Public participation in decision making: A three-step procedure

This article introduces a novel model of public particpation in political decisions. Structured in three consecutive steps, the model is based on the view that stakeholders, experts, and citizens should each contribute to the planning effort their particular expertise and experience. Stakeholders are valuable resources for eliciting concerns and developing evaluative criteria since their interests are at stake and they have already made attempts to structure and approach the issue. Experts are necessary to provide the data base and the functional relationships between options and impacts. Citizens are the potential victims and benefactors of proposed planning measures; they are the best judges to evaluate the different options available on the basis of the concerns and impacts revealed through the other two groups. The three-step model has been developed and frequently applied as a planning tool in West Germany. We compare this experience with the model's first application in the United States, and conclude that the three-step procedure offers a limited, but promising future for democratizing policy making in the United States.     

The personal vote and economic reform

Do electoral rules affect the progress of economic reforms? The students of economic reform have examined the effects of inter-party competition, partly shaped by electoral rules, on economic reform, but have neglected the more direct effects of electoral rules, namely the extent to which they encourage the personal vote. More broadly, studies of the effect of electoral rules on economic policy have relied on the simplistic SMD/PR distinction and have neglected features of electoral institutions that affect the level of intra-party competition. Building on the personal vote literature, we argue that electoral institutions that encourage the personal vote are not conducive to reform progress. We provide the first systematic multivariate cross-country test of the implications of the personal vote literature for economic reform in the context of the post-communist countries from 1990 to 2006. We find that, in line with our theory, countries where electoral rules encourage the personal vote are less likely to reform.     

Addressing the Issues: The Choice of Environmental Conflict‐Resolution Venues in the United States

Environmental conflicts are the catalyst for policy and institutional changes, and they are expected to increase due to rising populations, economic growth, and climate change impacts. Yet, environmental conflicts and the venues used to address them have not been thoroughly examined. A common‐pool resource dilemmas typology is used to categorize environmental conflict issues and to develop hypotheses relating conflict issues to resolution venues. The hypotheses are tested on western water‐resource conflicts. The capacity of venues to address the underlying conflict issues as well as how some venues tend to work in tandem are important for explaining the matching of conflict type to venue.     

“Give me some space”: exploring youth to parent aggression and violence

A small scale qualitative project, undertaken by an interdisciplinary domestic violence research group involving academic researchers and research assistants, with colleagues from Independent Domestic Abuse Services (IDAS), investigated youth aggression and violence against parents. Following the literature review, data was generated through several research conversations with young people (n = 2), through semi-structured interviews with mothers (n = 3) and practitioners (n = 5), and through a practitioner focus group (n = 8). Thematic analysis and triangulation of the data from parents, practitioners and young people, elicited interconnected and complex overarching themes. Young people could be both victim and perpetrator. The witnessing or experiencing of domestic aggression and violence raised the concept of ‘bystander children’. The impact of young people experiencing familial violence was underestimated by parents. For practitioners, the effects of working with domestic violence was shown to be significant - both positively and negatively.     

Evidence for Social and Behavior Problems in Low-Income,Urban Preschoolers: Effects of Site,Classroom, and Teacher

Teacher ratings of 336 preschool children (mean age = 48 months) attending two urban Head Start programs were collected to examine the influence of contextual variables of teacher training, classroom, and site on the prevalence of significant problems. The prevalence of externalizing behaviors in the problem range was higher than expected and fewer children were rated in the well-adjusted range on social competence measures. Psychometric characteristics of the ratings indicated that teachers in this urban setting were less consistent in their ratings of internalizing problems, calling into question the lack of elevation of such problems in this population. Ratings by teachers and teacher assistants of the same children showed low agreement; the level of ratings was not affected by differences in training but did vary across classrooms. Hierarchical linear modeling analyses of the entire sample showed significant effects of classroom and site on problem behaviors and social competence. These results reveal the wide variation in problem frequency across classrooms, which needs to be considered in the implementation and evaluation of evidence-based interventions. Further, these results point to the importance of studying possible lasting effects on children exposed to these differing contexts.     

As unconscious and gay as a trout in a stream?: turning the trope of the Australian Girl

The instability of colonial representational economies, identities and tropes is the subject of analysis in this paper. I take as my starting point the anxieties that were generated during the late 19th century in relation to what I nominate the fictitiousness of settler subjects in colonial Australia. In order to examine these historical concerns and their explicitly gendered representations, I consider in detail one text, Rosa Campbell Praed's Fugitive Anne: A Romance of the Unexplored Bush (1902). This text was published in 1902 and was one of a number of romance novels this author produced for readerships in both colonial Australia and England. This adventure romance features the trope of the Australian Girl and also engages in varying degrees with discourses of colonial ethnography that, to my knowledge, have not been examined in relation to the ideological production and effects of this figure.     

