The link between demographic events: a study of nuptiality patterns

The author examines links between the timing of various major life events (including women's age at marriage and the spacing of children) and the economic and urban development of a society, using Mexico as an example. The focus is on marriage patterns. She finds that nuptiality influences rural-urban migration for women, as do age and socioeconomic factors and husband's employment status. Data are from the Mexican Fertility Survey for the period 1976-1977. (SUMMARY IN ENG)     

Tollison costs and technological innovation: The case of environmental regulation

This paper departs from the Tullock cost paradigm that views competition for monopoly privilege as a welfare-inimical process that wastefully dissipates preexisting producers' surplus and, occasionally, leads to inefficient increases in costs and counterproductive uses of scarce resources. The potential availability of rent-seeking may bring about the elimination of inefficient regulatory regimes that retard or prevent the introduction of cost-reducing innovations. Air quality management is but one area in which innovation rent-seeking holds promise for concrete welfare gains. Researchers may wish to focus on institutional mechanisms designed to overcome the transactions costs and free rider disincentives to the formation of a coalition to seek innovation rents. An example of such a mechanism might be a joint venture that requires all venture members to engage in lobbying and to contribute to collective research efforts. These unaddressed questions await future research.The authors are grateful for the insightful comments of Gordon Tullock, Robert D. Tollison, Michael T. Marlow and J.R. Clark. The usual caveats apply. The views expressed herein are solely those of the authors and should not be taken to represent the views of their employers.     

The satisfaction with life scale: Psychometrics properties in an adolescent sample

The Satisfaction With Life Scale (SWLS) was developed in the United States as a multiitem scale for the overall assessment of life satisfaction as cognitive-judgmental process, rather as a measurement of specific satisfaction areas (e.g., health, energy). The present study attempted to extend the applicability of the SWLS by investigating specific aspects of reliability and validity in a different cultural context (Portugal) with adolescents. In line with previous American findings, reliability figures were found to be favourable. SWLS scores were affected by sex and sociocultural level. In addition, SWLS scores showed to be predictably associated with psychological measures: loneliness, social anxiety, shyness, self- concept, and physical attractiveness. The variables that best predicted satisfaction were overall self-concept, loneliness, and physical attractiveness.Received a Ph.D. in normal and abnormal anthropology from École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (Paris) in 1980 and a Ph.D. in Social Psychology from Faculty of Psychology (Porto) and an Aggregation in Psychology from Faculty of Psychology (Coimbra) in 1990. Research interests include migration and cross-cultural social migration.The author wishes to thank the anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments on an earlier version of this paper.     

Postmodern policy analysis: Discourse and identity in welfare policy

Postmodern inquiry into the discursive construction of identity has the potential to make a distinctive, democratizing contribution to public policy analysis. More so than conventional approaches, a postmodern policy analysis offers the opportunity to interrogate assumptions about identity embedded in the analysis and making of public policy, thereby enabling us to rethink and resist questionable distinctions that privilege some identities at the expense of others. Public policy analysis can benefit from postmodernism's emphasis on how discourse constructs identity. A review of postmodernism and postmodern approaches to interrogating identity is followed by an exercise in postmodern policy analysis. Social welfare policy in contemporary postindustrial America is shown to participate in the construction and maintenance of identity in ways that affect not just the allocation of public benefits, but also economic opportunities outside of the state. Mired in old, invidious distinctions (e.g., independent/dependent, contract/charity, family/promiscuity), welfare policy discourse today helps to recreate the problems of yesterday, particularly as a critical factor in reproducing women's poverty.     

“Comorbidity” of behavioral, emotional, and cognitive problems in adolescence

The purpose of this study was to examine in a sample of 11,516 secondary school students the extent to which different behavioral, emotional and cognitive problems (a) reflected one or more underlying common factors; (b) actually cooccurred; and (c) were single problems. Principal Component Analyses were performed and percentagewise techniques were used. PCA demonstrated that one or more general syndromes could not by far account for all of the variance of the variables. The results suggest the existence of adolescent subgroups with divergent comorbidity patterns: those who primarily report one single symptom; those who report concurrent symptoms either exclusively in the category of behavioral problems or exclusively in the category of emotional and cognitive problems; and those who report concurrent symptoms in both categories. This distinction between different subgroups has important theoretical, diagnostic, and treatment implications.     

