The puzzle transformed: Explaining declining turnout

This analysis of the decline in aggregate voting turnout in the United States between the 1950s and the 1980s attributes the decline to changes in the generational composition of the electorate. In particular, the post-New Deal generation (first presidential vote in 1968 or later), which continues to grow in size, votes at a rate well below that of older generations. A minor part of the generational differences in turnout can be attributed to generational differences in party identification and social connectedness (as measured by such indicators as home ownership and church attendance). The larger portion of generational turnout differences cannot be directly explained with variables contained in the National Election Studies. The generational differences in turnout arenot reflected in preelection participation (informal campaigning, doing party work, etc.) and they cannot be accounted for by a declining sense of political efficacy or citizen duty or by lessened interest in campaigns and election outcomes.     

Committees and the core of the Constitution

An ongoing debate in the formal theory of legislatures involves the question of why these institutions (apparently) manifest so much stability. That is, why do the institutions not continually upset policies adopted only a short time before? A large number of answers have been advanced. This paper proposes that the stability derives from the interaction of two factors, (i) the fundamental constitutional rules (bicameralism, executive veto, and veto override) that structure the legislative process, and (ii) the committee systems endowed with veto powers that many American legislatures have developed. This interaction, we argue, can create a core — a set of undominated points — so large that even a substantial change in the legislature's members (reflecting electoral outcomes, for example) will be unlikely to shift its location enough for the status quo to be upset.     

Child fosterage in the United States: signs of an African heritage.

"The presence of significant numbers of family and household structures among African Americans...[differs] from traditional Euro-American models.... The recently developed U.S. Census public use samples and measures oriented to the practices of informal child fosterage are used to examine and compare these different bases of family life. Data from the turn of the century provide some historical distance from previous explanations of difference centered on slavery, or explanations that focus on contemporary social issues such as urban problems or the welfare state. Comparisons with studies of the contemporary U.S., Africa, the Caribbean, and historical materials give broader scope to fosterage analysis and to the consideration of cultural family differences."     

Reviews

Paul Dukes, The Last Great Game: USA Versus USSR. Events, Conjunctures, Structures. London: Pinter Publishers in association with John Spiers, 1989, xii + 209 pp., £35.00 h/b, £12.95 p/b

Walter C. Clemens, Jr., Can Russia Change?: The USSR Confronts Global Interdependence. Boston, MA: Unwin Hyman, 1989, xxix + 384 pp., £38.00 h/b, £12.95 p/b.

Neil Malcolm, Soviet Policy Perspectives on Western Europe. London: The Royal Institute of International Affairs/Routledge, 1989, viii + 117 pp., £7.95 p/b.

R. A. Longmire, Soviet Relations with South‐East Asia. London and New York: Kegan Paul International, 1989, x + 176 pp., £35.00.

Geoffrey Roberts, The Unholy Alliance: Stalin's Pact with Hitler. London: I. B. Tauris, 1989, xviii + 296 pp., £19.95.

Anthony Jones & William Moskoff, eds., Perestroika and the Economy. New Thinking in Soviet Economics. Armonk, NY, London: M. E. Sharpe, 1989, xxii + 277 pp., $45.00.

Kristian Gerner & Stefan Hedlund, Ideology and Rationality in the Soviet Model: A Legacy for Gorbachev. London and New York: Routledge, 1989, xii + 455 pp., £30.00.

J. L. Porket, Work, Employment, and Unemployment in the Soviet Union. Basingstoke and London: Macmillan, St. Antony's/Macmillan Series, 1989, xv + 250 pp., £37.50.

Vladimir Shlapentokh, Public and Private Life of the Soviet People. Changing Values in Post‐Stalin Russia. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989, 281 pp., $24.95.

David Joravsky, Russian Psychology: A Critical History. Oxford and Cambridge: Basil Blackwell, 1989, xxii + 583 pp., £45.00.

W. O. McCagg & Lewis Siegelbaum, eds., The Disabled in the Soviet Union. Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1989, 304 pp., $34.95.

Thomas F. Remington, ed., Politics and the Soviet System: Essays in Honour of Frederick C. Barghoom. London: Macmillan, 1989, 235 pp., £35.00.

Julian Graffy & Geoffrey Hosking, eds., Culture and the Media in the USSR Today. Basingstoke and London: Macmillan in association with SSEES, University of London, 1989, viii + 168 pp., £35.00 h/b, £14.99 p/b.

Carlo Frateschi, ed., Fluctuations and Cycles in Socialist Economies. Aldershot: Avebury, 1989, xiii + 157 pp., £25.00.

Martin Myant, The Czechoslovak Economy 1948–1988: The Battle for Economic reform. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989, xii + 316 pp., £30.00, $54.50.