Post‐national citizenship,social exclusion and migrants rights: Mexican seasonal workers in Canada

In the past few decades, migrants residing in many European and North American countries have benefited from nation‐states' extension of legal rights to non‐citizens. This development has prompted many scholars to reflect on the shift from a state‐based to a more individual‐based universal conception of rights and to suggest that national citizenship has been replaced by post‐national citizenship. However, in practice migrants are often deprived of some rights. The article suggests that the ability to claim rights denied to some groups of people depends on their knowledge of the legal framework, communications skills, and support from others. Some groups of migrants are deprived of the knowledge, skills, and support required to negotiate their rights effectively because of their social exclusion from local communities of citizens. The article draws attention to the contradiction in two citizenship principles—one linked to legal rights prescribed by international conventions and inscribed through international agreements and national laws and policies, and the other to membership in a community. Commitment to the second set of principles may negate any achievements made with respect to the first. The article uses Mexican migrants working in Canada as an illustration, arguing that even though certain legal rights have been granted to them, until recently they had been unable to claim them because they were denied social membership in local and national communities. Recent initiatives among local residents and union and human rights activists to include Mexican workers in their communities of citizens in Leamington, Ontario, Canada, are likely to enhance the Mexican workers' ability to claim their rights.     

Reviews

Janos Kornai, Highways and Byways. Studies on Reform and Post‐Communist Transition. Cambridge, MA and London: MIT Press, 1995, xv + 241 pp., £26.95

Ha‐Joon Chang & Peter Nolan (eds), The Transformation of the Communist Economies: Against the Mainstream. Basingstoke and London: Macmillan, 1995, xii, + 438 pp., £47.50.

Paul Cook & Frederick Nixson (eds), The Move to the Market?: Trade and Industry Policy Reform in Transitional Economies. London: Macmillan, 1995, xvi + 280 pp., £45.00.

Tom Gallagher, Romania after Ceausescu. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1995, viii + 267 pp., £16.95.

Carol Barner‐Barry & Cynthia A. Hody, The Politics of Change. The Transformation of the Former Soviet Union. New York: St Martin's Press, 1995, xi + 371 pp., £14.99.

Daniel Orlovsky (ed.), Beyond Soviet Studies. Washington: The Woodrow Wilson Center Press, 1995, xi + 349 pp., £20.50.

Aleksandr Gurov, Krasnaya Mafiya, Moscow: Samotsvet, 1995, 328 pp., no price.

Beatrice F. Manz (ed.), Central Asia in Historical Perspective. Boulder and Oxford: Westview Press, 1994, x + 245 pp., £40.95.

H. B. Paksoy (ed.), Central Asia Reader—The Rediscovery of History. Armonk and London: M. E. Sharpe, 1994, ix + 206 pp., $60.00 h/b $21.95 p/b.

Peter Ferdinand (ed.), The New States of Central Asia and Their Neighbours. New York: Council on Foreign Relations Press, for The Royal Institute of International Affairs, 1994, 120 pp., $14.95.

Michael Mandelbaum (ed.), Central Asia and the World—Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Turkmenistan. New York: Council on Foreign Relations Press, 1994, 251 pp., $16.95

Stephen Kotkin & David Wolff (eds), Rediscovering Russia in Asia: Siberia and the Russian Far East. Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 1995, xxiii + 356 pp., $65.00 h/b, $24.95 p/b.

Suzanne Goldenberg, Pride of Small Nations: The Caucasus and Post‐Soviet Disorder. London: Zed Books, 1994., xvi + 233 pp., £14.95.

Levon Chorbajian, Patrick Donabedian & Claude Mutafian, The Caucasian Knot: The History and Geo‐politics of Nagorno‐Karabagh. London: Zed Books, 1994, xxi + 198 pp., £14.95.

Shireen T. Hunter, The Transcaucasus in Transition. Nation‐building and Conflict. Washington, DC: The Center for Strategic and International Studies, 1994, xiii + 223 pp., $19.95.

