Reviews

Thomas Remington (ed.), Parliaments in Transition. The New Legislative Politics in the Former USSR and Eastern Europe. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1994, vii + 246pp.

Carlos Taibo, La disolución de la URSS. Barcelona: Ronsel, 1994, xii + 376 pp., 1900 pesetas.

Miroslav Shkandrij, Modernists, Marxists and the Nation. The Ukrainian Literary Discussion of the 1920s. Edmonton: Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies Press, University of Alberta, 1992, xii + 265 pp.

Don C. Rawson, Russian Rightists and the Revolution of 1905. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995, xvi + 286 pp., £40.00 h/b, £19.95 p/b.

Mary Schaeffer Conroy, In Health and in Sickness: Pharmacy, Pharmacists and the Pharmaceutical Industry in Late Imperial, Early Soviet Russia. New York: East European Monographs, Boulder, distributed by Columbia University Press, 1994, viii + 703 pp., h/b, No price.

William Millinship, Frontline: Women of the New Russia. London: Methuen, 1993, xxi + 297 pp., £9.99 p/b.

Sebastian Siebel‐Achenbach, Lower Silesia from Nazi Germany to Communist Poland, 1942–1949. London and Basingstoke: The Macmillan Press Ltd, 1994, vii + 381 pp., £47.50.

John Erickson & David Dilks (eds), Barbarossa. The Axis and the Allies. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1994, xii + 287 pp., £25.00

Yuri Pavlov, Soviet‐Cuban Alliance; 1959–1991. New Brunswick and London: Transaction Publishers, 1994, iv + 272 pp., $18.95.

Joshua Fogel, The Cultural Dimension of Sino‐Japanese Relations: Essays on the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries. Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 1995, 216 pp., £40.00 h/b, £16.00 p/b     

Negotiating History for Reconciliation: A Comparative Evaluation of the Baltic Presidential Commissions

This article discusses the presidential historical commissions of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania that were established in 1998 to research the crimes of the Nazi and Soviet totalitarian regimes and to overcome interpretive disputes that had begun to overshadow the new democracies' politics. Conceptually framed as a state tool of historical conflict resolution and reconciliation, the Baltic commissions' structure, operative work and results all reveal many of the pitfalls, but also the opportunities of such official bodies of historical truth-seeking. The article concludes that even though all three commissions had a clear reconciliatory aim, their operative processes and final output differed remarkably. Their contribution to actual reconciliation was also very limited.     

The impact of real estate agents on house prices near environmental disamenities

The purpose of this paper is to determine the impact of real estate agents on the price of houses that are located close to an environmental disamenity. Our main hypothesis is that real estate agents obtain higher prices than those theoretically expected when the houses are located closer to an environmental disamenity. We attribute this result to agents' ability to effectively match potential buyers to house sellers as well as their influence on bargaining power. Estimates from a sample selection corrected hedonic model suggest that the percentage increase in the house price obtained by a real estate agent is greater than the commission rate.     

Historical change and the administrative state: An analysis of the theoretical foundations of public administration

This article offers an explanation for the theoretical underdevelopment of Public Administration. It argues that Public Administration studies the relations among elements of the administrative state and between the administrative state and its environment dissociated from time. The ahistorical orientation of the discipline has drastically reduced its capacity for theory building.     

Temporal Influences of Family Structure and Family Risk Factors on Drug Use Initiation in a Multiethnic Sample of Adolescent Boys

This study examines the effects of family structure and family environments on the initiation of illicit drug use among a sample of U.S.- and foreign-born Hispanic/Latino, African American, and White non-Hispanic adolescent boys (N = 3413). Bivariate and multivariate analyses with longitudinal data, three years, were used to assess transitional/temporal influences of family variables on the initiation of illicit drug use. Findings revealed large differences in family structure among the three race/ethnic groups. African American adolescents report the lowest incidence of illicit drug use initiation, and the weakest effects of family structure and environment on substance use. Cumulative effects of family risk factors were strongly associated with increased probabilities of illicit drug use initiation, but there were temporal as well as race/ethnic variations on these effects. Deteriorating changes in family environments were stronger predictors of the initiation of drug use among Hispanic immigrants than nonimmigrants, and family socioeconomic status was a predictor for immigrant Hispanics only. The relationship between family structure and drug use initiation varied in the context of temporal indicators of family environments, and the accumulation of family risk factors was a stronger predictor of illicit drug initiation than family structure.     

Is Corruption Really Bad for Inequality? Evidence from Latin America

This article presents new evidence on the relationship between corruption and income inequality. Using a panel data methodology, we find that lower corruption is associated with higher income inequality in Latin America. This result is in contrast to other empirical studies but it makes sense in Latin America for a number of reasons. The finding of an inverse relationship between inequality and corruption suggests that institutional reform policies by themselves may be misguided.