Book reviews

A. L. Meiendorf, Optimizatsiya khozyaistvennykh reshenii: metod analiza prirashchenii. Series: Aktual'nye problemy sel'skogo khozyaistva. Moscow: ‘Ekonomika’, 1976.

Oliver H. Radkey, The Unknown Civil War in Soviet Russia. A Study of the Green Movement in the Tambov Region, 1920–21. Stanford, Calif.: Hoover Institution, 1976. xiv+457 pp. $12.95.

Roy and Zhores Medvedev, Khrushchev—The Years in Power. London: OUP, 1977. xi+198 pp. £3.95.

Daniel F. Calhoun, The United Front: the TUC and the Russians, 1923–1928. Cambridge: CUP, 1976. 450 pp. £10.50.

Gabriel Gorodetsky, The Precarious Truce. Anglo‐Soviet Relations 1924–27. Cambridge: CUP, 1977. 289 pp. £9.00.

Herbert S. Dinerstein, The Making of a Missile Crisis: October 1962. Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins UP, 1976. 302 pp. $14.95.

Donald R. Kelley, Kenneth R. Stunkel, Richard R. Wescott, The Economic Superpowers and the Environment: The United States, The Soviet Union, and Japan. San Francisco: W. H. Freeman & Co., 1976. 335 pp.

Fred Singleton (ed.), Environmental Misuse in the Soviet Union. New York and London: Praeger Publishers, 1976. xvii+103 pp. $13.50. £8.80.

Peter H. Juviler, Revolutionary Law and Order. Politics and Social Change in the USSR. New York: The Free Press, and London: Collier MacMillan, 1976. xii+274 pp. £11.05.

Richard Szawlowski, The System of the International Organizations of the Communist Countries. Leyden: A. W. Sijthoff, 1976. 322 pp.

Jürg Meister, Soviet Warships of the Second World War. London: Macdonald & Jane, 1977. 348 pp. £7.95.     

Book reviews

David Granick, Enterprise Guidance in Eastern Europe. A Comparison of Four Socialist Economies. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton UP, 1976. xvi+505 pp. £17.20 or £6.10 (paperback).

A. Zauberman, Mathematical Theory in Soviet Planning (Concepts, Methods, Techniques). London: OUP for the Royal Institute of International Affairs, 1976. xiv+464 pp. £17.00.

H. Gordon Skilling, Czechoslovakia's Interrupted Revolution. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton UP, 1976. 924 pp. £31.30 or £10.50 (paperback).

Alex Pravda, Reform and Change in the Czechoslovak Political System: January‐August 1968. Sage Research Papers in the Social Sciences, vol. 3, series No. 90–020 (Contemporary European Studies Series). Beverly Hills and London: Sage Publications, 1976. 96 pp. £1.30.

R. G. Gidadhubli (ed.), Fifty Years of Soviet Power—a Study of Social, Economic and Political Developments. Centre of Soviet Studies, University of Bombay, 1976. 295 pp. 29 rupees.

Occasional Papers, Centre for Soviet and East European Studies, Jawalharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, Nos. 2 and 3, 1976 (mimeographed).

Adam B. Ulam, A History of Soviet Russia. London: Martin Robertson, 1976. viii+312 pp. £5.00.

Olga A. Narkiewicz, The Green Flag: Polish Populist Politics 1867–1970. London: Croom Helm, 1976. 314 pp. £7.95.

Jacques Levesque, L'URSS et la révolution cubaine. Montreal: Presses de 1'Université de Montréal, 1976. 221 pp.

John B. Dunlop, The New Russian Revolutionaries. Belmont, Mass.: Nordland, 1976. 344 pp. $18.50.

Brian Hunter, Soviet‐ Yugoslav relations 1948–1972: a bibliography of Soviet, Western and Yugoslav comment and analysis. New York and London: Garland, 1976. 223 pp. $20.00.     

Diffusion milieus as a focus of research on innovation in the public sector

Public policies to increase the efficiency of state and local governments through fostering the use of new technologies are based, implicitly at least, on theories of diffusion. Existing theories of diffusion have been found to be deficient. This paper presents an approach to the diffusion of technological innovations in state and local governments organized around the concept of diffusion milieus.A diffusion milieu contains those elements external to the organization which bring pressure to bear on the organization to alter its existing practices, which define the range of feasible alternatives to these practices, and which condition the information flow on the performance characteristics of the proposed innovation(s). These milieu components are then filtered through the internal decision-making process(es) of the organization to produce a decision to accept or reject the innovation(s). More specifically, the milieu contains (1) the specific nature of the demands upon the agency to change behavior (performance gaps), (2) the supply of alternatives to existing practices (technological change), (3) agency-executive relationships, (4) the activities of suppliers in marketing innovations, (5) the resources available to the agency to acquire new techniques, (6) the characteristics of the knowledge infrastructure which affect the search behavior and the degree of uncertainty associated with adopting new techniques, (7) the impact of intergovernmental relationships, and (8) citizen demands. The components of the diffusion milieu are then (9) related to a set of agency decision-rules concerning the adoption of new techniques.The rate of diffusion in each field will depend upon themagnitude of the components and on thelinkages between them.Functional fields differ in both respects.Research for this paper was supported by a grant from the National Science Foundation, Office of R & D Assessment. We have benefited from the helpful comments of Professor Marvin Rozen, an anonymous referee and the research assistance of Ms. Lee Ann Kozak. The views expressed in this paper are the sole responsibility of the authors. An earlier version of this paper was presented at the 1975 American Political Science Association meetings.     

