Patterns of EU Energy Policy Outputs: Incrementalism or Punctuated Equilibrium?

Although macro-level analyses of EU policy outputs are common, few empirical studies have measured the long-run evolution of the Union’s energy policy sector. This article provides an overview of European energy legislation to show past sectoral developmental trends, current characteristics and potential future directions. During this period, EU energy policy has evolved sequentially to encompass multiple sectors, including coal, nuclear energy, oil and gas production, energy conservation, market harmonisation and climate change concerns. Moreover, by measuring the velocity of legislative output as an indicator of policy activity, the overall picture is one of gradual incremental growth centred broadly on several episodes of shallow, delayed action punctuated equilibrium that has resulted in an uneven mixture of national and supranational decision-making. Expansion is perhaps set to continue along a similar path as a common EU climate–energy policy emerges, although some constraints are evident.     

Book reviews

Simon Singh, The Code Book: The Evolution of Secrecy from Mary, Queen of Scots to Quantum Cryptography (London: Fourth Estate, 1999). Pp.xiii + 402, illus., bibliog., index. £16.99. ISBN 1–85702–879–1

Alan Judd, The Quest for C: Mansfield Cumming and the Founding of the Secret Service (London: HarperCollins, 1999). Pp.501, illus., bibliog., index. £19.99. ISBN 0–00–255901–3.

Michael Smith, Station X: Decoding Nazi Secrets (London: Channel 4 Books, 1999). Pp.184, 8pp illus., bibliog., index. £14.99. ISBN 0–7522–2189–2.

Hugh Skillen (ed.), The Enigma Symposium, 1998 (Privately printed, 1998). Pp.ix + 205, illus., facsims., no index. £9.95. ISBN 0–95–313300–1.

Frank B. Rowlett and David Kahn, The Story of Magic, Memoirs of an American Cryptologic Pioneer (Laguna Hills, CA: Aegean Park Press, 1998). Pp.266, 12 b/w photos., no index. $32.80. ISBN 0–8941–2273–8.

David Alvarez, Secret Messages: Codebreaking and American Diplomacy, 1930–1945. (Lawrence, KS: UP of Kansas 2000). Pp.292, photos, bibliog., index. $35. ISBN 0–7006–1013–8.

Michael E. Haas, In the Devil's Shadow: U.N. Special Operations During the Korean War (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2000). Pp.xx + 243, 1 map, 5 illus, 26 photos, notes, bibliog., index, chronology. $29.95; £26.50. ISBN 1–55750–344–3.

Stephen G. Rabe, The Most Dangerous Area in the World: John F. Kennedy Confronts Communist Revolution in Latin America (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1999). Pp.257, bibliog., index. £31.95 (cloth); $17.95 (paper). ISBN 0–8078–2461–5.

L. V. Scott, Macmillan, Kennedy and the Cuban Missile Crisis (London: Macmillan Press, 1999). Pp.x + 251, bibliog., index. £45; $65. ISBN 0–333–71470–9.

Ezra Y. Siff, Why the Senate Slept: The Gulf of Tonkin Resolution and the Beginning of America's Vietnam War (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1999). Pp.xi + 172, illus., notes, bibliog., appendices, index. $37.50. ISBN 0–275–96389–6.

Fredrik Logevall, Choosing War: The Lost Chance for Peace and the Escalation of the War in Vietnam (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1999). Pp.xxv + 529, bibliog., index. $35. ISBN 0–520–21511–7.

John Prados, The Blood Road: The Ho Chi Minh Trail and the Vietnam War (New York: John Wiley, 1999). Pp.432, index. $35. ISBN 0–471–25465–7.

Kenneth Conboy and Dale Andrade, Spies & Commandos: How America Lost the Secret War in North Vietnam (Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 2000). Pp.347, illus., bibliog., index. $34.95. ISBN 0–7006–1002–2.

Anne Hessing Cahn, Killing Detente: The Right Attacks the CIA (University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1998). Pp.232, index. $24.50/£17.38 (paper). ISBN 0–271–01791–0.

Thomas K. Adams, US Special Operations Forces in Action: The Challenge of Unconventional Warfare (London and Portland, OR: Frank Cass Publishers, 1998). Pp.xxviii + 360, 11 photos, glossary of acronyms and terms, bibliog., index. £42.50/$59.50 (cloth); £19.50/$27.50 (paper). ISBN 0–7146–4795–0 and ‐4350–5.     

Institutions and governance: public staff management in Tanzania

The importance of institutions is one of the distinctive features of the new governance model. This article is an empirical study of how the institutional framework affects the way public servants are managed in Tanzania. In the ‘Ujamaa’ period, staffing institutions were placed under the control of the ruling party so that they would serve national development objectives, but the effect was to contaminate the efficiency and integrity of government. The legal framework conferred excessive powers on the President, and centralised staffing authority in agencies which were largely rubber‐stamping bodies, and it allowed duplication of functions between central and line agencies. Recent reforms have not altered this situation. In a climate of corruption and favouritism, there was little confidence in the integrity of civil service staffing. There was a need to strengthen its independence, to devolve and to align the institution governing it with current political and development objectives while controlling corruption at lower levels. Our findings may have an application to the institutions of government as a whole. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Health news and the American public, 1996-2002

The Kaiser Family Foundation/Harvard School of Public Health Health News Index, a series of 39 surveys with a total of over 42,000 respondents from 1996 through 2002, measures how closely Americans follow major health stories in the news and what they understand about the issues covered in those stories. On average, four in ten adults reported following health news stories closely. The public reports paying the most attention to stories about public health, followed by health policy and disease-related stories. While knowledge about health news varies, individuals who follow health news stories closely are significantly more likely to give the correct answer to knowledge questions about those stories.     

Early Care and Education for Children in the Child Welfare System: Evaluations of Two Training Programs

Despite evidence that early care and education services benefit at-risk children, they remain underutilized by families in the child welfare system. This article describes two training programs developed to educate child welfare and childcare/preschool staff about the importance of early care and education for maltreated children and how to access these services. A combined total of 274 trainees completed knowledge tests about this topic and significant pre- to post-training improvements indicate that both training programs effectively increased participants' knowledge about this important topic. In addition, improvement in self-assessed competency was observed for participants in one program, and positive changes in attitudes and anticipated practice behavior regarding childcare for foster children were observed among participants in the other.