Reviews

Seweryn Bialer ed. Politics. Society and Nationality inside Gorbachev's Russia. Boulder, London: Westview Press, 1989. xv + 255 pp., £22.50 h/b., £11.00 p/b.

Jan Winiecki, The Distorted World of Soviet‐Type Economies. London and New York: Routledge, 1988, xi + 130 pp., £33.00.

Jan Adam, Economic Reforms in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe since the 1960s. London: Macmillan, 1989, xvi + 242 pp. £29.50.

Alexander George, Philip J. Farley and Alexander Dallin, eds. U.S.‐Soviet Security Cooperation. Achievements, Failures, Lessons. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988, xi + 746 pp., £30.00.

Thomas M. Cynkin, Soviet and American Signalling in the Polish Crisis. London: MacMillan Press, 1988, ix + 263 pp., £35.00.

Stephen Lewarne, Soviet Oil: The Move Offshore. Boulder and London: Westfield Press, 1988, xiv + 190 pp. Price not indicated.

Margaret Chadwick, David Long and Machiko Nissanke, Soviet Oil Exports: Trade Adjustments, Refining Constraints and Market Behaviour. Oxford: OUP 1987. xviii + 263 pp. £29.50.

James H. Bater, The Soviet Scene: A Geographical Perspective. London: Edward Arnold, 1989, xv + 304 pp., £30.00 h/b., £11.95 p/b.

Raymond Hutchings, Soviet Secrecy and Non‐Secrecy. London: Macmillan, 1987, vii + 292 pp., £29.50.

Bryan Ranft and Geoffrey Till, The Sea in Soviet Strategy. 2nd Edition, London: Macmillan, 1989, xviii + 284 pp., £35.00.

Robert Desjardins, The Soviet Union through French Eyes, 1945–85. Foreward by Archie Brown, St Antony's/Macmillan series, Macmillan Press, London, 1988, xiii + 199 pp., £33.00.

Linda R. Killen, The Soviet Union and the United States: A New Look at the Cold War. Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1989, xv + 195 pp., $24.95 h/b., $12.95 p/b.

Anne D. Rassweiler, The Generation of Power. The History of Dneprostroi. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988, viii + 247 pp., £24.00.

Stephen White, The Bolshevik Poster. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1988, viii + 152 pp., £19.95, $39.95.

János Timár, Idö és munkaidö (Time and Work Time), Közgazdasági és Jogi Könyvkiadó, Budapest, 1988, 297 pp.

Tamara Dragadze, Rural Families in Soviet Georgia. A case study in Ratcha Province. International Library of Anthropology, Routledge, London and New York, 1988, xii + 226 pp.

Thomas A. Oleszczuk, Political Justice in the USSR: Dissent and Repression in Lithuania, 1969–1987. Boulder, Colorado: East European Monographs, 1988, viii + 221 pp., $34.50.

Nora Levin, The Jews in the Soviet Union since 1917: Paradox of Survival. New York: New York University Press, 1988, 2 vols. xxxiv + 1013 pp., $55 each vol., $100 the set; foreign prices $69 and $125.

Benjamin Pinkus, The Jews of the Soviet Union: The History of a National Minority. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988, xvii + 397 pp., £30.00, $34.50.

Marko Milivojevi?, John B. Allcock and Pierre Maurer, eds. Yugoslavia's Security Dilemmas: Armed Forces, National Defence and Foreign Policy. Oxford: Berg Publishers Limited, 1988, viii + 324 pp., £35.00.

German Institute for Economic Research, ed. GDR and Eastern Europe. A Handbook. Avebury, Gower Publishing Company Limited, 1989, xxi + 383 pp., £32.50.

Daniel N. Nelson, Romanian Politics in the Ceausescu Era. London: Gordon and Breach Science Publishers, 1988, xvii + 244 pp., $69.00.

The Blackwell Encyclopedia of the Russian Revolution, Edited by Harold Shukman, Basil Blackwell, 1988, xv + 418 pp.     

Civil commitment from a systems perspective

Responsibility for the civil commitment process currently is shared between the justice and mental health systems. Neither system, however, owes substantial loyalty to the goals of civil commitment. The result, as documented in numerous empirical studies, is that the ostensible goals of the process are routinely subverted in favor of other systemic interests. Most reform efforts to date, focused on altering legal rules to conform to doctrinal desiderata, have ignored this problem, leading to uneven and disappointing outcomes. A systems perspective on these problems suggests that one means of dealing with systems whose loyalty to a task is questionable is to create an independent system with the incentives to give primacy to the task in question. The implications of this analysis for civil commitment are explored.     

Bias in OMB's economic forecasts and budget proposals

The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) annually submits the President's budget for the U.S. government to the Congress. The economic forecasts and revenue and outlay proposals contained in the budget have been criticized as biased, especially during the 1980s. Tests for bias in one year ahead proposals for the 1963–89 period show no bias in economic forecasts and revenue estimates, but substantial bias in outlay proposals. Most outlay proposals are consistently less than actual outcomes, accounting for underprediction of the Federal deficit. OMB outlay proposals appear to be influenced by politics. Republican administrations show more significant proposal biases, with defense proposals higher and domestic outlay proposals lower than outcomes. The Office of Management and Budget consistently understates the deficits by resorting to the most optimistic economic assumptions it can credibly — and now sometimes even incredibly — employ. — Senator James SasserWall Street Journal, 25 January 1990     

Rent-seeking in the deregulatory environment: State telecommunications

Proponents of rent-seeking theories argue that firms pressure and reward politicians and bureaucrats to pursue favorable policies so they can achieve higher than normal, market returns. In an era of deregulation, often with long transition periods toward unregulated competition, how do firms develop specific political strategies to achieve success in rent-seeking? Deregulation of telecommunications at the state level allows comparison of the strategies of the seven firms created in the AT&T divestiture in more than one political jurisdiction. One firm, U S West, has pursued the most aggresive political strategy. This paper argues that U S West executives correctly perceived that the political environment in which they operated differed greatly from that in the rest of the country and that a different deregulatory strategy was appropriate. The firm exploited institutional differences by bypassing state regulators and going directly to state legislators to get favorable policies.