Techniques and processes of administration

Abstract. Since the Glassco Commission in the early sixties there has been a plethora of administrative changes: Program Planning and Budgeting, Operational Performance Measurement Systems, Management by Objectives, and Cost/Benefit Analysis have all been introduced as technical panaceas. In terms of processes, some should probably have been changed but remain the same(such as the personnel selection-promotion process), while others have been circumvented (the regular budgetary process). Still others have been changed (the cabinet committee process) but have produced results of questionable value and perhaps positive harm to majority governments. It is contended that the Glassco injunction ‘let the manager manage’ and the assumption that private sector practices should be adopted by government, virtually without modification, ignore fundamental differences between the two sectors. The war between competing interest groups is inevitable and hence perpetual. Governments engage in a rolling set of compromises between factions in an essentially adversarial process under rules, formal and informal, that restrict the field of battle. Frequently, those who advocate administrative changes are in pursuit of their personal interests. They frequently find themselves in alliances with one or more of the contending parties who look upon them as guns for hire to be used or rejected on strategic grounds. After an impressionistic critique of each of the processes and techniques previously cited, the paper ends on a more positive note. There is a plea that the powers of the auditor general be expanded to encompass reporting upon (as distinct from undertaking) the extent to which a ministry is carrying out efficiency and effectiveness studies, where there is a consensus about the validity of the data and methodology. It is also suggested that the auditor general report upon the disposition of these studies with the aim of breaking down present secrecy barriers. A better informed public would change the incentive structure within which ministers, aided by officials, reach their decisions. Sommaire. Depuis la Commission Glasscoe, au début des années 60, il y a eu une pléthore de changements administratifs. La Planification et l'établissement des budgets par programme, les systèmes de mesure des performances opérationnelles, la gestion en function des objectifs, l'analyse des coûts et avantages, tous ces systèmes ont été utilisés comme panacées techniques. Du point de vue des processus, certains, qui auraient dû sans doute être changés ne l'ont pas été (comme par exemple la sélection du personnel et le processus de l'avancement) alors que d'autres ont été contournés (le processus budgétaire normal). D'autres encore ont été changEeAs (le processus des comités de cabinet) mais pour produire des résultats de valeur douteuse et parfois franchement défavorables pour les gouvernements majoritaires. L'auteur soutient que l'impératif de la Commission Glasscoe « laisser gérer les gestionnaires » et le postulat suivant lequel les pratiques du secteur privé devraien être adoptées pratiquement sans modification par les gouvernements ignorent les différences fondamentales qui existent entre les deux secteurs. La lutte entre des groupes aux intérêts divergents est inévitable, et done perpétuelle. Les gouvernements s'engagent dans tout un jeu de compromis dynamiques entre les différentes factions dans ce qui essentiellement un processus antagoniste, à l'intérieur de règies formelles ou non formelles, qui réduisent la portée du conflit. Fréquemment, ceux qui réclament des changements administratifs le font dans leur propre intérêt et ils se trouvent souvent alliés à un ou plusueurs des partis d'opposition qui les considèrent comme des mercenaires à utiliser ou rejeter pour des raisons stratégiques. Après une critique subjective des divers processus et techniques cités précédemment, l'auteur conclut sur une note plus positive. Il demande que les pouvoirs de l'Auditeur général soient étendus pour qu'il fasse connaître (et non pas pour qu'il étudie) la mesure dans laquelle les ministères effectuent des études sur l'efficience et l'efficacité, là où il existe un consensus quant à la validité des données et de la méthodologie. Il propose aussi que l'Auditeur général fasse rapport sur l'usage qui est fait de ces études, afin de supprimer le secret qui l'entoure actuellement. Un public mieux informé transformerait la structure de la motivation qui entoure actuellement les ministres qui prennent des decisions et leurs fonctionnaires.     

Voting May Be Habit-Forming: Evidence from a Randomized Field Experiment

Habit is a frequently mentioned but understudied cause of political action. This article provides the first direct test of the hypothesis that casting a ballot in one election increases one's propensity to go to the polls in the future. A field experiment involving 25,200 registered voters was conducted prior to the November general election of 1998. Subjects were randomly assigned to treatment conditions in which they were urged to vote through direct mail or face-to-face canvassing. Compared to a control group that received no contact, the treatment groups were significantly more likely to vote in 1998. The treatment groups were also significantly more likely to vote in local elections held in November of 1999. After deriving a statistical estimator to isolate the effect of habit, we find that, ceteris paribus, voting in one election substantially increases the likelihood of voting in the future. Indeed, the influence of past voting exceeds the effects of age and education reported in previous studies.