Approaches to the Politics of Systemic Economic Reform in the Soviet Union

Political support for economic reform in the USSR is evaluated at five different levels of Soviet society, or more properly, of the political-administrative hierarchy: the top leader (Gorbachev himself), the collective leadership (Politburo), the bureaucracy, knowledge specialists (intelligentsia), and the population at large. Attitudes and motivations within each group are examined in order to demonstrate how interest group relations in the Soviet Union have made and will continue to make basic economic change a protracted, complex, and unpredictable process. journal of Economic Literature, Classification Numbers: 052, 113.     

Regional councils of governments at the crossroads: implications for intergovernmental management and networks

Councils of governments (COGS) have been subjected to powerful forces of change in the 1980s, due principally to drastic reductions in federal financial support. To survive, the councils have had to become more entrepreneural, to extend themselves in new directions They have scanned their local and regional task environments intensively for opportunities to form and/or join new networks and to provide more services in traditional and in new areas. The new style of council is described in this paper, using a market model. The model emphasizes opportunistic scanning of the regional task environment, and the assessment of issue networks as an iterative process in COG direction setting and implementation efforts.     

Book review/dangerous offenders and endangered justice

Mark H. Moore, Susan R. Estrich, Daniel McGillis, and William Spelman, Dangerous Offenders: The Elusive Target of Justice Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1984, vi + 252 pp.