Reviews

Steven Fortescue, The Communist Party and Soviet Science. Macmillan, London/Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, 1986, 234 pp. £27.50, $28–50.

Cameron Ross, Local Government in the Soviet Union: Problems of implementation and Control. London: Croom Helm, 1987, 229pp., £29.95.

Albert P. van Goudoever, The Limits of Destalinization in the Soviet Union. Translated by Frans Hijkoop. London: Croom Helm, 1986, viii + 276 pp., £25.00.

Donald Filtzer, Soviet Workers and Stalinist Industrialization: the Formation of Modern Soviet Production Relations, 1928–1941, London: Pluto Press, 1986, vi + 338 pp., £25.00.

William Chase, Workers, Society, and the Soviet State. Labor and Life in Moscow, 1918–1929. Urbana, Il.: University of Illinois Press, 1987, xviii + 344 pp., $29.90.

Catherine Andreyev, Vlasov and the Russian Liberation Movement: Soviet Reality and Emigre Theories. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987, xiv + 251 pp., h/b £25.00, $34.50.

Olimpiad S. Ioffe and Mark W. Janis, eds. Soviet Law and Economy. Law in Eastern Europe Series, no. 32. Dordrecht, Holland: Martinus Nijhoff, 1986, xii + 335 pp., £58.75.

A. Hewett, ed., Energy Economics and Foreign Policy in the Soviet Union. Washington DC: The Brookings Institution, 1984, xi + 228 pp., £12.85 p/b, £34–00 h/b.

George W. Hoffman (with contributions by Leslie Dienes), The European Energy Challenge: East and West. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1985, xvi + 207 pp., £34.75.

Carl H. McMillan, Multinationals from the Second World. London: Macmillan, 1987, xvi + 220pp., £29.50.

Sergio Alessandrini and Bruno Dallago, eds., The Unofficial Economy: Consequences and Perspectives in Different Economic Systems. Aldershot: Gower, 1987, 345 pp., £22.50.

A. James McAdams, East Germany and Detente: Building Authority after the Wall. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985, xi + 233 pp., £25.00, $34.00.

Karel Kaplan, The Short March, The Communist Takeover in Czechoslovakia 1945–1948. London: C. Hurst & Company, 1987. xvi + 207 pp., £16.50.

D. Turnock, The Romanian Economy in the Twentieth Century, Basingstoke, Kent: Croom Helm, 1986, xx + 296 pp., £27.95.

John Hiden, The Baltic states and Weimar Ostpolitik. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987, xi + 276 pp., £25.00.

Jan F. Triska, ed., Dominant Powers and Subordinate States: the United States in Latin America and the Soviet Union in Eastern Europe, Duke University Press, 1986, 504 pp. £48.90 h/b, £14.40 p/b.

Rasul B. Rais, The Indian Ocean and the Superpowers. Economic, Political and Strategic Perspectives, London: Croom Helm, 1986, 215 pp., £25.00.

Vera Broido, Lenin and the Mensheviks. The Persecution of Socialists Under Bolshevism, Hants: Gower/Maurice Temple Smith, 1987, 224 pp. £17.50.

J. P. Roos and Andrzej Sicinski. Ways of Life in Finland and Poland. Gower, Aldershot and Vermont: 1987, viii + 203 pp., £18.50.     

Knowing and Skilling in Contemporary Public Administration

Knowledge is the latest buzzword in public administration, yet contemporary debates demonstrate a poor understanding of how knowledge is constructed and valued and of how public administration knowledge frames are changing in response to major structural shifts in political imperatives. In particular the retreat from economic rationalism and the embracing of social and human capital ideas with the search for 'third ways' and 'triple bottom lines' are bringing more constructivist knowledge frames back into play. In this way centralised 'rational/expert' knowledge is being challenged by knowledge arising from cooperative, local inquiry and multiple knowledge frames are now being brought to bear in public administration. Yet public administration, as a profession, seems unsure of whether this is an elegant finesse implying little real change or an exposure of the naked pretension of previously dominant unitary frameworks. This article uses a historical comparison to show how changes in the ontology and epistemology of public administration are demanding new skills of contemporary public administrators.     

Where have all the heroes gone? A rational-choice perspective on heroism

Heroism emerges when individual decisions are coupled with public rewards for heroic actions, making heroism akin to the voluntary provision of a highly specialized public good. In the past 35 years, however, the number of heroes has fallen considerably as reflected by military honors such as the Congressional Medal of Honor. Our model, which seeks to explain heroism in a rational decision-making framework, suggests that an observed decline in heroism can be explained on the basis of optimal individual and social responses, rather than as an arbitrary change in the governmental rewards for heroism.     

A Large‐Sample Test of a Semi‐Automated Clavicle Search Engine to Assist Skeletal Identification by Radiograph Comparison

In 2014, a morphometric capability to search chest radiograph databases by quantified clavicle shape was published to assist skeletal identification. Here, we extend the validation tests conducted by increasing the search universe 18‐fold, from 409 to 7361 individuals to determine whether there is any associated decrease in performance under these more challenging circumstances. The number of trials and analysts were also increased, respectively, from 17 to 30 skeletons, and two to four examiners. Elliptical Fourier analysis was conducted on clavicles from each skeleton by each analyst (shadowgrams trimmed from scratch in every instance) and compared to the search universe. Correctly matching individuals were found in shortlists of 10% of the sample 70% of the time. This rate is similar to, although slightly lower than, rates previously found for much smaller samples (80%). Accuracy and reliability are thereby maintained, even when the comparison system is challenged by much larger search universes.     

Photo‐Realistic Statistical Skull Morphotypes: New Exemplars for Ancestry and Sex Estimation in Forensic Anthropology

Graphic exemplars of cranial sex and ancestry are essential to forensic anthropology for standardizing casework, training analysts, and communicating group trends. To date, graphic exemplars have comprised hand‐drawn sketches, or photographs of individual specimens, which risks bias/subjectivity. Here, we performed quantitative analysis of photographic data to generate new photo‐realistic and objective exemplars of skull form. Standardized anterior and left lateral photographs of skulls for each sex were analyzed in the computer graphics program Psychomorph for the following groups: South African Blacks, South African Whites, American Blacks, American Whites, and Japanese. The average cranial form was calculated for each photographic view, before the color information for every individual was warped to the average form and combined to produce statistical averages. These mathematically derived exemplars—and their statistical exaggerations or extremes—retain the high‐resolution detail of the original photographic dataset, making them the ideal casework and training reference standards.     

Homicides with Mutilation of the Victim's Body

Abstract:  Information on homicide offenders guilty of mutilation is sparse. The current study estimates the rate of mutilation of the victim's body in Finnish homicides and compares sociodemographic characteristics, crime history, life course development, psychopathy, and psychopathology of these and other homicide offenders. Crime reports and forensic examination reports of all offenders subjected to forensic examination and convicted for a homicide in 1995–2004 ( n  = 676) were retrospectively analyzed for offense and offender variables and scored with the Psychopathy Check List Revised. Thirteen homicides (2.2%) involved mutilation. Educational and mental health problems in childhood, inpatient mental health contacts, self-destructiveness, and schizophrenia were significantly more frequent in offenders guilty of mutilation. Mutilation bore no significant association with psychopathy or substance abuse. The higher than usual prevalence of developmental difficulties and mental disorder of this subsample of offenders needs to be recognized.