The new ethics of modern public service

Books reviewed:
Chapman, R. (ed.), Ethics in Public Service
Lawton, A., Ethical Management for the Public Services
Gowthorpe, C. and Blake, J. (eds), Ethical Issues in Accounting     

Undergraduate Education in Legal Psychology

The purpose of this article is to describe ways that legal psychology can be introduced into the undergraduate curriculum. The extent to which undergraduate psychology and law courses are currently a part of the curriculum is described, and a model is proposed for coursework in a Psychology Department that might adequately reflect coverage of the legal area. The role of legal psychology in interdisciplinary programs and Criminal Justice departments is discussed. Sources for teaching aids and curricular materials are described.     

The Impact of Political Debate on Government Trust: Reminding the Public What the Federal Government Does

Americans' confidence in government is low by historical standards. We fielded a national telephone survey to examine influences on government confidence and whether public discontent was affected by altering the salience of specific government operations. We used a question order experiment where we alternated between first asking a general question about confidence in government and first asking about confidence in specific government operations. We found that posing the specific policy questions first elevated general confidence more than the reverse. The largest and most noticeable effects were observed for Republicans and those most knowledgeable and attentive to politics. Findings of context effects and the partisan subgroup differences are consistent with existing theories on public opinion change as well as with previous question order experiments. But, evidence that the cognitive elite was especially influenced by question order challenges previous theories that presumed that its sophistication made it immune to influence. We suggest that education and political knowledge expand rather than contract the opportunities for priming.     

Reviews

Rudolf L. Tökés (ed.), Opposition in Eastern Europe. London and Basingstoke: Macmillan in association with St. Anthony's College, Oxford, 1979. xxiv + 306 pp. £12.00.

Hannes Adomeit and Robert Boardman (eds.), Foreign Policy Making in Communist Countries. Farnborough: Saxon House, 1979. 164 pp. $19.00.

C. G. Jacobsen, Soviet Strategic Initiatives: Challenge and Response, New York: Praeger, 1979. xiv+168 pp. £13.00.

Donald D. Barry & Carol Barner‐Barry, Contemporary Soviet Politics: An Introduction. Prentice‐Hall, Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1978. ix + 406 pp.

T. H. Rigby, Lenin's Government: Sovnarkom 1917–1922. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979. xvi + 320 pp. £16.75.

Stephen White. Britain and the Bolshevik Revolution: A Study in the Politics of Diplomacy, 1920–1924. Macmillan, 1979. xiii + 317 pp. £12.00.

Roy Medvedev, The October Revolution. Translated by George Saunders; foreword by Harrison E. Salisbury. London: Constable, 1979. xv + 239 pp. £6.50.

Constantin A. Krylov. The Soviet Economy. How It Really Works. Lexington Books, 1979, xiv + 255 pp.

Jon Bloomfield, The Passive Revolution: Politics and the Czechoslovak Working Class, 1945–48. London: Allison & Busby, 1979. 290 pp. £10.00 (pb. £3.95).

Jan B. de Weydenthal, The Communists of Poland. Stanford: Hoover Institution Press, 1978. 217 pp. $7.95.

Leslie Dienes and Theodore Shabad, The Soviet Energy System. Washington: V. H. Winston & Sons, 1979. Distributed by Halsted Press, vii + 298 pp. £12.00.

R. S. Mathieson, Japan's Role in Soviet Economic Growth. Transfer of Technology since 1965. New York: Praeger, 1979. xxi + 278 pp.     

The Federal Trade Commission, clinical integration, and the organization of physician practice

This article examines Federal Trade Commission (FTC) policy--in particular, the agency's controversial 1996 statements on clinical integration--toward joint negotiations for nonrisk contracts with health plans by physicians organized into independent practice associations (IPAs) and (with hospitals) into physician-hospital organizations (PHOs). The article concludes that the policy is consistent with anti-trust principles, consistent with current thinking on the use of organized processes to improve medical care quality, specific enough to provide guidance to physicians wanting to integrate clinically, and general enough to encourage ongoing innovations in physician organization. The FTC should consider stronger sanctions for IPAs and PHOs whose clinical integration is nothing more than a sham intended to provide cover for joint negotiations, should give the benefit of the doubt to organizations whose clinical integration appears to be reasonably consonant with the statements, and should clarify several ambiguities in the statements. Health plans should facilitate IPA and PHO efforts to improve care by rewarding quality and efficiency and by providing clinically integrated organizations with claims information on individual patients. Though creating clinically integrated organizations is difficult and expensive, physicians should recognize that clinical integration can help them both to gain some negotiating leverage with health plans and to improve the quality of care for their patients.