BOOK REVIEWS

Turner's turn with the CIA

Stansfield Turner: Secrecy and Democracy: The CIA in Transition Houghton Mifflin Co., Boston, 1985,304 p., $16.95.

007s Analysis of KAL's Flight 007

Alexander Dallin: Black Box: KAL 00 7 and the Superpowers University of California Press, Berkeley, 1985, 130 p., $14.95

Oliver Clubb: KAL Flight 007: The Hidden Story The Permanent Press, Sag Harbor, N.Y., 1985, 132 p., $14.95

Knowing who's who

Ernest May: Knowing One's Enemies Princeton University Press, 1985, 561 p., $29.50

British intelligence from A To Z

Anthony Read and David Fisher: Colonel Z: The Secret Life of a Master of Spies Viking, New York, 1985, 264 p., $17.95

Setting the record straight

Nigel West: A Thread of Deceit: Espionage Myths of World War II Random House, New York, 1985, 285 p., $16.95

Unreliable Witness: Espionage Myths of the Second World War In England: Weidenfeld and Nicholson, 1984, 275 p., £8.95.

The catcher in the lie

Paul Ekman: Telling Lies: Clues to Deceit in the Marketplace, Politics, and Marriage W. W. Norton &; Company, N.Y., 1985, 320 p., $17.95

The cat's meow

William M. Leary: Perilous Missions: Civil Air Transport and CIA Covert Operations in Asia. The University of Alabama Press, Birmingham, Ala., 1984, 281 p., $22.50

Proceed with caution

Ernest Volkman: Warriors of the Night William Morrow and Company, Inc., New York, 1985, 434 p., $17.95

Beyond what the facts will bear

Walter Laqueur: A World of Secrets: Uses and Limits of Intelligence New York: Basic Books, 1985, 404 p., $21.95     

The use of “security” jargon in sustainable development discourse: evidence from UN Commission on Sustainable Development

The premise of discourse theory in environmental policy is that realities are shaped by language. One discourse that is gaining popularity is the concept of environmental security, a discourse that presupposes environmental threats as urgent. The attempt to cast environmental issues as security issues has resulted in the common use of security jargon, idioms, and metaphors in policymakers’ and politicians’ statements. Various analyses attempt to identify why natural resources are discussed in terms and language of security. However, far fewer studies have attempted to identify differences in the manner in which different types of resources are incorporated into such a discourse by different actors and what variables contribute to this process. This study examines the construction of the security references, security arguments, and language in the statements of the Commission on Sustainable Development dealing with energy and water. We found that international organizations and Non-governmental Organizations were somewhat more likely than state actors to use security references to discuss sustainability issues. The issues securitized are not the traditional high political ones such as regime stability and conflicts, but rather issues more associated with human security, such as access to renewable energy, affordable food, and clean water. The fact that in many statements examined the use of security references was not associated with any existential threat and hence did not comply with the conditions of the Copenhagen School raises some doubts as to whether security language in these statements implies a true securitization move. We also examined whether the use of the term “security” by states was correlated with greater resource scarcity or vulnerability. In the case of water-related sessions, the evidence was mixed, depending on the choice of dependent variable. The results from energy security regressions, however, were inconsistent with the hypothesis that greater scarcity or vulnerability induces more use of security language.     

Long-term effects of the Moving to Opportunity residential mobility experiment on crime and delinquency

Objectives

Using data from a randomized experiment, to examine whether moving youth out of areas of concentrated poverty, where a disproportionate amount of crime occurs, prevents involvement in crime.

Methods

We draw on new administrative data from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Moving to Opportunity (MTO) experiment. MTO families were randomized into an experimental group offered a housing voucher that could only be used to move to a low-poverty neighborhood, a Section 8 housing group offered a standard housing voucher, and a control group. This paper focuses on MTO youth ages 15–25 in 2001 (n = 4,643) and analyzes intention to treat effects on neighborhood characteristics and criminal behavior (number of violent- and property-crime arrests) through 10 years after randomization.

Results

We find the offer of a housing voucher generates large improvements in neighborhood conditions that attenuate over time and initially generates substantial reductions in violent-crime arrests and sizable increases in property-crime arrests for experimental group males. The crime effects attenuate over time along with differences in neighborhood conditions.

