Violations of rights, a weak Duma, political parties dominated by bureaucrats, and corrupt privatization are ordinarily taken as signs or even causes of the failure of democracy in Russia or at best as normal traits of electoral politics in a middle-income state. Yet all of these are natural consequences of introducing democracy in a country with the Russian electorate’s distinctive recent experience of a loss of a third of the state’s territory and half its population. In such a democracy only a centrist, not a liberal, strategy can block a return to authoritarianism, and such a strategy in Russia will subordinate rights to the task of privatization that a Duma weakened by ideological, demographic and geographic impediments to party development cannot conduct. Consequently what are taken as signs or causes of democratic failure in Russia are instead necessary effects of introducing democracy in Russia’s special circumstances.     

Implementing the convention on the prevention and punishment of crimes against internationally protected persons,including diplomatic agents

Abstract

The Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Crimes Against Internationally Protected Persons was negotiated by the Sixth Committee of the U.N. General Assembly on the basis of a draft by the International Law Commission. The Convention represents a major move against terrorism aimed at diplomats and others who have special status under international law. The United States Government was successful in obtaining fairly rapid approval of the text and also in obtaining the necessary U.S. legislative action to put it into effect. The United States has been hampered, however, by the fact that the two federal agencies, the F.B.I, and the U.S. Marshal's service normally do not engage in the type of activity required to protect persons covered by the Convention. Local U.S. authorities are overburdened with their normal duties and there is extremely limited federal authority to extend financial assistance to the states. More far‐reaching measures to counter the growing terrorist threat are needed.