Reviews

Women writing in India

Susie Tharu and K. Lalita (eds), Women Writing in India — 600 B. C. to the Present; Volume 1: 600 B. C. to the Early Twentieth Century (The Feminist Press, City University of New York) New York, 1991.

Poststructuralism and politics

Judith Butler, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (Routledge) New York and London, 1990; Rosalyn Diprose and Robyn Ferrell (eds), Cartographies: Poststructuralism and the Mapping of Bodies and Spaces (Allen and Unwin) Sydney, 1991; Nancy Fraser, Unruly Practices: Power, Discourse and Gender in Contemporary Social Theory (University of Minnesota Press) Minneapolis, 1989.

Postponed lives, secondary data and pushing our own barrow

Laura S. Brown and Esther D. Rothblum (eds), Fat Oppression and Psychotherapy: A Feminist Perspective (Haworth Press) New York, 1989; Helen Roberts (ed.), Women's Health Counts (Routledge) London, 1990; Health Sharing Women, The Health Sharing Reader: Women Speak about Health (Pandora) Sydney, 1990.

Primatology and feminism

Donna Haraway, Primate Visions (Routledge) New York, 1989, distributed by the Law Book Company Limited.

Domestic violence

Heather McGregor and Andrew Hopkins, Working for Change: The Movement Against Domestic Violence (Allen and Unwin) Sydney, 1991; Jan Horsfall, The Presence of the Past: Male Violence in the Family (Allen and Unwin) Sydney, 1991.

Feminist strategies and the state

Clare Burton, The Promise and the Price (Allen and Unwin) Sydney, 1991; Hester Eisenstein, Gender Shock (Allen and Unwin) Sydney, 1991; Gretchen Poiner and Sue Wills, The Gifthorse (Allen and Unwin) Sydney, 1991; Margaret Thornton, The Liberal Promise (Oxford University Press) Oxford, 1990.     

Public Management and Educational Performance: The Impact of Managerial Networking

Policies are implemented in complex networks of organizations and target populations. Effective action often requires managers to deal with an array of actors to procure resources, build support, coproduce results, and overcome obstacles to implementation. Few large-n studies have examined the crucial role that networks and network management can play in the execution of public policy. This study begins to fill this gap by analyzing performance over a five-year period in more than 500 U.S. school districts using a nonlinear, interactive, contingent model of management previously developed by the authors. The core idea is that management matters in policy implementation, but its impact is often nonlinear. One way that public managers can make a difference is by leveraging resources and buffering constraints in the program context. This investigation finds empirical support for key elements of the network-management portion of the model. Implications for public management are sketched.     

Desperately Seeking Selznick: Cooptation and the Dark Side of Public Management in Networks

Most literature on public-sector networks focuses on how to build and manage systems and ignores the political problems that networks can create for organizations. This article argues that individual network nodes can work to bias the organization's actions in ways that benefit the organization's more advantaged clientele. The argument is supported by an analysis of performance data from 500 organizations over a five-year period. A classic theoretical point is supported in a systematic empirical investigation. While networks can greatly benefit the organization, they have a dark side that managers and scholars need to consider more seriously.     

Adolescent Depressed Mood in a Multiethnic Sample

This research assessed whether there is an impact of race-ethnicity on depressed mood among adolescents, independent of socioeconomic status, whether gender differences in depressed mood are apparent within all race-ethnicity subgroups, and whether pubertal development influences depressed mood in a similar manner within gender and race-ethnicity subgroups. A three-stage, area probability sampling frame was utilized to select adolescents, ages 12–17 years, for an in-person interview. Depressed mood was assessed by the Children's Depression Inventory. Compared to Whites, African Americans, or Asian Americans, Latinos reported more symptoms of depressed mood, a finding that was independent of socioeconomic status. Advancing puberty was associated with depressed mood only among females, but the timing of pubertal changes, relative to ones peers, was related to depressed mood among both males and females, and among Latinos.     

Anchoring political preferences: The structural bases of stable electoral decisions and political attitudes in Britain

Abstract. The paper applies a structural perspective to the analysis of political preferences. Examining two British surveys, the 1987 cross–section of the electorate and a panel survey that covers the 1983 and 1987 elections, the research explores the bases of persistent voting for the same party, location on left–right scales, and the probability of holding the same policy views on a host of different issues over time. A set of structural variables rests at the heart of the paper's theory: discussion networks, patterns of interactions with members of political parties, social class networks, and location in the social structure. Several hypotheses guide the analysis: The effects of the structural variables on the probability of casting a ballot for the same political party in any one election and in adjacent elections will remain, even after controlling for party identification; political party socialization; location on left–right scales; positions taken on any and all political issues; age, and past levels of electoral stability. The effects of structural variables on left–right position will remain, even after controlling for locations on alternative left–right scales. Finally, reinforcing attitudinal context provides the only consistent determinant of stable policy positions, after controlling for a host of alternative explanations including level of education; age; interest in politics, and a general propensity to offer stable answers to political questions.     

Voter Disenfranchisement and Policy toward Election Reforms

How did poverty, race, population density, and other demographic characteristics affect disenfranchisement in the 2004 presidential election? I argue that there are two types of disenfranchisement: partisan disenfranchisement, which targets Democrats, and structural disenfranchisement, which targets members of low‐status groups. Drawing demographic data from the United States census in 2000, and voting data from the secretaries of state websites, I use a negative binomial regression to correlate these variables with the incidence of voter disenfranchisement as collected by the Election Incident Reporting System, for the three “swing” states of Florida, Ohio, and Pennsylvania, with the “safe” states of California and Texas as controls. The results of this analysis indicate that disenfranchisement increases with population density, Black population, Democratic loyalty, and as the margin of victory decreases. Income and education also correlate with an increase in reported incidents of disenfranchisement, but that likely reflects the failings of self‐report data.     

Risk management for targeting customs controls in developing countries: a risky venture for revenue performance?

Customs authorities in developing countries are often reluctant to forget systematic inspections for fear of risking revenue loss. Such physical inspections however, impede rather than facilitate trade. Control selectivity is therefore a key issue in customs administration reform. This paper shows how a sophisticated risk management method can facilitate trade by automatically and rationally selecting transactions, with the end result of actually enhancing revenue performance. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.