Inquiry into Local Government Responsibilities and Funding

On 30 May 2002 I announced a major inquiry into local government. The inquiry is to be conducted by the multi–party House of Representatives Standing Committee on Economics, Finance and Public Administration. In this article I look at the background to the inquiry and at some of the things I hope it will achieve.     

Reviews

Neil Harding, Lenin's Political Thought, Vol. 2 Theory and Practice in the Socialist Revolution. London: Macmillan, 1981. ix + 387 pp. £15.00.

David Lane, Leninism, A Sociological Interpretation. Cambridge: C.U.P., 1981. x + 150 pp. £13.50 and £4.50.

Christel Lane, The Rites of Rulers. Ritual in Industrial Society—The Soviet Case. Cambridge University Press, 1981. 308 pp. £20.00, £6.95 paperback.

Alastair McAuley, Women's Work and Wages in the USSR. London: George Allen and Unwin, 1981. xi + 228 pp. £18.00, $37.50.

Marie Lavigne (ed.), Travail et Monnaie en systemesocialiste. Paris: Economica, 1981. 310 pp.

Robert Campbell, Soviet Energy Technologies. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1980. x + 268 pp. $22.50, £13.50.

Alfred Zauberman, Topics in Trade Coordination of Planned Economies. London and Basingstoke; The Macmillan Press Ltd., 1980. 108 pp. £15.00.

Helen Desfosses (ed.), Soviet Population Policy: Conflicts and Constraints. New York: Pergamon Press, 1981. xx + 210 pp. $24.50

Judith Pallot and Denis J. B. Shaw, Planning in the Soviet Union. London: Croom Helm, 1981. 303 pp. £16.95 (boards).

Peter Hruby, Fools and Heroes: The Changing Role of Communist Intellectuals in Czechoslovakia. Oxford: Pergamon Press, 1980. xx + 265 pp. $32.00 & $18.75, £14.00 & £8.50.

Jiri Musil, Urbanization in Socialist Countries. White Plains, New York: M. E. Sharpe, Inc., 1980 and London: Croom Helm, 1981. xii + 188 pp. £10.50.

Timothy J. Colton, Commisars, Commanders, and Civilian Authority: The Structure of Soviet Military Politics. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1979. viii + 365 pp. £15.00.     

Political culture and the persistence of inequality

A definition of political culture is posited in which the values that regulate reciprocal altruism constitute a normative system that sustains social solidarity and stabilizes inequalities. These values dampen resentment over unequal rewards by justifying status differences and the exclusion of racial, ethnic, and religious groups, among others, from full participation in social life. Inequality is bolstered by conventional modes of moral reasoning that legitimize explanations for inequality that are embedded in law or emanate from authority.