Books in review

Down and Out in America: The Origins of Homelessness.     

Revived and Discouraged: Evaluating Employment Barriers for Section 3 Residents With Criminal Records

Section 3 was established in the Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Act of 1968 to provide employment for public housing residents in distressed communities while rebuilding underserved neighborhoods. As a provision that recipients of HUD funding must comply with, Section 3 reporting agencies are having trouble securing employment for ex-offenders. This is problematic since low-income ex-offenders unable to secure stable employment are more likely to recidivate. Research evaluating the specific barriers to employment for Section 3 residents with criminal records and policy recommendations are sparse although the problem is prevalent in communities nationwide. This study uses San Antonio, Texas as an example for conducting a policy review to identify the barriers to employment for Section 3 ex-offenders. The results of the qualitative analysis indicate that at the national level, HUD and the Section 3 provision do not create barriers to employment but state and local policies and practices do.     

Reviews

Daniel S. Fogel (ed.), Firm Behaviour in Emerging Market Economies: Cases from the Private and Public Sectors in Central and Eastern Europe. Aldershot: Avebury, 1996, ix + 193 pp., £35.00.

Oldrich D#akedek et al., The Break‐up of Czechoslovakia: an In‐depth Economic Analysis. Aldershot: Avebury, 1996, xi + 208 pp., £32.50.

OECD, OECD Economic Surveys: The Czech Republic. Paris: OECD, 1996, viii + 121 pp.

OECD, OECD Economic Surveys: The Slovak Republic. Paris: OECD, 1996, viii + 159 pp.

Jan Winiecki (ed.), Five Years after June: the Polish Transformation, 1989–1994. London: The Centre for Research into Communist Economies, 1996, vi + 138 pp., £9.95.

Boris Rumer (ed.), Central Asia in Transition: Dilemmas of Political and Economic Development. London: M. E. Sharpe, 1996, xx + 286 pp.

Rosemarie Forsythe, The Politics of Oil in The Caucasus and Central Asia. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996, 67 pp., £13.99.

Wei Ding et al., Bosnia and Herzegovina: Toward Economic Recovery. Washington, DC: The World Bank, 1996, xxxi + 68 pp., £8.95.

Dmitri Steinberg, The Soviet Economy 1970–1990. A Statistical Analysis. San Francisco: International Trade Press, 1990, x + 350 pp., $115.00.

Abram Chayes & Antonia Handler Chayes (eds), Preventing Conflict in the Post‐Communist World. Washington, DC: The Brookings Institution, 1996, vii + 605 pp.

Trevor Findlay (ed.), Challenges for the New Peacekeepers. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996, xii + 170 pp., £25.00 h/b, £12.95 p/b.

Ike Jeanes, Forecast and Solution: Grappling with the Nuclear, a Trilogy for Everyone. Blacksburg, VA: Pocahontas Press, 1996, xiv + 770 pp., £25.00.

David R. Marples, Belarus: From Soviet Rule to Nuclear Catastrophe. London: Macmillan, 1996, xxi + 179 pp., £14.99.

Jeffrey D. McCausland, Conventional Arms Control and European Security: Conventional Arms Control Agreements and Their Role in the Emerging European Security Architecture. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996, 76 pp., £13.99.

Christopher Williams, Vladimir Chuprov & Vladimir Staroverov (eds), Russian Society in Transition. Aldershot: Dartmouth, 1996, xi + 315 pp., £39.50.

James O. Finckenauer, Russian Youth. Law, Deviance and the Pursuit of Freedom. London: Transaction, 1995, xvii + 237 pp., $34.95.

Rosalind Marsh (ed. & trans.), Women in Russia and Ukraine. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996, xvii + 350 pp., £55.00 h/b, £19.95 p/b.

Jeff Chinn & Robert Kaiser, Russians as the New Minority: Ethnicity and Nationalism in the Soviet Successor States. Boulder, CO: Westview, 1996, xii + 308 pp., £48.50 h/b, £13.50 p/b.

Ladislav Holy, The Little Czech and the Great Czech Nation. National Identity and the Post‐communist Transformation of Society. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996, x + 226 pp., £50.00 h/b, £16.96 p/b.

Francine Friedman, The Bosnian Muslims. Denial of a Nation. Colorado: Westview Press, 1996, xv + 288 pp., £14.95.

Yuri Feofanov & Donald D. Barry, Politics and Justice in Russia: Major Trials of the Post‐Stalin Era. New York: M. E. Sharpe, 1996, xiii + 346 pp., $62.95 h/b, $21.95 p/b.

Kathryn Hendley, Trying to Make Law Matter. Legal Reform and Labour Law in the Soviet Union. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1996, viii + 265 pp., $39.50 h/b.

Mark Lupher, Power Restructuring in China and Russia. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1996, xv+ 335 pp., £34.50 h/b, £13.50 p/b.

Gary D. Rawnsley, Radio Diplomacy and Propaganda: the BBC and VOA in International Politics, 1956–64. Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1996, x + 224 pp., £35.00.