Conclusions

Our findings suggest that criminal behavior is more strongly related to current neighborhood conditions (situational neighborhood effects) than to past neighborhood conditions (developmental neighborhood effects). The MTO design makes it difficult to determine which specific neighborhood characteristics are most important for criminal behavior. Our administrative data analyses could be affected by differences across areas in the likelihood that a crime results in an arrest.     

Random Coefficient Models for Time-Series-Cross-Section Data: Monte Carlo Experiments

Jonathan N. Katz Division of the Humanities and Social Sciences, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA 91125 e-mail: jkatz{at}caltech.edu e-mail: nathaniel.beck{at}nyu.edu (corresponding author) This article considers random coefficient models (RCMs) fortime-series–cross-section data. These models allow forunit to unit variation in the model parameters. The heart ofthe article compares the finite sample properties of the fullypooled estimator, the unit by unit (unpooled) estimator, andthe (maximum likelihood) RCM estimator. The maximum likelihoodestimator RCM performs well, even where the data were generatedso that the RCM would be problematic. In an appendix, we showthat the most common feasible generalized least squares estimatorof the RCM models is always inferior to the maximum likelihoodestimator, and in smaller samples dramatically so. Authors' note: We gratefully acknowledge the financial supportof the National Science Foundation. Katz also acknowledges thesupport of the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences.We are thankful to Jake Bowers, Rob Franzese, Andy Gelman, SandyGordon, Bill Greene, and Luke Keele for comments; to Larry Bartelsfor always reminding us that our judgment may outperform thedata; as well as to the anonymous reviewers of Political Analysis.     

Flaws in the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's rationale for supporting the development and approval of BiDil as a treatment for heart failure only in black patients

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration's (FDA) rationale for supporting the development and approval of BiDil (a combination of hydralazine hydrochloride and isosorbide dinitrate; H-I) for heart failure specifically in black patients was based on under-powered, post hoc subgroup analyses of two relatively old trials (V-HeFT I and II), which were further complicated by substantial covariate imbalances between racial groups. Indeed, the only statistically significant difference observed between black and white patients was found without any adjustment for potential confounders in samples that were unlikely to have been adequately randomized. Meanwhile, because the accepted baseline therapy for heart failure has substantially improved since these trials took place, their results cannot be combined with data from the more recent trial (A-HeFT) amongst black patients alone. There is therefore little scientific evidence to support the approval of BiDil only for use in black patients, and the FDA's rationale fails to consider the ethical consequences of recognizing racial categories as valid markers of innate biological difference, and permitting the development of group-specific therapies that are subject to commercial incentives rather than scientific evidence or therapeutic imperatives. This paper reviews the limitations in the scientific evidence used to support the approval of BiDil only for use in black patients; calls for further analysis of the V-HeFT I and II data which might clarify whether responses to H-I vary by race; and evaluates the consequences of commercial incentives to develop racialized medicines. We recommend that the FDA revise the procedures they use to examine applications for race-based therapies to ensure that these are based on robust scientific claims and do not undermine the aims of the 1992 Revitalization Act.     

THE POTENTIAL DEMISE OF ANOTHER NATURAL MONOPOLY: RETHINKING THE COLLECTIVE ADMINISTRATION OF PERFORMING RIGHTS

In most countries the right to publicly perform music is notadministered individually by the copyright holders but rathercollectively by performing rights organizations (PROs). Thecommon explanation behind the proliferation of collective administrationis that some aspects of copyright administrations are naturalmonopolies. It is often argued that individual administrationis impracticable or at least non-economical. Collective administrationis therefore promoted as the most efficient method for licensing,monitoring and enforcing those rights. In addition, becausethe market is a natural monopoly, regulation, rather than anattempt to foster competition, is thought to be the optimalregulatory response. This is the first in a series of two articlesthat critically analyzes this natural monopoly argument. Inthis article I argue that the case for PROs is not as straightforwardas it is assumed to be. I show that many of the underlying costefficiencies that are attributed to PROs are usually simplyassumed and, in many cases, could be equally achieved underless restrictive arrangements.