Reviews

Michael Mandelbaum (ed.), Post‐Communism: Four Perspectives. New York: Council on Foreign Relations, 1996, vi + 208 pp.

Raymond Taras, Consolidating Democracy in Poland. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1996, xii + 276 pp., £44.50 h/b, £13.50 p/b.

Jane Leftwich Curry & Luba Fajfer (eds), Poland's Permanent Revolution: People vs. Elites, 1956–1990. Lanham: American University Press, 1995, x + 294 pp., $64.50 h/b, $27.50 p/b.

Ben Slay (ed.), De‐monopolization and Competition Policy in Post‐Communist Economies. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1996, ix + 245 pp.

Éva Ehrlich & Gabor Révész, Hungary and its Prospects, 1985–2005. Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó, 1995, 166 pp., $29.00.

Simon Clarke (ed.), Conflict and Change in the Russian Industrial Enterprise. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 1996, ix + 298 pp., £45.00.

Maurice Ernst, Michael Alexeev & Paul Marer, Transforming the Core: Restructuring Industrial Enterprises in Russia and Central Europe. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1996, xx + 315 pp., £13.50.

John S. Strong & John R. Meyer, Moving to Market: Restructuring Transport in the Former Soviet Union. London: Harvard University Press, 1996, ix + 237 pp, £19.95.

Raymond J. Struyk (ed.), Economic Restructuring of the Former Soviet Bloc. The Case of Housing. Washington: The Urban Institute Press, 1996, xviii + 373 pp., £51.95 h/b, £22.95 p/b.

Istvan Pogany (ed.), Human Rights in Eastern Europe. Aldershot: Edward Elgar, 1995, xv + 255 pp., £39.95.

Lucjan Dobroszycki & Jeffrey S. Gurock (eds), The Holocaust in the Soviet Union. Studies and Sources on the Destruction of the Jews in the Nazi‐Occupied Territories of the USSR, 1941–1945. London: M. E. Sharpe, 1993, xii + 260 pp., $59.95 h/b, $24.95 p/b.

Robert Bideleux & Richard Taylor (eds), European Integration and Disintegration: East and West. London and New York: Routledge, 1996, xii + 298 pp., £45.00 h/b, £13.99 p/b.

F. Stephen Larrabee (ed.), The Volatile Powder Keg: Balkan Security after the Cold War. Washington, DC: The American University Press, 1994, xxviii + 320 pp., $27.50.

John F. Wright, Suzanne Goldenberg & Richard Schofield (eds), Transcaucasian Boundaries. London: UCL Press, 1996, vii + 237 pp.

Juris Dreifelds, Latvia in Transition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1996, ix + 214 pp., £40.00 h/b, £14.95 p/b.

Alfred Erich Senn, Gorbachev's Failure in Lithuania. New York: St Martin's Press, 1995, xx + 188 pp., $39.95.

Neil Melvin, Russians beyond Russia: The Politics of National Identity. London: Royal Institute of International Affairs, 1995, vi + 170 pp., £11.99.

Kathleen E. Smith, Remembering Stalin's Victims. Popular Memory and the End of the USSR. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1996, xv + 220 pp., £23.50.

Martin McCauley, Stalin and Stalinism, 2nd edn. London and New York: Longman, 1995, xiii + 142 pp., £5.99.

Christopher Read, From Tsar to Soviets. The Russian People and Their Revolution, 1917–1921. London: UCL Press, 1996, vi + 330 pp.

C. M. Hann, The Skeleton at the Feast. Contributions to East European Anthropology. Canterbury: Centre for Social Anthropology and Computing, University of Kent at Canterbury, 1995, xv + 250 pp., £10.00.

Irena Maryniak, Spirit of the Totem: Religion and Myth in Soviet Fiction, 1964–1988. London: The Modern Humanities Research Association, Texts and Dissertations Series, Volume 39, 1995, x + 186 pp., £25.00.

Nancy Condee (ed.), Soviet Hieroglyphics: Visual Culture in Late Twentieth‐Century Russia. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1995, xxv + 179 pp., £14.99.     

The Reliability of Chronological Age Determination by Means of Mandibular Third Molar Development in Subjects in Croatia*

Abstract: The aim of this study was to determine the development of the mandibular third molar and its relation to chronological age. The evaluated material consisted of 979 orthopantomograms of patients of Croatian Caucasian origin aged between 5.7 and 14.6 years. Third molar developmental stages were evaluated according to the stages proposed by Nolla. The frequencies of different stages of mineralization and the mean value of the mineralization of the mandibular third molars with regard to age, gender, and size of the mandible were determined and the coefficient of correlation determined between the age of the subject and the stage of development of the mandibular molars. Statistically significant correlation was determined between mineralization of the mandibular third molar and chronological age of the subjects (boys, mandibular left third molar r = 0.779, right third molar r = 0.793; girls, mandibular left third molar r = 0.746, right third molar r = 0.725). It can be concluded that the accuracy of age estimation based on Nolla’s method is applicable for Croatian children.     

Candidate ballot information and election outcomes: the Czech case

This study measures the importance of candidate characteristics listed on ballots for a candidate's position on a slate, for preferential votes received by a candidate, and, ultimately, for getting elected. We focus on the effects of gender, various types of academic titles, and also several novel properties of candidates' names. Using data on over 200,000 candidates competing in recent Czech municipal board and regional legislature elections, and conditioning on slate fixed effects, we find that ballot cues play a stronger role in small municipalities than in large cities and regions, despite the general agreement on higher candidate salience in small municipalities. We also quantify the electoral advantage of a slate being randomly listed first on a ballot.     

Reinventing ‘new’ Europe: Baltic perspectives on transatlantic security reconfigurations

This article examines the self-positioning of the three Baltic states in international politics in relation to the major structural pressures challenging the status quo of the transatlantic security configuration. The constitutive role of the Russia-Georgia war of 2008, the global economic recession, the debt crisis in the eurozone, and the shifting policy preferences and force projection of the United States towards Asia are explored as the key sources of the emerging Baltic security predicament. The empirical conclusions of the poststructuralist discourse analysis conducted for this study demonstrate how the Baltic states, in particular Estonia, have recently come to redefine the contents of ‘new’ Europe, thereby shifting the extant fault lines within the European Union.     

The Nato enlargement debate in the media and civil‐military relations in the Czech Republic and Slovakia

This article links the NATO enlargement debate to the course of civil‐military relations in the Czech Republic and Slovakia. After a general analysis of civil‐military relations and the media, it looks at the NATO membership issues discussed across seven dimensions and their impact on relations between civil society and the military. It concludes that a gap existed between the governing elite and the public in both countries.     

Money, organization and the state: The partial cartelization of party politics in Slovenia

A detailed analysis of party organization, party funding and voting behaviour in parliament in Slovenia indicates a partial cartelization of Slovene party politics. In line with the cartel thesis, parties in Slovenia are heavily dependent on the state for their finances and there is evidence that parties have used the resources of the state to limit competition. Nonetheless, there is much less evidence of cartelization in terms of party organization indicating more cartelization in the party system as a whole than within individual parties.