Reviews

Kazimierz Z. Poznanski, Technology, Competition, and the Soviet Bloc in the World Market, Berkeley; University of California Press, 1987, ix + 226 pp. $13.95 p/b.

Philip Hanson, Western Economic Statecraft in East West Relations, Chatham House Papers, No. 40, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1988, vi + 85 pp., £6.95 (paperback).

Iliana Zloch‐Christy, Debt Problems of Eastern Europe, Cambridge University Press. Cambridge, New York, New Rochelle, 1987, xix + 220 pp., £25.00, $37.50.

Franklyn D. Holzman, The economics of Soviet bloc trade and finance. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1988, xi + 215 pp., $33.50.

Ed A. Hewitt, Reforming the Soviet Economy: Equality versus Efficiency, Washington: The Brookings Institution, 1988, xi + 404 pp., £36.95 h/b, £16.95 p/b.

Bob Arnot, Controlling Soviet Labour: Experimental Change from Brezhnev to Gorbachev. London: Macmillan Press, 1988, xv + 305 pp., £35.00.

Elizabeth Teague, Solidarity and the Soviet Worker. London, Croom Helm Publishers Ltd. 1988, 378 pp., £30.00.

Fred Singleton ed. Environmental Problems in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. Boulder, London: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1987, viii + 208 pp., £24.00.

Robert J. Mclntyre, Bulgaria: Politics, Economics and Society. London: Pinter Publishers, 1988, xxii + 201 pp., £25.00 h/b, £8.95 p/b.

Ingemar Lindahl, The Soviet Union and the Nordic Nuclear‐ Weapons‐Free‐Zone Proposal. Foreward by Vojtech Mastny. London and Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1988, xii + 227 pp., £33.00.

William Zimmerman, Open Borders, Nonalignment, and the Political Evolution of Yugoslavia. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1987, ix + 158 pp., £14.70.

Helmuth Dahm, Sozialistische Krisentheorie. Die Sowjetische Wende—ein Trugbild. Sammlung Wissenschaft und Gegenwart, Munchen: Erich Wewel Verlag, 1987, 292 pp. DM48.00 p/b.     

A tale of two deserts: the sahara and the gobi

The Raiders of the Sarhad. By Brigadier‐General R. E. H. Dyer, C.B. London: H. F. and G. Witherby. 1921. Price: 15s. net.

Two Years in Kurdistan: Experiences of a Political Officer, 1918–1920. By Captain W. E. Hay. (Sidgwick and Jackson.)

An Administrator in the Making: James Saumarez Mann, 1893–1920. Edited by his Father. Longmans, Green and Co. 1921. Price: 15s. net.     

THE MYSTERIES OF THE GOBI DESERT

An account of archaeological finds in two great Chinese deserts, the Gobi and the Lop. They now seem utterly inhospitable, yet they were once inhabited, witness the abandoned city of Lou Lan in the Lop, discovered by Sven Hedin in 1893 and subsequently further excavated by Aurel Stein. The graves and mummies discovered there and in the Gobi have given rise to one of the great mysteries of Asia. Who are these people, who lived in the area and seemingly predated the arrival of Chinese settlers by some 2,000 years? Incredibly there is significant evidence to suggest they could be Celtic.     

Psychopathy among prisoners in England and Wales

Most research into psychopathy among prisoners is based on selected samples. It remains unclear whether prevalences are lower among European populations. This study aimed to measure the prevalence of psychopathy, and the distribution and correlates of psychopathic traits in a representative national sample of prisoners. Psychopathy was measured using the revised Psychopathy Checklist (PCL-R) in a second stage, cross-sectional survey of prisoners in England and Wales in 1997 (n = 496). Poisson regression analysis was carried out to examine independent associations between correlates and PCL-R total and factor scores. The prevalence of categorically diagnosed psychopathy at a cut off of 30 was 7.7% (95%CI 5.2–10.9) in men and 1.9% (95%CI 0.2–6.9) in women. Psychopathic traits were less prevalent among women. They were correlated with younger age, repeated imprisonment, detention in higher security, disciplinary infractions, antisocial, narcissistic, histrionic, and schizoid personality disorders, and substance misuse, but not neurotic disorders or schizophrenia. The study concluded that psychopathy and psychopathic traits are prevalent among male prisoners in England and Wales but lower than in most previous studies using selected samples. However, most correlates with psychopathic traits were similar to other studies. Psychopathy identifies the extreme of a spectrum of social and behavioral problems among prisoners.     

Nazi archaeology abroad: German prehistorians and the international dynamics of collaboration

Examining the work of German prehistoric archaeologists during the Third Reich reveals the importance of international scholarship in understanding how and why professional academics collaborated with the Nazi regime. Hare's article focuses on a specific cohort of German prehistorians at the University of Kiel and the Schleswig-Holstein Museum of Antiquities whose work was especially valued by Nazi ideologues. Through a study of their correspondence with colleagues at home and abroad, it identifies four key ways in which the international academic sphere informed collaboration at home, including the demands of foreign networks, the politics of cross-border projects and conferences, concerns about the reputation of German academia and the involvement of German archaeologists in occupied countries during the Second World War. Ultimately, this case study of Kiel archaeologists working during the 1930s and 1940s shows that engagement on the international level led both German and foreign scholars to make accommodations with the regime, but also at times led away from Nazi goals and provided a foundation for rebuilding the discipline after 1945.     

The future of the intelligence analysis task

Abstract

Information technology will have a significant impact on the intelligence analysis workflow, skills, and organization in the next couple of decades. In future, instead of ingesting information themselves, analysts will use a range of information tools to add value to data. Future analysts will need less knowledge of subject matter, and more general reasoning skills. The future task will involve more creativity, and less focus on detail, than today.     

What Ordered Optimal Classification reveals about ideological structure,cleavages, and polarization in the American mass public

This paper develops an extension of Poole’s (Polit Anal 8(3):211–237, 2000) Optimal Classification (OC) scaling procedure to the analysis of polytomous or ordered choice data. This type of data is regularly encountered in public opinion and expert surveys, legislative and judicial bodies where abstention is relevant, and measures of policy that are coded along ordinal scales. OC is nonparametric and requires only minimal assumptions about voters’ utility functions and the error term. As such, Ordered Optimal Classification (OOC) provides a flexible modeling strategy to estimate latent ideological spaces from ordinal choice data. OOC is also easily estimated in multidimensional space without identifying restrictions. After describing the OOC procedure, we perform a series of Monte Carlo experiments and apply the method to analyze survey data from the 2015 Cooperative Congressional Election Study. We then conclude with a discussion of how scholars can utilize OOC in future work involving multidimensional spatial models of choice.