Literary Reviews

Tyranny and redemption. Anthills of the Savannah. Chinua Achebe. London: William Heinemann. 1987. 233pp. £10.95hb

Suffering with stoicism: Kenyan histories. Coming to Birth. Marjorie Oludhe Macgoye. London: Virago Press. 1986. 150pp. £3.95pb

The Present Moment. Marjorie Oludhe Macgoye. London: Heinemann. 1987. 155pp. £10.95hb

The politics of the soul. Search Sweet Country. B Kojo Laing. London: Picador. 1987. 318pp. £3.95pb

Images of Istanbul. The Sea‐Crossed Fisherman. Yashar Kemal. Translated from the Turkish by Thilda Kemal. London: Methuen. 1986. 289pp. £3.95pb

The Birds Have Also Gone. Yashar Kemal. Translated from the Turkish by Thilda Kemal. London: Collins Harvill. 1987. 122pp. £8.95hb

Enemies within. War in the Land of Egypt. Yusuf al Qa'id. Translated from the Arabic by Olive and Lome Kenny and Christopher Tingley. London: Al Saqi. 1986. 192pp. £4.95pb

Frustrated fantasies. Heartbreak Tango: A Serial. Manuel Puig. Translated from the Spanish by Suzanne Jill Levine London: Arean. 1987. 224pp. £2.95pb

Pubis Angelical. Manuel Puig. Translated from the Spanish by Elena Brunet. London: Faber and Faber. 1987. 236pp. £9.95hb

Tending towards one voice. Faces and Masks. Eduardo Galeano. Translated from the Spanish by Cedric Belfrage. London: Quartet. 1987. 304pp. £14.95hb

Land of riches. Cuzcatlan. Manlio Axgueta. Translated from the Spanish by Clark Hansen. London: Chatto and Windus. 1987. 255pp. £11.95hb

Autobiography of the age. The Infinite Rehearsal. Wilson Harris. London: Faber and Faber. 1987. 88pp. £8.95hb

Caribbean childhoods. Summer Lightning and Other Stories. Olive Senior. Harlow, England: Longman. 1986. 134pp. £2.95pb

Whole of a Morning Sky. Grace Nichols. London: Virago. 1987. 156pp. £3.50pb

Traumas of partition. Kingdom's End and Other Stories. Saadat Hasan Manto. Translated from the Urdu by Khalid Hasan. London/New York: Verso. 1987. 257pp. £U.95/S18.95hb

Mirroring Pakistan: reflections and distortions. The Thirteenth House. Adam Zameenzad. London: Fourth Estate. 1987. 202pp. £10.95hb

Black Mirrors. Farooq Khalid. Translated from the Urdu by Eric Cyprian. London: Jonathan Cape. 1987. 285pp. £10.95hb

Christopher Shackle. School of Oriental and African Studies, London. Prize poetry. Under Another Sky: An Anthology of Commonwealth Poetry Prize Winners. Edited by Alastair Niven. Manchester and New York: Carcanet. 1987. 103pp. £6.96/S10.95pb     

Policy framing: Interest groups and the lead up to 1996 inter‐governmental conference

This article (completed before the Amsterdam Summit in June 1997) examines the ongoing attempts by key non‐governmental actors to influence the agenda of the 1996 Inter‐governmental Confederence (IGC). This IGC constitutes a good example of the ‘garbage‐can’ model of organisational choice, characterised by solutions chasing problems and problems chasing solutions. In the absence of a fixed agenda, key groups such as businesses, trades unions and environmentalists compete to ‘frame’ the IGC debates in a manner consistent with their own interests. Building on the policy fashion of the 1980s and 1990s, business has been particularly successful in establishing ‘competititveness’ as a central theme. Other groups, such as environmentalists and trade union may secure ‘side payments’ in return for continued support for European integration. As the IGC progresses, groups are likely to reformulate their preferences and engage in continuous ad hoc coalition‐building in order to achieve their objectives.     

Hong Kong between East and West

The Hong Kong Basic Law: Blueprint for ‘Stability and Prosperity’ under Chinese Sovereignty, edited by Ming K. Chan and David J. Clark. (Hong Kong Becoming China Series) M. E. Sharpe, New York, 1991. xv + 311 pp. $45. ISBN 0–87332–835–3.

The China‐Hong Kong Connection: The Key to China's Open‐Door Policy, by Yun‐Wing Sung. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1991. xiv + 183 pp. £27.50. ISBN 0–521–38245–9.

The Making of Hong Kong Society: Three Studies of Class Formation in Early Hong Kong, by W. K. Chan. Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1991. viii + 251 pp. £32.50. ISBN 0–19–827320–7.     

