Reviews

Susan Gross Solomon (ed.), Pluralism in the Soviet Union. Essays in Honour of H. Gordon Skilling. London: Macmillan, 1983, xiii + 179 pp. £20.00.

George Yaney. The Urge to Mobilize: Agrarian Reform in Russia, 1861–1930. Urbana, Chicago, London: University of Illinois Press, 1982, xii + 599 pp. £18.75.

Roy Medvedev, All Stalin's Men. Translated by Harold Shukman. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1983, x + 184 pp. £8.95.

Robert F. Byrnes (ed.), After Brezhnev: Sources of Soviet Conduct in the 1980s. London: Frances Pinter, 1983, xviii + 457 pp., bibliography and index, h/b £16.50, p/b £6.95.

Basile Kerblay, Modern Soviet Society (translated by Rupert Swyer). London: Methuen, 1983, xxvi + 321 pp. h/b £16.00, p/b £7.95.

Max Hayward, Writers in Russia: 1917–1978. Edited and with an introduction by Patricia Blake. London: Harvill Press, 1983, lxxvi + 340 pp. £7.95.

Dina R. Spechler. Permitted Dissent in the USSR. Novy mir and the Soviet Regime. New York: Praeger, 1982, xxiv + 296 pp. $27.95.

Everett M. Jacobs (ed.), Soviet Local Politics and Government, London: George Allen & Unwin, 1983, xiv + 225 pp. £15.00, $28.50.

Alan H. Smith, The Planned Economies of Eastern Europe. London: Croom Helm, 1983, 249 pp. £16.95.

John Löwenhardt, The Soviet Politburo. Translated by Dymphna Clark, Edinburgh: Canongate, 1982, 152 pp. £7.95.

Stephen Clissold, Djilas: the progress of a revolutionary. Introduction by Hugh Setton‐Watson. London: Temple Smith, 1983, 343 pp. £15.00.

Steven L. Burg, Conflict and Cohesion in Socialist Yugoslavia: Political Decision Making Since 1966. Princeton, N. J.: Princeton U. P., 1983, xii + 365 pp. $49.00.

Elizabeth Kridl Valkenier: The Soviet Union and the Third World. New York: Praeger, 1983, 185 pp. $21.95.

Dorothy Atkinson, The End Of The Russian Land Commune, 1905–30. Stanford, Calf.: Stanford UP, 1983, xii + 457 pp. $29.50.

Alain Touraine, et al., Solidarity: Poland 1980–81, Cambridge and Paris: CUP jointly with Editions de la Maison des Sciences de l'Homme, 1983, xvii + 203 pp. paperback £6.95.     

Richtlinienkonforme Auslegung und unmittelbare Wirkung von EG-Richtlinien in der Rechtsprechung der österreichischen Höchstgerichte

Die unmittelbare Wirkung von EG-Richtlinien sowie die Auslegung nationalen Rechts in ihrem Licht sind Instrumente zur Herstellung von Gemeinschaftsrechtskonformit?t, die in der Rechtsprechung der ?sterreichischen H?chstgerichte sehr h?ufig zur Anwendung kommen. Der vorliegende Beitrag soll einerseits den, mancherorts immer noch bestrittenen, "Vorrang" der richtlinienkonformen Auslegung argumentativ untermauern sowie zur Kl?rung offener Fragen zu Zul?ssigkeit und Durchführung richtlinienkonformer Rechtsfortbildung beitragen. Weiters soll gezeigt werden, dass die H?chstgerichte sowohl in der methodisch notwendigen Abgrenzung der beiden Instrumente als auch der konkreten Anwendung richtlinienkonformer Auslegung nicht sehr einheitlich und nur wenig transparent urteilen.     

Constructing and contesting City of London power: NGOs and the emergence of noisier financial politics

Existing literature on the City of London has tended to focus on its ‘structural power’, while neglecting political and narrative agency. This paper acts as a corrective by presenting evidence to show that since the financial crash of 2008 the political terrain the City operates on has become more contested, crowded and noisier. The contribution develops a middle course between a positive assessment of the role of civil society in relation to global finance, and a more pessimistic reading. We demonstrate how macro-narratives and public story-telling both construct and contest City and financial sector power. In a new pattern since the financial crash, NGOs have moved from campaigns of limited duration and narrow focus, to a more sustained presence on macro-structural issues. Adopting a supply–demand framework for assessing governance and regulatory change, we look at the emergence of TheCityUK as a new advocacy arm and the strategies of three of the more prominent and focused NGOs that have mobilized in the aftermath of the crash: the Tax Justice Network’s (TJN) use of the ‘finance curse’; Positive Money on private endogenous money creation; and Finance Watch counterweight strategies at the level of the European Union. We suggest these mobilizations highlight the need for a more concerted and orchestrated construction of a global institutional civil society infrastructure in finance (a global financial public sphere) to achieve greater access, resources, scrutiny and oversight for a range of specialist expert NGOs.     

Electoral cycles,partisan effects and US naturalization policies

Public Choice - Using a panel of naturalizations in the United States from 1965 to 2012, we empirically analyze the impact of elections on naturalization policy. Our results indicate that...     

Book reviews

Sylvia Plath's sources

Sylvia Plath: Method and Madness, by Edward Butscher, New York, Seabury Press, 388 pp. $15.95.

Chapters in a Mythology: The Poetry of Sylvia Plath. by Judith Kroll. Harper & Row, New York. 303 pp. $12.50.

