How Can India Catch Up to China? The Importance of Social Investment

After twenty years of economic reform and liberalization, is India now on pace to close the development gap with China? To assess this prospect, I analyzed multi-decade trends across six dimensions of human capabilities crucial to both individual and national development: 1) economic, 2) health, 3) infrastructure, 4) knowledge and technology, 5) public administration and 6) gender equality. I also conducted a focused comparison of two industrial sectors: software services and equipment manufacturing. The evidence shows that India is starting to catch up in several sectors, but overall China currently has a significant lead on most economic and technological indicators. Whereas most scholars studying this divergence have focused on shifting economic policies as the key to convergence, I argue that lingering development gaps may primarily be a result of India’s lower levels of social investment. Thus, if India is to catch up and surpass China, it will not only need supportive economic policies but must also concentrate heavily on expanding and improving rural infrastructure, education, and especially gender equality.     

Consequences of Undercover Operations in Law Enforcement: a Review of Challenges and Best Practices

Undercover (UC) assignments are among the most stressful faced by law enforcement officers. Undercover work features isolation from colleagues and family, the necessity to adopt behaviors and false personal characteristics frequently opposite to the given officer’s beliefs and personality, and negative attention from members of the public and even from fellow officers while in the undercover role. Because of all of these factors, undercover work is frequently associated with problems in mental and physical health, and with difficulties in post-assignment social adjustment with family, community, and department. Undercover work is inherently difficult to research, but as the present review indicates, there is significant overlap between the symptomatology typical of undercover work and of that typical of non-UC police work, normally an area of greater research accessibility. These issues will be addressed below. In addition, this review identifies current best psychological practices in dealing with the undercover officer client; these include reliable, supportive, frequent contact with officer clients, psychoeducation in the areas of coping mechanisms, reframing of undercover work in terms of the overall corpus of the given officer’s career, and mechanisms of reintegration of the undercover officer into the realm of more typical, and frequently more mundane, regular police duties.     

Reviews

Herbert J. Ellison, (ed.), Soviet Policy Toward Western Europe, Seattle and London: University of Washington Press. 1983. xvii + 322 pp. £25.00.

Edwina Moreton and Gerald Segal, (eds.), Soviet Strategy Toward Western Europe, London: George Allen & Unwin. 1984. 296 pp. £17.50.

Lawrence L. Whetten (ed.), The Present State of Communist Internationalism, Lexington & Toronto: Lexington Books, 1983, xi + 254 pp. £25.00.

Neil Harding (ed.), The State in Socialist Society, London: MacMillan, 1984, 316 pp. h/b £20.00. p/b £7.95.

Stephen White, John Gardner and George Schopflin, Communist Political Systems: an Introduction, Macmillan, 1982, viii + 293 pp. £15.00.

John Erickson, The Road to Berlin. Volume 2 of Stalin's War with Germany, London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1983. xiii + 877 pp. £20.00.

John B. Dunlop, The Faces of Contemporary Russian Nationalism, Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1983, 363 pp. £28.20.

Aryeh L. Unger, Constitutional Development in the USSR. A Guide to the Soviet Constitutions, London: Methuen, 1981. viii + 310 pp. £12.50.

Stefan Hedlund, Crisis in Soviet Agriculture, London and Sydney: Croom Helm and New York: St. Martin's Press, 1984, 228 pp. £17.95.

Vladimir Sobell, The Red Market: Industrial Co‐operation and Specialisation in Comecon, Gower Publishing Company, 1984, 265 pp. £16.50.

Raymond Hutchings, The Structural Origins of Soviet Industrial Expansion, London and Basingstoke, Macmillan: 1984, x + 242 pp. Index, £25.00.

Peter Blandon, Soviet Forest Industries, Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press. Distributed by Bowker Publishing Co., Erasmus House, Epping, Essex, UK 290 pp. £19.75.

Ronald Grigor Suny, Transcaucasia: Nationalism and Social Change. Essays in the history of Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia, University of Michigan: Ann Arbor, 1983, 349 pp. + xiv.

Sidney Bloch and Peter Reddaway, Soviet Psychiatric Abuse: The Shadow over World Psychiatry, London: Victor Gollancz Ltd. 1984, 288 pp. £10.95.

Thomas T. Hammond, Red Flag Over Afghanistan. The Communist Coup, the Soviet Invasion, and the Consequences, Boulder, Colorado; Westview Press, 1984, xvii + 261 pp. £9.75 pb., £23.00 hb.

Martin Crouch and Robert Porter (eds.), Understanding Soviet Politics through Literature. A book of readings, London: George Allen and Unwin, 1984, xi + 211 pp. h/b £15.00. p/b £6.95.

Bernard Chavance, Le système économique soviétique, Paris: Editions le Sycomore, 1983, 114pp. Price: 33F.

S. Brucan, The post‐Brezhnev era, New York: Praeger, 1983 126 pp. xiii + $21.95.     

MP Transparency,Communication Links and Social Media: A Comparative Assessment of 184 Parliamentary Websites

Parliamentary websites (PWs) can potentially enhance the quality of government by providing information and communication links that stimulate political awareness, deliberation and participation. This article focuses on two particular uses of PWs that can facilitate communication between constituents and their Members of Parliament: provision of MP contact and background information; and links to social media. Through a seminal empirical examination of all 184 functioning lower house and unicameral PWs around the world, this study found that although PWs in wealthy democracies generally provide more MP information, the majority of PWs are deficient in providing basic MP information to citizens and utilizing linkages to social media. By contrast, some non-democratic states and newly democratized countries, especially those with compulsory voting, display a relatively high level of MP transparency and social media connectivity.     

Tactical Means,Strategic Ends: Al Qaeda's Use of Denial and Deception

This analysis surveys Al Qaeda's employment of denial and deception (D&D) and shows that it uses D&D on tactical and operational levels in order to achieve strategic results. It defines denial and deception and explains how they relate to Al Qaeda, overviews Al Qaeda's changing network structure and seeks to summarize how Al Qaeda employs D&D throughout its operations. This paper is structured to show that denial and deception are institutionalized factors that manifest themselves through all aspects of bin Laden's organization and that the traditional conception of D&D—that nonstate actors are incapable of employing deception as an element of grand strategy—is incorrect.     

Book reviews

Liberal democratic governments may differ in both their kind and degree of democracy. However, the literature too often conflates this distinction, hindering our ability to understand what kinds of governing structures are more democratic. To clarify this issue, the article examines two prominent contemporary models of democracy: developmental liberal democracy (DLD) and protective liberal democracy (PLD). While the former takes a ‘thicker’ approach to governance than the latter, conventional wisdom holds that these systems differ only in kind rather than degree. The article tests this assumption through an empirical comparison of electoral, legislative, and information-regulating institutions in two representative cases: Sweden and the United States. The empirical findings lead us to the conclusion that developmental liberal democracies represent not only a different kind, but also a deeper degree of democracy than protective liberal democracies. The implications for democracy promotion appear substantial.