Attitudes Toward Reform Among Provincial Russian Politicians

An American political scientist presents the results of a survey of 1, 280 oblast' and city deputies in five provinces of central Russia. The survey conducted in 1992, assessed support for reforms aimed at development of a market economy and a more democratic political system. Five scales, two economic (including one to determine views on accumulation of wealth) and three political, were developed to measure deputies' attitudes. In addition, the respondents' age, education, occupation, gender and incumbency were used to determine whether attitudinal variation could be explained by demographic factors. The findings are related to the current struggle over control of local resources. Journal of Economic Literature, Classification Numbers: H70, P20, R59.     

Misguided investments in meeting millennium Development Goals: a reconsideration using ends-based targets

This paper contends that some of the Millennium Development Goals do not distinguish between potential and actual achievements. In the case of education for instance, the completion of primary education by all students is not an end in itself, but rather an intermediary phase in the process of learning to read and write, and so on. Thus, meeting the stated Millennium Development Goal may in fact do little or nothing to enhance these more ultimate achievements. Using other, similar examples, we suggest that governments need to consider moving from means- to ends-based proxies, and in so doing, to reconsider whether the way that resources are allocated in any given sector is in fact the optimal one.     

Book reviews

Toward a Global Civil Society edited by M. Walzer. Providence, RI and Oxford: Berghahn Books, 1995. Pp.341. £31. ISBN 1 57181 05 4

Politics UK by Bill Jones, Andrew Gray, Dennis Kavanagh, Michael Moran, Philip Norton and Anthony Seldon. Hemel Hempstead: Prentice Hall, 1998 (3rd edn). £16.50 (paperback). Pp.xiv + 571; index. ISBN 0132696061

Athens on Trial: The Antidemocratic Tradition in Western Thought by Jennifer Tolbert Roberts. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994. Pp.426. £38 (hardback); £13.95 (paperback). ISBN 0 691 05697 8 and 02919 9

The Rise and Fall of State Socialism: Industrial Society and the Socialist State by David Lane. Cambridge: Polity Press, 1996. Pp.viii + 233; index. £45 (hardback); £12.95 (paperback). ISBN 0 74560 742 X and 743 8

Government and Politics in Africa by William Tordoff. Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1997. Pp.xxii + 326; notes and references; index. £45 (hardback); £14.99 (paperback). ISBN 0 333 69473 2 and 69474 0

Democracy in Zambia: Challenges for the Third Republic edited by Owen Sichone and Bornwell C. Chikulo. Harare: SAPES Books, 1996. Pp.237; index. NP (paperback). ISBN 1 77905 047 X

Mapping the Women's Movement edited by Monica Threlfall. London: Verso/New Left Review, 1996. Pp.vii + 312; index. £44.95 (hardback); £13.95 (paperback). ISBN 1 85984 984 9 and 120 1

Making Democracy Work: Civic Traditions in Modern Italy by Robert Putnam. Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1993. Pp.xiii + 258. £11.95 (paperback). ISBN 0 691037388

Culture and Politics by Oliver H. Woshinsky. New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 1995. Pp.xv + 205; index. £15. ISBNO 13 311366 3

Political Ideas in Modern Britain by Rodney Barker. London: Routledge, 1997 (2nd edn). Pp.352; index; bibliography. £45 (hardback); £14.99 (paperback). ISBN 0 415 161665 and 07121 6     

The Confucian ethic and the spirit of East Asian police: a comparative study in the ideology of democratic policing

This paper is an empirical study in comparative police ideology. It describes cultural qualities that distinguish Taiwan’s idea of democratic policing from comparable ideas in other places. I examine the historical process by which Taiwan’s police came to be organized around the population registry (the hukou). This process has institutionalized a Confucian understanding of civic virtue as an organizing principle in Taiwanese policing. Based on these historical and cultural observations, I formulate an ideal typical model of Taiwanese “policing through virtue” that can be compared to other stereotypical national policing styles such as Britain’s “policing by consent,” America’s discretionary policing, and France’s formalist emphasis on division of power and rule of law.     

Strategic campaigning, closeness, and voter mobilization in U.S. Presidential elections

The scholarly literature on voter mobilization is ambivalent regarding the effects of closeness on turnout. Economic analyses of turnout (i.e. the classic calculus of voting) contend that as elections become closer, voters perceive their participation as more valuable because there is a greater chance that they will cast the deciding vote. Other work argues that voters do not take closeness into account because the probability that their vote uniquely changes the outcome of an election is quite small even in close elections. Still, this second perspective maintains that closeness may increase turnout because elites distribute campaign resources to places where election results could be affected by mobilizing additional supporters. While the latter perspective is theoretically well-developed, empirical support for the notion that elite activity (rather than citizen perceptions) connects closeness and turnout is limited. Using improved measures of closeness and campaign activities, we test for citizen perception and elite mobilization effects on turnout in the context of U.S. Presidential elections. Results show that while closeness has no direct effect on turnout, elites indeed target campaign activities on close states and the asymmetric distribution of resources across states results in higher turnout in battleground states.     

Priming time for Blair? Media priming, Iraq, and leadership evaluations in Britain

Priming is often mentioned in studies of media effects in Britain, yet empirical tests of its extent and nature are lacking; most evidence of priming effects is from the United States. Moreover, research on British elections concludes that the media have little impact on the public’s perceptions of issues, including in the 2005 election. In this paper we argue that priming by the British media has been misconceived and thus not studied adequately. We demonstrate that the issue of the war in Iraq was primed by media coverage in 2005, both as a consequence of the volume of coverage of the issue and its tone. The influence of Iraq was not just long-term, via its impact on confidence in the Labour government or Tony Blair’s reputation, but was also affected by media coverage during the campaign. We also demonstrate that the media’s coverage of Iraq in 2005 influenced voters’ evaluations of Blair by polarizing consumers of the same news. Finally, we find slightly more of an impact of the tone of coverage of Iraq in 2005 but it is moderated by the editorial stance of the newspaper—the editorial stance of British newspapers still seems to matter, suggesting that the dealignment of the British press has not eliminated the influence of reading a newspaper that endorses a party, no matter how qualified that endorsement may be.