Japan in the coming century: Looking East or West?

The modernization of Japan's trade policies and social structure, argues Professor Ronald Dore of the London School of Economics, will increase Japan's social instability. The continuation of the outdated Japan‐US alliance, he states, only inhibits the growth of the international order; he warns that the day may come when Japan's interests lie with China rather than the US. Dore advocates that Japan adopt a proactive foreign policy, using military force not for reasons of national interest, but only to contribute to the peaceful settlement of international conflicts.     

Book reviews

This paper analyzes recent free trade arrangements from a positive political economy perspective. In contrast to most other literature which fails to take into account geographical factors it is argued here that proximity and transportation costs play an important role in trade arrangements. Another important also largely neglected factor is the degree of social cohesion in terms of labor standards among potential trading partners. A political support maximizing government will consider these factors when balancing political support from free traders and protectionists.     

The Discourse and Practice of Counter-Terrorism in Liberal Democracies

This article examines the post-Cold War tendency to broaden the counter-terrorism mandate to include other phenomena such as organised crime, drug-trafficking and illegal immigration. This redefinition has important implications for democracy, both at the level of discourse and at the level of practice. At the level of discourse, the plasticity of the word "terrorism" and its application to a wide variety of phenomena is a form of claims making activity by a variety of agencies fighting for budgetary allocations in an era of cost-cutting and deficit reduction. At the level of practice, the counter-terrorism mandate is being expanded to include the range of phenomena covered in the widening discourse and this, in turn, has led to a blurring of boundaries between internal and external security, police and military models of control, and public and private sectors. All this has an impact on the openness of government, the accountability of agencies of social control, the adherence to the rule of law in the fight against terrorism and related phenomena, and the possibility of informed consent by a public made fearful by the claims-making discourse as it is disseminated through the mass media.     

Differences in mothers' and children's perceptions of urban black children's life stress

Differences between mothers' and childrens' perceptions of the children's life Stressors were evaluated among 380 urban black elementary school children and their mothers. Fifty-eight life Stressors were rated for frequency of occurrence to the children over the last year and the degree of negative affect associated with Stressors that occurred. Fifty-one items were classified into seven specific contextual categories. Predicted mother-child differences were noted for total frequency and subjective weight ratings and in mulnvariate comparisons of frequency and subjective weight ratings across the seven categories, confirming mothers' tendency to underreport in comparison with their children. Gender differences were not evident for total frequency or subjective weight ratings, but multivariate analyses support gender differences across categories. Mothers showed no consistent pattern of differences between reports for sons and daughters. Development of population-appropriate stress measures, use of stress categories, and implications for the interpretation of stress reports are discussed.An earlier version of this paper was presented at the Conference on Human Development, Richmond, Virginia, March 1990. This project was supported by a postdoctoral research fellowship from the American Heart Association of the National Capital Area awarded to Dr. O'Brien, a grant from National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute (HL 35261) to Dr. lannotti, and a grant from National Institute on Drug Abuse (DA 4497) to Dr. Patricia J. Bush.Received Ph.D. in developmental psychology from The Catholic University of America. Research interests include life stress during middle childhood and adolescence as it relates to risk behaviors, and family support and conflict during adolescence, particularly among siblings.Received Ph.D. in developmental psychology from The State University of New York at Buffalo. Research interests include social and environmental influences on the early use of abusable substances, the development of children's eating and exercise patterns and their relationship to cardiovascular risk factors, and the development of understanding of and attitudes toward health and illness, including heart disease and AIDS.