Edward Allworth (ed.), Muslim Communities Reemerge. Historical Perspective on Nationality, Politics and Opposition in the Former Soviet Union and Yugoslavia, trans. Caroline Sawyer. Durham & London: Duke University Press, 1994, xii + 365 pp., £57.00 h/b, £23.50 p/b.

S. Frederick Starr (ed.), The Legacy of History in Russia and the New States of Eurasia. Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 1994, xiii + 313 pp., $22.95.

Vladimir Shlapentokh, Munir Sendich & Emil Payin (eds), The New Russian Diaspora: Russian Minorities in the Former Soviet Republics. London: M. E. Sharpe, 1994, xxv + 221 pp., £48.00 h/b, £19.00 p/b.

Michael Rywkin, Moscow's Lost Empire. New York & London: Armonk, M. E. Sharpe, 1994, xiii + 214 pp., £40.00 h/b, £16.00 p/b.

Tobias R. Philibin III, The Lure of Neptune. German‐Soviet Naval Collaboration and Ambitions, 1919–1941. University of South Carolina, 1994, xxi + 192 pp., $34.95.

Yu. L. Dyakov & T. S. Bushueva, The Red Army and the Wehrmacht. How the Soviets Militarised Germany, 1922–1933, and Paved the Way for Fascism. New York: Prometheus Books 1995, 348 pp., £21.00.

Iosif Stalin v ob"yatiyakh sem'i: iz lichnogo arkhiva (Sbornik dokumentov), compiled by Yu. G. Murin, edited by V. N. Denisov. Moscow: Rodina, 1993, 222 pp., no price.

Donald Rayfield, The Literature of Georgia. A History. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994, xvi + 360 pp., £35.00.

Susan Layton, Russian Literature and Empire: Conquest of the Caucasus from Pushkin to Tolstoy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994, xiii + 354 pp., £40.00.

Arto Luukkanen, The Party of Unbelief: The Religious Policy of the Bolshevik Party 1917–1929. Helsinki; Studia Historica 48, 1994, 274 pp., no price.

John Fennell, A History of the Russian Church to 1448. London: Longman, 266 pp., £12.99.     

Reviews

John B. Dunlop, The Rise of Russia and the Fall of the Soviet Empire. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993, xi + 360 pp., £24.95, $29.95.

W. Lutz, S. Scherbov & A. Volkov (eds), Demographic Trends and Patterns in the Soviet Union Before 1991. London: Routledge, 1994, xl + 496 pp., £85.00.

Deborah Adelman, The ‘Children of Perestroika’ Come Of Age. Young People Of Moscow Talk About Life in the New Russia. Armonk, NY & London: M. E. Sharpe, 1994, xxii +193 pp.

Gale Stokes, The Walls Came Tumbling Down: The Collapse of Communism in Eastern Europe. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993, viii + 319 pp.     

Reviews

Thomas Remington (ed.), Parliaments in Transition. The New Legislative Politics in the Former USSR and Eastern Europe. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1994, vii + 246pp.

Carlos Taibo, La disolución de la URSS. Barcelona: Ronsel, 1994, xii + 376 pp., 1900 pesetas.

Miroslav Shkandrij, Modernists, Marxists and the Nation. The Ukrainian Literary Discussion of the 1920s. Edmonton: Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies Press, University of Alberta, 1992, xii + 265 pp.

Don C. Rawson, Russian Rightists and the Revolution of 1905. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995, xvi + 286 pp., £40.00 h/b, £19.95 p/b.

Mary Schaeffer Conroy, In Health and in Sickness: Pharmacy, Pharmacists and the Pharmaceutical Industry in Late Imperial, Early Soviet Russia. New York: East European Monographs, Boulder, distributed by Columbia University Press, 1994, viii + 703 pp., h/b, No price.

William Millinship, Frontline: Women of the New Russia. London: Methuen, 1993, xxi + 297 pp., £9.99 p/b.

Sebastian Siebel‐Achenbach, Lower Silesia from Nazi Germany to Communist Poland, 1942–1949. London and Basingstoke: The Macmillan Press Ltd, 1994, vii + 381 pp., £47.50.

John Erickson & David Dilks (eds), Barbarossa. The Axis and the Allies. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1994, xii + 287 pp., £25.00

Yuri Pavlov, Soviet‐Cuban Alliance; 1959–1991. New Brunswick and London: Transaction Publishers, 1994, iv + 272 pp., $18.95.

Joshua Fogel, The Cultural Dimension of Sino‐Japanese Relations: Essays on the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries. Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 1995, 216 pp., £40.00 h/b, £16.00 p/b