Hugh Ragsdale, The Russian Tragedy: the Burden of History. New York: M. E. Sharpe, 1996, xix + 306 pp., $61.95 h/b, $21.95 p/b.

Adele Lindenmeyr, Poverty is Not a Vice: Charity, Society, and the State in Imperial Russia. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996, xiv + 335 pp., $49.50.

Derek Watson, Molotov and Soviet Government. Sovnarkom, 1931–1941. Basingstoke: Macmillan/New York: St Martin's Press, 1996, xxiii + 274 pp., £45.00.

Lars T. Lih, Oleg V. Naumov & Oleg V. Khlevniuk (eds), Stalin's Letters to Molotov, 1925–1936. London: Yale, 1995, xviii + 276 pp., £16.95.

Sekrety Gitlera na stole u Stalina: razvedka i kontrrazvedka o podgotovke germanskoi agressii protiv SSSR, mart‐iyun’ 1941 g. Dokumenty iz Tsentral'nogo arkhiva FSB. Moscow: Mosgorarkhiv, 1995, 254 pp.     

Measuring party orientations towards European integration: results from an expert survey

Some observers have held that political parties have been minor players in the process of European integration due to the low salience of the issue and the prevalence of intra party disagreement over European questions. Although recent scholarship and the rising salience of European issues have brought increased attention to the role of political parties, the study of the relationship between party positions and both public opinion and policy outcomes has been hampered by an absence of comparable data on party positions. This research note presents the findings of an expert survey on party positions on the issue of European integration. In addition to estimates of the parties' positions on the issue itself, this survey provides information on the importance of the issue of European integration to each party, and the extent of internal dissent within parties. The data also indicate that parties have, on average, become increasingly pro–European over the period 1984–1996. Both the salience of the issue of integration and the extent of intra–party disagreement have increased during this period. However, deep intra–party divisions appear less prevalent than commonly believed.     

Reviews

G. N. Khanin, Sovetskii ekonomicheskii rost: analiz zapadnykh otsenok. Novosibirsk: 1993, 156 pp.

William Moskoff, Hard Times: Impoverishment and Protests in the Perestroika Years. The Soviet Union 1985–1991. Armonk, NY and London: M. E. Sharpe, Inc., 1993, xii + 244 pp., $59.95 h/b, $24.95 p/b.

Simon Clarke, Peter Fairbrother, Michael Burawoy & Pavel Krotov, What About the Workers? London: Verso, 1993, 248 pp., £34.95 h/b, £11.95 p/b.

Kazimierz Z. Poznanski (ed), Stabilization and Privatization in Poland: An Economic Evaluation of the Shock Therapy Program. Boston, MA: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1993, vii + 269 pp.

Norbert Zmijewski, The Catholic‐Marxist Ideological Dialogue in Poland, 1945–1980. Alder‐shot: Dartmouth Publishing Company, 1991, 179 pp., £37.50.

Andrzej K. Kozminski, Catching Up? Organizational and Management Change in The Ex‐Socialist Block. New York: State University of New York Press, 1993, viii + 236 pp., $16.95.

Don van Atta (ed), The ‘Farmer Threat’. The Political Economy of Agrarian Reform in Post‐Soviet Russia. Boulder, CO, and Oxford: Westview Press, 1993, xiii + 221pp., £25.50.

Malcolm R. Hill & Caroline M. Hay, Trade, Industrial Cooperation and Technology Transfer‐Continuity and Change in a New Era of East‐West Relations. Aldershot: Avebury Publishing, 1993, vii + 123 pp.

J. Arch Getty & Roberta T. Manning (eds), Stalinist Terror. New Perspectives. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993, viii + 294 pp., £35.00, $39.95 h/b, £13.95, $17.95 p/b.

Vladimir Andreff, La crise des economies socialistes. Grenoble: Presses Universitaires de Grenoble, 1993, 447 pp., 140 francs.

Alexander J. Motyl, Dilemmas of Independence. Ukraine After Totalitarianism. New York: Council on Foreign Relations, 1993, xv + 217 pp., $17.95 p/b.

John Dunstan (ed), Soviet Education under Perestroika. Papers from the IV World Congress for Soviet and East European Studies, Harrogate, UK, 1990. London: Routledge, xii + 230 pp., £35.00.

Deming Brown, The Last Years of Soviet Russian Literature. Prose Fiction 1975–1991. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993, x + 208 pp., £35.00, $54.95.

Carmelo Mesa‐Lago (ed), Cuba—After the Cold War. Pittsburgh, PA, and London: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1993, 383 pp., $49.95 h/b, $19.95 p/b.     

E‐government in China

The article analyses e‐government progress in China. It provides a brief overview of benchmarking studies and their evaluation of China, plus a contextual analysis of e‐government initiatives in China and of the changing official position witnessed in the past two decades. It then takes stock of e‐government in China in the first quarter of 2004. On this basis, it considers the significance of contemporary e‐government activity for Chinese governance. The argument is that e‐government is currently having no more than a limited impact on the Chinese public sector. However, there are strong grounds for optimism about future development. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.