Book reviews

Graham E. Fuller, The Center of the Universe. The Geopolitics of Iran, Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1991, xv + 301pp., $35.00 hardback, $18.50 paperback.

Tim McDaniel, Autocracy, Modernization and Revolution in Russia and Iran, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1991, x + 235pp., $29.95.

Steven G. Marks, Road to Power: the Trans‐Siberian Railroad and the Colonization of Asian Russia, 1850–1917, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1991, xxiii + 235pp., $31.95.

Cyril E. Black, Louis Dupree, Elizabeth Endicott‐West, Daniel C. Matuszewski, Eden Naby and Arthur N. Waldron, The Modernization of Inner Asia, Sharpe, Armonk, 1991, xviii + 405 pp., $49.95.

Audrey L. Altstadt, The Azerbaijani Turks: Power and Identity Under Russian Rule. Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution Press, 1992, xxiv + 331 pp., $18.95

G. A. Khidoiatov, Moia rodnaia istoriia. Oqituwchi, Tashkent, 1990, 304 pp. + colour plates.

Robert L. Canfield (ed.), Turko‐Persia in Historical Perspective. A School of American Research Book. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991, xiv + 256 pp., $54.00.     

Ethnic conflict & civic life: a review essay

Academic discourse on ethnic conflict in India has, all too often, amounted to little more than platitudes, hand-wringing, and blame-casting. Far too seldom do we see an investigation of the topic that is firmly grounded in both theory and on-the-ground data collection: a soberly argued, articulately presented work examining the local circumstances that make Hindu–Muslim conflict more or less likely to flare into bloodshed. Even apart from the added timeliness produced by last year's conflagration in Gujarat, Ashutosh Varshney's new book, Ethnic Conflict & Civic Life: Hindus & Muslims in India, is a welcome contribution to a field sorely in need of such creative, clear-headed, and academically rigorous thinking. It provides the opportunity, moreover, to review the existing schools of thought attempting to explain ethnic conflict, and highlight their inadequacies as a comprehensive framework for analysis.     

Insurgency and Counterinsurgency in Russia: Contending Paradigms and Current Perspectives

The most outstanding trend in contemporary conflicts has been the fusion of the threats from terrorism and insurgency. Insurgent threats in many places on the globe today are mistaken as terrorist threats, and counterterrorism (CT) is deployed as the local insurgents come increasingly to resemble their transnational terrorist partners. Such an emphasis on the role of terrorism in insurgencies and the undue focus on CT risks strengthening, rather than severing, the connection between local insurgents and transnational terrorists. Russia's counterterrorist strategy inadvertently transformed the conflict from a contained, nationalist rebellion to a sprawling jihadi insurgency and perversely encouraged the group to resort even more to terrorist tactics. The Russian counterinsurgency has been unsuccessful, as the insurgents are neither demolished as a force nor are they isolated by society. Losing the hearts and minds among the Chechen people is a key reason behind why the Russian operation in Chechnya suffered failures. Too little attention was paid to winning over the “hearts and minds” of the people.     

The Impact of Earnings Disregards on the Behavior of Low‐Income Families

This paper investigates the impact of changes in earnings disregards for welfare assistance received by single mothers following welfare reform in 1996. Some states adopted much higher earnings disregards (women could work full‐time and still receive substantial welfare benefits), while other states did not. We explore the effect of these changes on women's labor supply and income using several data sources and multiple estimation strategies. Our results indicate these changes had little effect on labor supply or income. We show this is because surprisingly few women used the earnings disregards. We discuss several explanations for why this might occur.