Reviews

Michael Mandelbaum (ed.), Post‐Communism: Four Perspectives. New York: Council on Foreign Relations, 1996, vi + 208 pp.

Raymond Taras, Consolidating Democracy in Poland. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1996, xii + 276 pp., £44.50 h/b, £13.50 p/b.

Jane Leftwich Curry & Luba Fajfer (eds), Poland's Permanent Revolution: People vs. Elites, 1956–1990. Lanham: American University Press, 1995, x + 294 pp., $64.50 h/b, $27.50 p/b.

Ben Slay (ed.), De‐monopolization and Competition Policy in Post‐Communist Economies. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1996, ix + 245 pp.

Éva Ehrlich & Gabor Révész, Hungary and its Prospects, 1985–2005. Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó, 1995, 166 pp., $29.00.

Simon Clarke (ed.), Conflict and Change in the Russian Industrial Enterprise. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 1996, ix + 298 pp., £45.00.

Maurice Ernst, Michael Alexeev & Paul Marer, Transforming the Core: Restructuring Industrial Enterprises in Russia and Central Europe. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1996, xx + 315 pp., £13.50.

John S. Strong & John R. Meyer, Moving to Market: Restructuring Transport in the Former Soviet Union. London: Harvard University Press, 1996, ix + 237 pp, £19.95.

Raymond J. Struyk (ed.), Economic Restructuring of the Former Soviet Bloc. The Case of Housing. Washington: The Urban Institute Press, 1996, xviii + 373 pp., £51.95 h/b, £22.95 p/b.

Istvan Pogany (ed.), Human Rights in Eastern Europe. Aldershot: Edward Elgar, 1995, xv + 255 pp., £39.95.

Lucjan Dobroszycki & Jeffrey S. Gurock (eds), The Holocaust in the Soviet Union. Studies and Sources on the Destruction of the Jews in the Nazi‐Occupied Territories of the USSR, 1941–1945. London: M. E. Sharpe, 1993, xii + 260 pp., $59.95 h/b, $24.95 p/b.

Robert Bideleux & Richard Taylor (eds), European Integration and Disintegration: East and West. London and New York: Routledge, 1996, xii + 298 pp., £45.00 h/b, £13.99 p/b.

F. Stephen Larrabee (ed.), The Volatile Powder Keg: Balkan Security after the Cold War. Washington, DC: The American University Press, 1994, xxviii + 320 pp., $27.50.

John F. Wright, Suzanne Goldenberg & Richard Schofield (eds), Transcaucasian Boundaries. London: UCL Press, 1996, vii + 237 pp.

Juris Dreifelds, Latvia in Transition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1996, ix + 214 pp., £40.00 h/b, £14.95 p/b.

Alfred Erich Senn, Gorbachev's Failure in Lithuania. New York: St Martin's Press, 1995, xx + 188 pp., $39.95.

Neil Melvin, Russians beyond Russia: The Politics of National Identity. London: Royal Institute of International Affairs, 1995, vi + 170 pp., £11.99.

Kathleen E. Smith, Remembering Stalin's Victims. Popular Memory and the End of the USSR. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1996, xv + 220 pp., £23.50.

Martin McCauley, Stalin and Stalinism, 2nd edn. London and New York: Longman, 1995, xiii + 142 pp., £5.99.

Christopher Read, From Tsar to Soviets. The Russian People and Their Revolution, 1917–1921. London: UCL Press, 1996, vi + 330 pp.

C. M. Hann, The Skeleton at the Feast. Contributions to East European Anthropology. Canterbury: Centre for Social Anthropology and Computing, University of Kent at Canterbury, 1995, xv + 250 pp., £10.00.

Irena Maryniak, Spirit of the Totem: Religion and Myth in Soviet Fiction, 1964–1988. London: The Modern Humanities Research Association, Texts and Dissertations Series, Volume 39, 1995, x + 186 pp., £25.00.

Nancy Condee (ed.), Soviet Hieroglyphics: Visual Culture in Late Twentieth‐Century Russia. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1995, xxv + 179 pp., £14.99.     

Keeping the other candidate guessing: Electoral competition when preferences are private information

We analyze a, model of two candidate competition in which candidate and voter preferences are private information. If candidates simultaneously commit to policy platforms the uncertainty about candidate preferences reinforces the incentive for platform divergence. After a candidate observes the other candidate’s stance but before she learns about voter preferences she may face regret about her choice. This ex post irrationality suggests that a 1 period model may not capture the relevant incentives. In a multi-period proposal game in which candidates first make non-binding public proposals and then they make binding public proposals (similar to Ledyard, 1989) we find that candidates are uninformative during the first stage, as they have a disincentive to reveal their preferences to the opposing candidate. This finding offers an explanation for candidate ambiguity or inconsistency early in an election which does not involve efforts to deceive voters. Candidates may be trying to keep their opponent guessing. With a strong pre-election commitment technology, candidates can only be deterred from this type of behavior if they anticipate that a sizeable number of voters (more than a majority) will vote contrary to their preferences over policy.     

On Gramsci

The writings of the Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci have garnered a great deal of interest across debates in both political theory and International Political Economy (IPE). Yet, despite the diversity of issues raised by such debates, similar arguments have been made that are pertinent to anyone interested in understanding the philosophy and strategic importance of Gramsci. The claim here is that similar demands have been made to return Gramsci to his historical context but without considering whether this means that ideas and the conditions that provoked such issues are therefore relegated to the epoch of origination. The argument consequently works through some of the assumptions of an historicist interpretation, whilst also outlining a particular approach that appreciates the contemporary theoretical and practical relevance of a Gramscian-inspired critique of the prevailing global political economy     

Appeals to community and crime prevention

This paper considers the growing appeals to the idea of community in criminal justice policy and the involvement of actual communities in criminal justice initiatives. It draws on a completed two year research study of a number of community-based crime prevention initiatives in the South East of England. The paper considers the nature of community to which appeals are made in criminal justice discourse and policies, the contribution of community to the practices of social order and the nature of community representation and participation in crime prevention initiatives. It is argued that appeals to community in crime prevention, and crime control more generally, embody shifts in what constitutes the legitimate responsibilities of individuals, collectivities and the state. This has a number of implications, the first of which is a redrawing of the cost of policing and security services. Additionally, there is an associated shift in blame for failure. Finally, actual community involvement in crime control gives rise to new structures and forms of local governance that evoke key questions about the regulation of social relations, the nature of conflict resolution, citizenship, democracy and social justice.     

A Cross-Cultural View of Adults’ Perceptions of Children’s Rights

This study examined how the need for autonomy may be coexisting with current cultural norms. A total of 264 U.S., 76 Swiss, and 51 British adults completed two perceptions of children’s rights surveys. The results showed that Swiss and British participants were significantly more likely to advocate for autonomy or self-determination rights than same-aged U.S. adults. British participants were also more likely to advocate for children’s self-determination rights than U.S. and Swiss participants, whereas Swiss adults were more likely to grant children nurturance rights than British and US adults. Generally, parents were less likely to advocate for autonomy than non-parents. The results are discussed in terms of individualism—collectivism, self-determination theories, and parentalism.