Book reviews

B.J.C. McKercher, Transition of Power: Britain's Loss of Global Pre-eminence to the United States, 1930-45, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1999, xii + 403, £40, ISBN 0521 440 904

Joseph A. Maiolo, The Royal Navy and Nazi Germany, 1933-39: A Study in Appeasement and the Origins of the Second World War (London, MacMillan Press Ltd., 1998), xii + 259 pp. £?? ISBN 0-333-72007-5.

William I. Hitchcock, France Restored: Cold War Diplomacy and the Quest for Leadership in Europe, 1944-54, University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill, 1998, pp.291. £37.50 hardback, £14.50 paperback.

R. Holland, Britain and the Revolt in Cyprus 1954-1959 (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1998). 347 pp. £48 hb. ISBN 0-19-820538-4.

Michael L. Krenn, Black Diplomacy: African Americans and the State Department 1945-1969 (London: M.E. Sharpe, 1999). Viii + 223pp. £15.95 pb. ISBN 0-7656-0381-0

Jerrold L. Schecter, Russian Negotiating Behavior (Washington, DC: United States Institute of Peace Press, 1998). 225 pp. ISBN: 1-878379-78-X.     

Snap Judgment: Implicit Perceptions of a (Political) Court

Do people fundamentally perceive the Supreme Court as a political institution? Despite the central importance of this question to theories of public evaluations of the Court and its decisions, it remains largely unanswered. To this end, we develop a new, implicit measure of political perceptions of the Court. This new measure relies on a categorization task wherein respondents quickly associate political or non-political attributes with the Supreme Court relative to institutions that are high or low in politicization. We find that the public implicitly perceives the Court as less political than Congress (high politicization) and more political than traffic court (low politicization) and that this measure is distinct from self-reported (explicit) perceptions of politicization. Finally, we find that implicit perceptions have a distinct effect on predicting diffuse support for the court and specific support for one of two Court decisions.     

‘Give us peace’: Gladys Avery Tillett and the search for women's political activism in the United States, 1945–1950

As previously demonstrated by scholars, the social justice feminism movement in the United States accomplished its two central goals by the time of that nation's official involvement in World War II. This article examines the subsequent development of former social justice feminists' search for political activism after World War II through the activities of one of the social movement's later, significant leaders, Gladys Avery Tillett, particularly in her participation in the controversial and bitter campaign of North Carolina United States Senator Frank Porter Graham to retain his seat in the 1950 Democratic party primary.     

China and the Regional Counter-Terrorism Structure: An Organizational Analysis

China is a member of the Regional Counter-Terrorism Structure (RCTS), the security organ of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO). Given China’s issues with Uighur separatists, close relationship with other SCO members such as Russia, and bankrolling of expanded SCO projects in other areas, one might expect RCTS to be a hub of Chinese-backed security cooperation. Yet it is not so. RCTS has a tiny staff and budget, and lacks the bureaucratic muscle to actually implement most of its broad security mandate. The author argues that this is a consequence of China’s reticence and/or inability to contribute to international security at a level commensurate with its ballooning capabilities.