Michael Simmons, The Unloved Country: A Portrait of East Germany Today. London: Abacus, 1989, viii + 184 pp., £4.99 p/b.

David Childs, Thomas A. Baylis & Marilyn Rueschemeyer, eds., East Germany in Comparative Perspective. London: Routledge, 1989, xvi + 238 pp., £35.00.

David Turnock, Eastern Europe: An Economie and Political Geography. London and New York: Routledge, 1989, xiv + 360 pp., £35.00.

David Turnock, The Human Geography of Eastern Europe. London and New York: Routledge, 1989, xii + 345 pp., £35.00.

Theodore H. Friedgut, Iuzovka and Revolution. Volume 1: Life and Work in Russia's Donbas, 1869–1924. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1989, xviii + 361 pp., illustrations, tables, $45.00.

Graham Smith, Planned Development in the Socialist World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989, vi + 106 pp., £10.95 h/b, £5.95 p/b.

Lynn Turgeon, State and Discrimination. The Other Side of the Cold War. Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 1989, xii + 169 pp., $32.50.

Gerald D. Surh, 1905 in St. Petersburg: Labor, Society, and Revolution. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1989, xvii + 456 pp., $45.00.     

Medical malpractice litigation: do the British have a better remedy?

Medical malpractice claims are filed nearly ten times more frequently in America than they are in Great Britain. British patients generally adopt a less adversarial stance toward medical malpractice than do American patients. This Article examines the British malpractice system, as compared with the American system, and explores the differences between the two, in terms of costs and fees, liability rules, statutory provisions, and judicial attitudes toward malpractice litigation. The Article also discusses British social and institutional factors, such as the "taint" of litigation and the National Health Service, and evaluates how these factors affect British malpractice litigation. The Article presents the alternative forums available to British patients in seeking satisfaction for their medical service complaints. The Article concludes with an evaluation of how these factors achieve the three societal objectives of malpractice litigation: reparation, emotional vindication and deterrence.     

Reviews

Gordon B. Smith, Soviet Politics: Continuity and Contradiction. Basingstoke and London: Macmillan Education, 1988. xi + 388 pp. £30.00 h/b, £8.95 p/b.

Daniel Thorniley, The Rise and Fall of the Soviet Rural Communist Party. 1927 39. London: Macmillan Press, 1988, xiii + 246 pp., £29.50.

Zenovia A. Sochor, Revolution and Culture: The Bogdanov‐Lenin Controversy, Cornell University Press, 1988, $32.95 ($29.95 USA and Canada.

Robert Edelman, Proletarian Peasants. The Revolution of 1905 in Russia's Southwest. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1987, xv + 195 pp., no price.

Robert W. Thurston, Liberal City, Conservative State: Moscow and Russia's Urban Crisis, 1906 1914. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987, viii + 266 pp., £27.50.

Douglas R. Weiner, Models of Nature: Ecology, Conservation, and Cultural Revolution in Soviet Russia. Bloomington and Indianapolis, Indiana University Press, 1988, xiv + 312 pp., $35.00.

Werner G. Hahn, Democracy in a Communist Party: Poland's experience since 1980. New York: Columbia University Press, 1987, xxv + 368 pp., $42.00.

Jaroslav Bilocerkowycz, Soviet Ukrainian Dissent: a Study of Political Alienation. Boulder: Westview Press, 1988, xii + 242 pp., $27.50 p/b.

Petro R. Sodol, UPA: They fought Hitler and Stalin, New York: Committee for the World Convention and Reunion of Soldiers in the Ukrainian Insurgent Army, 1987, 128 pp., $12.00.

Bruce McFarlane, Yugoslavia: Politics, Economics and Society. London and New York: Pinter Publishers, 1988, xxii + 240 pp., £25.00 h/b., £8.95 p/b.     

Beyond the Middle Finger: Plato,Schiller and the Political Aesthetics of Ai Weiwei

The photograph of Ai Weiwei’s middle finger set against the backdrop of Tiananmen Square has become an icon of politically subversive art. But can we see beyond the middle finger? Here I argue that current theories of political aesthetics (e.g. Jacques Rancière) operate on an oversimplified dichotomy between two competing paradigms of political art, and that this threatens a more nuanced engagement with contemporary artistic practices. In the first part, I re-examine both the antagonistic relation between art and politics exemplified in Plato's verdict against poetry as a socially corrosive form of imitation as well as the instrumental relation of art and politics developed in Friedrich Schiller’s conception of aesthetic education as a means of social and political reform. Then, drawing on recent work by the controversial Chinese artist, I argue for a model of political art that can account for the more complex interrelation of criticism and cultural affirmation evident in a growing body of politically-oriented art.