The Cold War and Third World revolution

Much of the Cold War took place in the Third World. The three works authored by Gregg A. Brazinsky, Winning the Third World: Sino-American Rivalry During the Cold War; Jeffry James Byrne, Mecca of Revolution: Algeria, Decolonization, and the Third World Order; and Jeremy Friedman, Shadow Cold War: The Sino-Soviet Competition for the Third World, are reviewed here and they provide historical details. A consistent theme that emerges is the importance of ideological factors in driving the events are discussed. It is also clear that the Third World states were not passive objects of pressure from great powers but had agendas of their own. These books provide useful material for theorists of international relations and policy makers.     

“The laughing third man in a fight”: Stalin's use of the wedge strategy

Although much IR theory focuses on balancing, this paper examines a version of the wedge strategy, what Stalin allegedly called being “the laughing third man in a fight.” This is the practice of advancing one's goals by setting up other states to fight each other. The first case study is Soviet strategy in Europe from September 1939 until June 1941. The second is Soviet strategy in the Far East in 1941–45. What I am looking at here is a policy of deliberately encouraging the start of a war and/or aiding its prolongation in order to weaken both sides. The two case studies indicate that the Soviet Union used such a strategy at times in place of the usual forms of balancing, discussed in the international relations literature. Additionally, analysis of Moscow's conduct, statements by Soviet leaders, and the policies of a number of foreign communist parties indicate that, in addition to any security goals, Stalin's agenda included furthering the USSR's goal as a revolutionary state, even thought this had at times to be constrained by realpolitik.     

A Cold War before the Cold War: Early Soviet Relations with the West

The field of international relations has seen considerable debate about the reasons for conflict between revolutionary states and status quo powers. The two works reviewed here deal with the early years of the Soviet regime. The material presented indicates that tensions were largely the result of Bolshevik attempts to “export the revolution.” This indicates that it is the nature of a revolutionary state and its desire to challenge the international status quo that leads to tension with other powers.     

Multiple Dimensions of Bureaucratic Discrimination: Evidence from German Welfare Offices

A growing experimental literature uses response rates to fictional requests to measure discrimination against ethnic minorities. This article argues that restricting attention to response rates can lead to faulty inferences about substantive discrimination depending on how response dummies are correlated with other response characteristics. We illustrate the relevance of this problem by means of a conjoint experiment among all German welfare offices, in which we randomly varied five traits and designed requests to allow for a substantive coding of response quality. We find that response rates are statistically indistinguishable across treatment conditions. However, putative non‐Germans receive responses of significantly lower quality, potentially deterring them from applying for benefits. We also find observational evidence suggesting that discrimination is more pronounced in welfare offices run by local governments than in those embedded in the national bureaucracy. We discuss implications for the study of equality in the public sphere.     

Justice,Morality or Politics: why did the British legal system execute Selina Wadge?

Although infanticide was a capital crime, mothers who killed their children were seldom convicted of murder and, from 1849 onward, hardly ever faced the death penalty. In fact, between 1843—when the authorities began documenting the gender of offenders—and 1899, only five women were hanged for infanticide. This article follows the story of one of these women, Selina Wadge, who was hung in the prison yard of Bodmin Gaol in Cornwall on 15 August 1878. The author read depositions, trial proceedings, newspaper reports, letters, notes and petitions, attempting to understand why the court and the Home Office chose to circumvent the accepted lenient policy and apply the severe letter of the law. Was Wadge executed for infanticide? Or did her hanging serve other social and political agendas? Through analysis of the case, the article provides insights into the attitudes of the British establishment towards mothers living on the margins.     

A very risky business. Medical professionals are demanding more effective AIDS protection for themselves.

Physicians, nurses and other health-care workers have always been willing to risk exposure to infectious diseases; it goes with the territory. But AIDS is in a grim category all by itself--a contagious illness that, so far, is almost always fatal. Today many health professionals no longer feel safe on the job--and they're demanding better protection for themselves.