Book reviews

The Nationalities Question in the Post‐Soviet States Graham Smith (editor) New York and London: Longman Group, 1996, xiv + 524 pp. $21.00 pb (second edition)

Regional Power Rivalries in the New Eurasia: Russia, Turkey and Iran Alvin Z. Rubinstein and Oles M. Smolansky (editors) New York: M. E. Sharpe, Inc., 1995, xii 4‐ 290 pp, pb

Kochevaia tsivilizatsiia kazakhov: osnovy zhiznedeiatel'nosti nomadnogo obshchestva (Nomad civilisation of the Kazaks: bases of the life activity of a nomad society) Nurbulat Masanov Almaty: Sotsivest. 1995

Atlas Geopolitique Informatique du Caucase Nicolas Beroutchachvili and Jean Radvanyi (editors) Paris: Observatoire des Etats Post‐Sovietiques (INALCO) 1996

Aurel Stein. Pioneer of the Silk Road Annabel Walker London: John Murray, 1995, 393 pp, illus., £25

Empire's Edge. Travels in South‐Eastern Europe, Turkey and Central Asia Scott Malcomson London: Faber and Faber, 256 pp, £8.99, pb

Frontiers of Heaven. A Journey Beyond the Great Wall Stanley Stewart London: John Murray, 1995, 223 pp, illus, £16.99

Art and Nationalism in Colonial India 1850–1922, Occidental Orientations Partha Mitter Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994, 475 pp, illus, index, £60     

Development of the lost pleasure of life scale

The concept of hedonic damages for loss of pleasure of life has been developed by forensic cases up to and includingMolzof v. United States (1992). One instrument available for assessment in this area, the Lost Pleasure of Life (LPL) scale, was refined through development of a rating matrix consisting of 37 behavioral anchors which experts had categorized into progressive levels of loss. Using brief instructions and case examples, mental health clinicians rated 15 written vignettes for loss of pleasure of life resulting from physical injuries. Results indicated moderate reliability (ICCR=.65 to .70) and moderately high correlation (r.86) between rank orderings of the case vignettes based on LPL ratings given by the clinicians and on financial awards for each case given by undergraduate students.This article is based on the first author's dissertation for which the second author served as chair.     

Book reviews

George Ritzer, The McDonaldisation Thesis (Sage, London, 1998), 212 pp., ISBN 0–7619–5540–2 (pb)

Terrell Carver and Veronique Mottier (eds), Politics of Sexuality. Identity, gender, citizenship (Routledge, London, 1998), 200 pp., ISBN 0–415–16953–4 (hb)

Hein Marais, South Africa: Limits to Change. The Political Economy of Transformation (Zed Books, London, 1998), 290 pp., ISBN 1–85649–544–2 (pb)

Taras Kuzio, Ukraine: State and Nation Building (Routledge, London, 1998), 298 pp., ISBN 0–415–17195–4 (hb)

Alan M. Dershowitz, Sexual McCarthyism: Clinton, Starr, and the Emerging Constitutional Crisis (Basic Books, New York, 1998), 275 pp., ISBN 0–465–01628–6 (hb)

Timothy Hoye, Japanese Politics: Fixed and Floating Worlds (Prentice Hall, New Jersey, 1999), 233 pp., ISBN 0–13–271289‐X (pb)

Julia Sudbury, Other Kinds of Dreams: Black Women's Organisations and the Politics of Transformation (Routledge, London, 1998), 282 pp., ISBN 0–415–16732–9 (pb)     

The insider/outsider distinction: an empirical investigation

The distinction between 'insiders' and 'outsiders' occupies a central role in thinking about the relationship between government and interest groups in Britain. Usually, the accuracy of such distinctions are based on studies of small numbers of groups. The results of a survey of 381 groups reveals that relatively few groups could be classed as pure outsiders, while a much larger number have the features of the insider. While the methodology employed means that the results are suggestive rather than conclusive, the implications of the findings for the study of government-group relations in Britain are that the insider/outsider distinction is at best an oversimplification and at worst misleading.     

Joint implementation of greenhouse gas abatement under the Kyoto protocol's ‘clean development mechanism’: Its scope and limits

The Kyoto Protocol on climate change includes four flexibility mechanisms, which pursue lower-cost global reduction of greenhouse gas emissions through voluntary international re-distribution of abatement effort. We consider the operation of one of these, the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), which grants transferable credit for abatement achieved by individual projects in countries without national emission targets. An uncredited pilot phase in effect since 1995 provides only limited guidance for projecting the operation of the credited CDM. Under the CDM, intractable difficulties of accounting for project-level effects are likely to bias project activity toward particular project types for which exaggeration-resistant accounting rules are most readily available. This bias will favor retrofits over new investments, and will consequently limit the CDM to a modest contribution to required abatement in developing countries. Use of CDM credits as instruments of domestic policy in investor countries, as well as instruments of international policy, may mitigate this bias and the associated limitation. So may the use of projects based on novel technologies of carbon management.     

Technology,change, and the management accountant

Before technology transfer can take place there must be a climate for change. An understanding of the change process is necessary if the transfer of new accounting technology is to be successful and if the design and implementation of it can be carried out in such a way as to create a fit within a particular organizational culture and environment. This article provides some insight into organizational change, change in management-accounting technologies, and the contributions of accountants to innovation in technology organizations.