Adolescents' evaluations of Peers' motives for helping

Four groups of high-school students (N=92) were each informed about a pair of helpers, either male or female, who independently helped a sameor opposite-sex peer. Within each pair of same-sex helpers, one was presented as having helped for empathic reasons and the other was presented as having helped for nonempathic reasons. The adolescents' ratings of the helpers indicated that they generally favored empathically motivated helping in both male and female peers. However, a female helper who did not express sensitivity and emotional responsiveness to the feelings of the needy other in her prosocial moral reasoning tended to be judged more harshly by the adolescents than did a male helper who failed to express such sentiments.Received Ph. D. from Northwestern University. Research interests include empathy and prosocial behavior.All received B.S. in psychology from Kansas State University in 1987.     

Fragmentation and the growth of local government

An assumption of the post-World War II metropolitan reform movement was that fragmentation of metropolitan regions into multiple local governments was wasteful and inefficient, increasing the cost and size of government. More recently, ‘polycentrists’ have argued that the competition between multiple governments in metropolitan regions can in factreduce the growth in government by providing a competitive check on the excessive demands of local bureaucrats for more resources. In this article, I explore the effects of fragmentation on growth in the size of suburban municipal government budgets and in the number of services offered. Competition inherent in more fragmented metropolitan regions is shown to slow the expansion in local government expenditures and service levels.     

Reviews

Martin McCauley, Who's Who in Russia since 1900. London: Routledge, 1997, xxiv + 268 pp., £12.99 p/b.

Michael McFaul, Russia's 1996 Presidential Election. The End of Polarized Politics. Stanford: Hoover Institution Press, 1997, xiii + 170 pp., $17.95.

Laura Belin & Robert W. Orttung, with Ralph S. Clem and Peter R. Craumer, The Russian Parliamentary Elections of 1995: The Battle for the Duma. London: M. E. Sharpe, 1997, xii + 203 pp., $62.95.

Stephen White, Alex Pravda & Zvi Gitelman (eds), Developments in Russian Politics 4. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1997, xvi + 304 pp., £42.50 h/b, £13.99 p/b.

Adrian Karatnycky, Alexander Motyl & Boris Shor (eds), Nations in Transit 1997. Civil Society, Democracy and Markets in East Central Europe and the Newly Independent States. New Brunswick: Transaction, 1997, 418 pp., $49.95.

Oskar Krejci, History of Elections in Bohemia and Moravia. Boulder, CO: East European Monographs CDXXXIII, 1995, xliv + 425 pp.

Anne Lorentz & Marianne Rostgaard (eds), The Aftermath of Real Existing Socialism in Eastern Europe. Volume 2. People and Technology in the Process of Transition. Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1997, ix + 309 pp., £50.00.

Yudit Kiss, The Defence Industry in East‐Central Europe: Restructuring and Conversion. Oxford: Oxford University Press/Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, 1997, vii + 237 pp., £22.50.

Shiping Zheng, Party vs. State in Post‐1949 China: The Institutional Dilemma. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997, xiv + 294 pp., £40.00 h/b, £14.95 p/b.

John Lewis Gaddis, We Now Know: Rethinking Cold War History. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997, x +425 pp., £25.00.

David Christian, Imperial and Soviet Russia: Power, Privilege and the Challenge of Modernity. Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1997, viii + 478 pp., £15.99.

Edward Acton, Vladimir Iu. Cherniaev & William G. Rosenberg (eds), Critical Companion to the Russian Revolution, 1914–1921. London: Edward Arnold, 1997, xviii + 782 pp., £59.99.

Michael David‐Fox, Revolution of the Mind: Higher Learning among the Bolsheviks, 1918–1929. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1997, xvii + 298 pp., £33.50. >Alexander Etkind, Eros of the Impossible: The History of Psychoanalysis in Russia, trans. Noah and Maria Rubins, Oxford: Westview, 1997, vii + 408 pp., £25.50.

Bernice Glatzer Rosenthal (ed.), The Occult in Russian and Soviet Culture. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1997, ix + 468 pp., £47.00 h/b, £19.50 p/b.

Knut Andreas Grimstad & Ingunn Lunde (eds), Celebrating Creativity: Essays in Honour of Jostein B0rtnes. Bergen: University of Bergen, 1997, 350 pp.     

Interstate Competition and Welfare Policy

In 1996, the federal government terminated the Aid to Familieswith Dependent Children (AFDC) program and replaced it withthe Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program (TANF).Many powers once held by the federal government are now beingused by state governments. Will welfare assistance be redesignedand expanded or will states "race to the bottom?" This issueis investigated by examining state welfare policy choices duringthe latter years of AFDC(1976–1994). Because each stateunder AFDC had the authority to set the level of its welfareguarantee for families that had no income, it is possible toestimate the effects of interstate competition on AFDC guaranteelevels. By estimating a spatial autocorrelation coefficientwhile controlling for theoretically relevant variables and statefixed effects, this study finds evidence that states are sensitiveto the welfare policies of their competitors.     

Special report on patient care. The new federal patient-dumping regulations: some commonly asked questions and answers

Until both providers and government surveyors become more familiar with the new EMTALA regulations, there will be an uncomfortable period of adjustment, and perhaps some turmoil as well, particularly regarding the new requirement that facilities who receive suspicious transfers report those transfers to HCFA. Providers should carefully examine their internal policies on discharge and transfer of emergency patients to assure that those policies are consistent with the new regulations. Particular attention should be given to inservice training for medical and support personnel in the emergency department, because they must precisely comply with the law and their errors can subject the hospital to costly investigations and potential fines of $50,000 for each violation.     

Exploring the offshore interface

The connections between economic development, corruption, and the increasingly globalised financial system are not yet fully understood. This article examines the offshore interface — tax havens and offshore finance centres — that lies between the developed countries and Less Developed Countries (LDCs), part of the international financial system where legitimacy meets corruption. The central argument is that the existence of the offshore interface facilitates and can even encourage onshore corruption. New technology, in combination with strict bank secrecy in the private banking offshore networks of major banks, allows rapid international flows of funds, illustrating an increasing synergy between the offshore interface, globalisation and onshore corruption.An earlier version of this paper was read at the Development Studies Annual Conference in Dublin, 7–9 September 1995.     

State legislative approaches to regulating the use of genetic information

As genetic testing becomes more prevalent and the uses for genetic information multiply, we are likely to witness more demand for comprehensive state legislation on the order of the Oregon law regulating the procedures for obtaining and using genetic information. In addition, the United States Senate has expressed an interest in the subject. The Senate Labor and Human Resources Committee reportedly agreed on August 2, 1995 to include in a health insurance reform bill (S. 1028) language prohibiting health plans from using genetic information when determining eligibility, continuation, enrollment, or contribution requirements. 4 BNA's Health Law Rep. at 1218 (Aug. 10, 1995). Insurance companies continue to maintain that genetic test results are simply another factor that should rightfully be used during underwriting, much as age, medical history, and physical examinations are routinely used today. Right to privacy advocates argue that genetic testing provides employers and insurance companies with too much information and offers a great potential for discrimination. As more states wrestle with this issue, these competing interests are likely to be debated in public forums throughout the country.     

Forced abortions and involuntary sterilization in China: are the victims of coercive population control measures eligible for asylum in the United States?

This Article discusses the propriety of granting political asylum to Chinese citizens fleeing China's coercive population control policy. It argues that China is persecuting some of its citizens through its population control policy and that the United States should grant asylum to those who have been persecuted or who have a genuine fear of future persecution.