A. reviews: general

WARFARE IN THE LATIN EAST, 1192–1291. By CHRISTOPHER MARSHALL. (Cambridge Studies in Medieval Life and Thought, fourth series, 17.) Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1992. xiv, 290pp. 7 figures, 9 plates.

MINORITES RELIGIEUSES DANS L'ESPAGNE MEDIEVALE [ = Revue du Monde Musulman et de la Méditerranée, 63–4]. Aix‐en‐Provence, Edisud, 1992. 292 pp. 150FF.

THE TRANSMISSION OF KNOWLEDGE IN MEDIEVAL CAIRO. By JONATHAN BERKEY. Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1992. x, 238pp. $39.50.

PRAGMATISM IN THE AGE OF JIHAD: THE PRECOLONIAL STATE OF BUNDU. By MICHAEL A. GOMEZ. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1992. xiii, 252 pp. £35.00.

THE CHURCH OF THE EAST AND THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND. A HISTORY OF THE ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY'S ASSYRIAN MISSION. By J.F. COAKLEY. Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1992. £45.00.

WOMEN, ISLAM AND THE STATE. By DENIZ KANDIYOTI. London, Macmillan, 1991. 271pp. + index.

MARRIAGE ON TRIAL: A STUDY OF ISLAMIC FAMILY LAW. By ZIBA MIRHOSSEINI. (Society and Culture in Modern Middle East Series.) London, I.B. Tauris, 1993. 200 pp. + notes and index.

WOMEN IN THE MIDDLE EAST: PERCEPTIONS, REALITIES AND STRUGGLES FOR LIBERATION. Edited by HALEH AFSHAR and MARY MAYNARD. Basingstoke, Macmillan, 1993. xiv, 250pp.

WRITING WOMEN'S WORLDS: BEDOUIN STORIES. By LILA ABU‐LUGHOD. Berkeley, Los Angeles and Oxford, University of California Press, 1993. xxiii, 266 pp., bibliography. $30.00 (hb), $12.00 (pb).

NASSER'S BLESSED MOVEMENT: EGYPT'S FREE OFFICERS AND THE JULY REVOLUTION. By JOEL GORDON. Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1992. vii, 254 pp.

WAR AND PEACE IN ISRAELI POLITICS: LABOR PARTY POSITIONS ON NATIONAL SECURITY. By EFRAIM INBAR. Boulder and London, Lynne Rien‐ner, 1991. 184pp., appendices. £21.95.

TURKEY AND THE WEST: CHANGING POLITICAL AND CULTURAL IDENTITIES. Edited by METIN HEPER, AYSE ÖNCÜ and HEINZ KRAMER. London/New York, Tauris, 1993. xiv, 289 pp.

TURKEY'S NEW GEOPOLITICS: FROM THE BALKANS TO WESTERN CHINA. By GRAHAM E. FULLER and IAN O. LESSER, with PAUL B. HENZE and J.F. BROWN. Boulder and Oxford, Westview Press, 1993. xv, 197pp.

THE SOCIALIST MOVEMENT IN TURKEY, 1960–1980. By IGOR P. LIPOVSKY. Leiden, Brill, 1992. ix, 190pp. $48.75.

ISLAM IN MODERN TURKEY: RELIGION, POLITICS AND LITERATURE IN A SECULAR STATE. Edited by RICHARD TAPPER. London/New York: Tauris, 1991. v, 314 pp.

SIBAWAYH THE PHONOLOGIST: A CRITICAL STUDY OF THE PHONETIC AND PHONOLOGICAL THEORY OF SIBAWAYH AS PRESENTED IN HIS TREATISE AL‐KITAB. By A.A. AL‐NASSIR. London and New York, Kegan Paul International, 1993. xx, 130 pp.

AL‐MADKHAL ILā TAQWīM AL‐LISāN WA‐TA'LīM AL‐BAYāN. By IBN HISHāM AL‐LAKHMī. Edited by JOSÉ PÉREZ LÁZARO. (Fuentes Arábico‐Hispanas, no. 6.) Madrid, Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas & Insti‐tuto de Cooperatión con el Mundo Árabe, 1990. 2 vols. 219; 599pp.     

Terminating federal research and development programs

The barriers to terminating federal research and development vary with the type of program (manpower resource creation, basic or applied research, hardware development) and the functional sector in which it is lodged (defense or civilian). Each has a public/private constituency of sponsors and performers. Some constituencies are much more potent than others. Hence, to kill an R&D program, one must weaken the constituency behind it. Useful strategies for would-be terminators include decremental funding and the amalgamation of competing R&D programs within the same agency.     

Testing Explanations of Strategic Voting in Legislatures: A Reexamination of the Compromise of 1790

A difficult yet prevalent problem in legislative politics is how to assess explanations when observable actions may not represent true (and unobserved) legislator preferences. We present a method for analyzing the validity of theoretical/historical accounts that unifies theory, history, and measurement. We argue that approaches to testing accounts of legislative behavior which are theoretically and historically agnostic are not always best and present an approach which: (1) forms an explicit explanation of behavior (here a simple dynamic voting game) that yields estimable parameter constraints, and (2) tests these constraints using a customized empirical model that is as consistent as possible with the explanation. We demonstrate the method using legislative voting data from the first Congress (1789–1791). Using the idea of sophisticated equivalents from voting theory we subject the traditional account of the “Compromise of 1790” to a statistical test and find that there is reason to doubt the claim that legislators of the time believed the specified log roll was taking place. The results suggest that the capital location and assumption issues were resolved independently.     

Lecture Versus Simulation: Testing the Long-Term Effects

Abstract

Active learning techniques are being use with increasing frequency in the classroom and more time is being dedicated to designing and implementing them. However, the literature still suffers from a lack of rigorous empirical methods to test the effects of simulations. Most of the claimed benefits of utilizing simulations, and other active learning techniques, are improved soft skills and higher order thinking like empathy, confidence, public-speaking abilities, and interpersonal skills—all of which don’t lend themselves well to scientific measurement. This gap in the literature is especially troubling considering that time spent using simulations is time not spent using other methods. This article seeks to test the differing impacts of simulations versus traditional lectures over the long-term using a simple 30-minute simulation and rigorous experimental methods. The most important results show that students learn more initially from a lecture, but that students who were exposed to the simulation were better able to retain that information over the long-term.