Willard Straight, The First World War, and "Internationalism of all Sorts": The Inconsistencies of An American Liberal Interventionist

Willard D. Straight was a banker-diplomat and one of the most prominent early twentieth-century advocates of a greater international role for the USA. From the beginning of the war he argued the Mahanist line that American security depended upon the British fleet and in its own interest the United States should therefore intervene. At the same time he perceived the war as offering a golden opportunity for American bankers and businessmen to make international commercial gains at the expense of Britain. In 1915 this outlook led him to leave the insistently pro-Allied banking firm of J. P. Morgan & Company for the National City-affiliated American International Corporation, which was consciously designed to expand American overseas investments. Throughout the war Straight, who died in late November 1918, consistently argued that an Anglo-American alliance must be the essential foundation of any postwar international order — a position also taken by Theodore Roosevelt — but Straight also demonstrated significant and growing suspicion of and hostility to Great Britain. The numerous inconsistencies in his thinking seem to have sprung from the fact that, rather than being a well thought-out position, his internationalism arose primarily from an indiscriminating psychological need to have his country play a great but poorly defined role on the world stage.     

Three meanings of capacity; or,why the federal government is most likely to lead on insurance access issues

This essay considers on what health policy issues the federal government is best able to lead. Positive leadership requires knowledge, power, and will. The federal government has different supplies of each for different aspects of quality of, cost of, and access to health care. Here I review technical capacity to attain desired ends, define the institutional strengths and weaknesses of the federal government, and outline current dynamics of the national political process. This analysis suggests both prospects for and some characteristics of successful policy. The federal government is more likely to lead on insurance than on other health policy issues because its supply of relevant knowledge and power is relatively high on insurance issues and the political barriers are lower than conventional wisdom suggests. But that leadership could take the form of either the expanding or contracting of access to insurance.     

Review

Richard Abraham, Alexander Kerensky: The First Love of the Revolution, London: Sidgwick & Jackson, 1987, xxii + 503 pp. £20.00.

R. F. Miller et al. eds. Gorbachev at the Helm: A New Era in Soviet Politics? London: Croom Helm, 1987, viii + 251 pp., £30.00.

Mervyn Matthews, Poverty in the Soviet Union: The Life‐Styles of the Underprivileged in Recent Years. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1986, xv + 227 pp., £22.40 h/b £7.95 p/b.

Angus Roxburgh, PRAVDA: Inside the Soviet News Machine. London: Gollancz, 1987, 285 pp., £16.95.

Cynthia S. Kaplan, The Party and Agricultural Crisis Management in the USSR, Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1987, xvi + 203 pp., $30.75.     

Protesting a perceived injustice: Sex discrimination and the restoration of equity

In this paper we propose a theoretical model that examines the relationship between resources and significant others in people's attempts to restore equity. Viewing the restoration of equity as a complex process, we integrate resource mobilization and equity arguments in order to better understand how people come to dispute and settle fair terms of exchange in allocative relationships. With individual-level data, we examine sex discrimination complaints and show that protest reactions against a perceived injustice are influenced by the level of resources a person controls. We find that the more resources a person controls, the better able she or he is in managing the protest and negotiation for equity. Further, resources also protect complainants from reprisals by the source of the inequity. These findings provide insight into the process by which people attempt to restore equity, and they suggest that the examination of real-life inequitable relations enhances our understanding of reactions to inequity.