Victorian Pudding

Women and Marriage in Victorian Fiction. New York: Oxford University Press, 1976. Pp 223.

Out of obscurity

The Woman and the Myth: Margaret Fuller's Life and Writings, by Bell Gale Chevigny, The Feminist Press, 1976.

Celebratory scholarship

The Authority of Experience: Essays in Feminist Criticism, edited by Arlyn Diamond and Lee R. Edwards, University of Massachusetts Press, 1977.

The Lay of the Land, by Annette Kolodny.

A Literature of Their Own. by Elaine Showalter

The Feminization of American Culture, by Ann Douglas     

Successful and failed democratic transitions from military rule in majority Muslim societies: the cases of Indonesia and Egypt

As majority Muslim societies with significant minorities and dominant militaries, Indonesia and Egypt experienced strikingly similar political trajectories between the early 1950s and the late 1990s. Yet, their respective democratic transitions have seen vastly different outcomes: while Indonesia solidified its democracy by extracting the military from politics, Egypt's democratic experiment ended after only two years with the return of the armed forces to the apex of government. This article highlights the reasons for this divergence. Contrary to existing scholarship that exclusively focuses on different geographical or economic circumstances, this contribution emphasises dissimilarities in the patterns of authoritarian rule, military organisation, intra-civilian conflict and international support. Conceptually, the discussion locates the Indonesian and Egyptian cases within the broader debate on civilian control in post-authoritarian states, arguing that this discourse needs to pay more attention to the creation of intra-civilian agreements on fundamental issues of governance as the best strategy to establish strong democratic oversight over the armed forces.     

Book reviews

The following books are reviewed.

Men of letters, writing lives: masculinity and literary auto/biography in the late victorian period TREV LYNN BROUGHTON, 1999 London: Routledge. 213 pp., ISBN 0 415 08211 0 hardback, £60.00 0 415 08212 9 paperback, £19.99

Adapting to Capitalism: working women in the English economy, 1700–1850 PAMELA SHARPE, 1996, 2000 London: Macmillan. xi + 226 pp., ISBN 0 333 91901 7

Women, Gender and Industrialisation in England, 1700–1870 KATRINA HONEYMAN, 2000 London: Macmillan. vii + 204 pp., £15.50

Breadwinning: New Zealand women and the state MELANIE NOLAN, 2000 Christchurch: Canterbury University Press. 386 pp., ISBN 0 908812 97 3, NZ$39.95

Working-class Culture, Women and Britain, 1914–1921 CLAIRE A. CULLERTON, 2000 London: Macmillan. xii + 221 pp., ISBN 0 333 91290 X

Austerity in Britain: rationing, controls, and consumption 1939–1955 INA ZWEINIGER-BARGIELOWSKA, 2000 Oxford: Oxford University Press. xiii + 286 pp., ISBN 0 19 820453 1, £40.00

Seeing History: public history in Britain now HILDA KEAN, PAUL MARTIN, SALLY J. MORGAN (Eds), 2000 London: Francis Boutle. 193 pp., ISBN 0 9532388 9 X, paperback, £10.00

Migrant Daughter: coming of age as a Mexican American woman FRANCES ESQUIBEL TYWONIAK & MARIO T. GARCIA, 2000 Berkeley: University of California Press. 237 pp., ISBN 0 526 21915 5

The Matriarchs of England's Co-operative Movement: a study in gender politics and female leadership, 1883–1921 BARBARA J. BLASZAK, 2000 London, Greenwood Press. ix + 209 pp., ISBN 0 313 30995 7

Dirt and Desire: reconstructing Southern women's writing, 1930–1990 PAULINE YAEGER, 2000 Chicago: University of Chicago Press. xvii+324 pp., ISBN 0 226 94491 3 paperback, £12.53     

North Korea's foreign economic relations

Many debates about engagement with North Korea hinge on theprecise nature of North Korea's foreign economic relations:whether trade and investment are on commercial or non-commercialterms; the extent of illicit activities, and the changing geographicpatterns of North Korea's trade. This article provides an effortto reconstruct North Korea's foreign economic relations, subordinatingour estimates to the discipline of the balance of payments accountingframework. Among the most salient findings for the debate aboutengagement and sanctions is that North Korea's trade and investmenthave continued to increase despite the onset of the nuclearcrisis and a decline in illicit activities. This growth hasoccurred in part because of the growing weight of China andSouth Korea in trade, aid, and investment. We also find thateconomic relations between North and South Korea have a substantiallygreater non-commercial component than those occurring acrossthe China–North Korea border. Received for publication November 29, 2007. Accepted for publication April 7, 2008.     

Local Government in Tasmania: Reform and Restructuring

Tasmania has a long history of failed attempts at restructuring local government boundaries yet managed a major reform process of 'modernisation' between 1990 and 1993 that incorporated major changes to council operations together with a restructuring of boundaries and a reduction from 46 to 29 councils. This process can be compared with a recent attempt to reduce further the number of local governments. In April 1997 the Liberal Premier announced reforms ('Directions for Tasmania') that led to a further reduction in the number of councils. This process collapsed following legal challenges and the proroguing of parliament prior to the 1998 state election. The defeat of the Liberal government saw the abandonment of the proposed amalgamations and establishment of 'partnerships' between the new ALP state government and councils. This paper compares the 1990–93 and 1997–98 reform processes and evaluates the outcomes of the amalgamations in 1990–93. It argues that the success of amalgamation and reform in local government has been strongly influenced by the degree of local government involvement and support in the reform process, lessons that have wider application.