Territorialising Sustainable Development: The Politics of Land-use Planning in Laos

Since the emergence of the sustainable development paradigm in the late 1980s, land-use planning has become a key arena for political debates over society-environment interactions and, in practice, an important means for territorialisation projects. The paper reviews the main planning approaches that have been employed over the past three decades in the Lao People's Democratic Republic, a country that has long been viewed as a valuable policy testing ground for the proponents of sustainable development. It highlights three concurrent territorialisation projects that have shaped the history of land-use planning and have fuelled tensions between central and subnational governments and local actors, national and foreign institutions, and land suitability and sustainability approaches. The paper argues that the latter tensions reflect an important dynamism and reactivity in the planning arena. It concludes that the capacity of land-use planners to adapt to specific contexts and evolving socio-environmental challenges should be harnessed in order to reconcile conflicting approaches to planning and, perhaps, to achieve sustainable development.     

Freedom of information: Developments in the United Kingdom

The great Iranian whodunit

Edward Shirley (pseud.): Know Thine Enemy: A Spy's Journey into Revolutionary Iran, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York, 1997, 247 p. $24.00

The big con game

John Barron: Operation SOLO: The FBI's Man in the Kremlin, Regnery Publishing, Inc., Washington, D.C., 1996, 368 p., $24.95.     

Book reviews

Ephraim Maisel, The Foreign Office and Foreign Policy 1991–1926 (Brighton: Sussex Academic Press 1994), £35. ISBN 1–898723–04–4.

Timothy P. Maga, The World of Jimmy Carter: U.S. Foreign Policy 1977–1981 (West Haven, CT: University of New Haven Press, 1994). 189 pp. ISBN 0–936385–23–0.

Michael Leifer, Dictionary of the Modern Politics of South‐East Asia (London and New York: Routledge, 1995), xii + 271pp. £45. ISBN 0–415–04219–4.

Christopher C. Harmon and David Tucker (eds.), Statecraft and Power: Essays in Honor of Harold W. Rood (Lanham and London: University Press of America with the National Institute for Public Policy, 1994), 284pp ISBN 0–8191–8718–6.     

Yeager,M. P. and Carter,C. (Eds) (2012). Pacts and Alliances in History. Diplomatic Strategy and the Politics of Coalitions

This article disputes the assertions of the new Reagan literature. Drawing upon radio broadcasts, speeches, correspondences, and documents from his presidential library, as well as recently published diaries from his White House years, it argues that Ronald Reagan had no grand strategy in the years 1976–1984. Indeed, throughout this period, he possessed two less-than-grand strategies I label “peace through strength” and “a crusade for freedom.” Each of these contained its own respective set of goals and employed its own corresponding set of tactics. Yet there was no grand strategy for ending the Cold War.     

Contested or established? A comparison of legislative powers across regimes

In research on authoritarian institutions, legislatures are portrayed as capable of resolving dilemmas between the leader and opposition members. Nevertheless, repeated interactions between a leader and their ruling coalition can lead to both contested dictatorships, in which institutions constrain the leader, and established dictatorships, in which the leader exercises near-complete control. To date, however, no one has examined the patterns by which powers vary across legislatures in different settings and over time. Using data from the Varieties of Democracy Project on legislative powers between 1900 and 2017, we conceptualize changes in the powers afforded to the national congress to characterize the development of regimes in either direction. The study expounds on the content of legislatures across regimes and the ways in which they change, encouraging scholars to further consider the relationship between regime dynamics and legislative institutionalization.     

Legal,Technical, and Interpretational Considerations in the Forensic Analysis of Viruses

The forensic evaluation of viruses presents new challenges to the forensic science community. Although many criminal cases have been adjudicated involving the deliberate transmission of viruses, especially HIV, this review provides a general approach to viral forensics, especially in light of significant biodefense challenges. Newly emerging techniques of nucleic acid sequencing are discussed in a forensic context. Human mitochondrial DNA analysis, wherein mixed profiles are routinely assessed in a forensic context, provides the groundwork for an interpretational approach to the issue of mixed DNA sequences. The importance of phylogenetic classification is discussed as both providing an integrated graphical depiction of the structure of viral nucleic acid variation as well as offering a tool that can be used to assess the relatedness of complex populations of nucleic acids.     

Cue utilization in the product authentication process: a framework and research agenda for product counterfeit prevention

Scholars suggest that consumers rely on heuristics to evaluate products. They employ both extrinsic and intrinsic cues to evaluate product quality and utilize the same cues to differentiate between counterfeit and genuine products. This has far-reaching public health, economic, product authentication, and even criminal justice policy implications due to the emerging ideas of criminalizing the purchase of counterfeit goods. In order to predict the viability and the possible effects of such a policy, a thorough understanding of consumer attitudes toward counterfeits, purchase motivation, and behavior, as well as of their ability to distinguish between genuine and counterfeit goods, is imperative. Building on cue utilization theory, this article develops a framework for understanding how consumers develop and utilize heuristics for product authentication in the context of intellectual property infringements and outlines a research agenda. Additionally, it helps to inform the development of prevention and enforcement efforts, in consumer education and enforcement agent training, as well as a basis for policy decisions.