Reviews

Orlando Figes, A People's Tragedy: The Russian Revolution 1891–1924. London: Jonathan Cape, 1996, xx + 923 pp., £25.00

Hafeez Malik (ed.), The Roles of the United States, Russia and China in the New World Order. Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1997, xvi + 333 pp., £47.50.

Leszek Buszynski, Russian Foreign Policy after the Cold War. Westport and London: Praeger, 1996, xiv + 243 pp., £46.95.

Mette Skak, From Empire to Anarchy: Postcommunist Foreign Policy and International Relations. London: C. Hurst & Company, 1996, x + 340 pp., £35.00 h/b, £14.95 p/b.

Hans von Zon, The Future of Industry in Central and Eastern Europe. Aldershot: Avebury, 1996, x + 164 pp., £35.00.

Bartlomiej Kaminski (ed.), Economic Transition in Russia and the New States of Eurasia. Armonk, New York: M.E. Sharpe, 1996, xviii + 430 pp.

Ben Fowkes, The Disintegration of the Soviet Union: A Study in the Rise and Triumph of Nationalism. Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1997, xii + 273 pp., £40.00

Juan J. Linz & Alfred Stepan, Problems of Democratic Transition and Consolidation. Southern Europe, South America, and Post‐Communist Europe. London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996, xx + 479 pp., £15.50.

David Lane, The Rise and Fall of State Socialism. Cambridge: Polity Press, 1996, 233 pp., £12.95.

Reneo Lukic & Allen Lynch, Europe from the Balkans to the Urals: The Disintegration of Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996, xvii + 436 pp.

Thomas Cushman & Stjepan G. Mestrovic (eds), This Time We Knew: Western Responses to Genocide in Bosnia. New York: New York University Press, 1996, ix + 412 pp., $50.00 h/b, $18.95 p/b.

Derek Hall & Darrick Danta (eds), Reconstructing the Balkans. A Geography of the New Southeast Europe. Chichester: John Wiley & Sons, 1996, xx + 260 pp., £45.00.

Ajay Patnaik. Central Asia. Between Modernity and Tradition. New Delhi: Konark Publishers, 1996, viii + 238 pp.

Rudolf L. Tokes, Hungary's Negotiated Revolution: Economic Reform, Social Change and Political Succession, 1957–1990. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996, xxiii + 544 pp., £19.95.

John D. H. Downing, Internationalizing Media Theory, Transition, Power, Culture, Reflections on Media in Russia, Poland and Hungary 1980–95. London: Sage, 1996, xviii + 269 pp., £45.00 h/b, £13.95 p/b.

Rogers Brubaker, Nationalism Reframed: Nationhood and the National Question in the New Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996, xi + 202 pp., £35.00 h/b, £12.95 p/b.

Donald P. Steury (ed.), Intentions and Capabilities: Estimates on Soviet Strategic Forces, 1950–1983. Washington DC: Center for the Study of Intelligence, 1996, xxii + 504 pp.

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V. P. Butt, A. B. Murphy, N. A. Myshov & G. R. Swain (eds), The Russian Civil War. Documents from the Soviet Archives. London: Macmillan, 1996, xvii + 217 pp., £15.99.

Ilya Somin, Stillborn Crusade: The Tragic Failure of Western Intervention in the Russian Civil War, 1918–1920. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 1996, ix + 236 pp., £21.95, $32.99.

David R. Shearer, Industry, State, and Society in Stalin's Russia, 1926–1934. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1996, xiv + 263 pp., £33.50 h/b, £14.95 p/b.

Peter H. Solomon Jr., Soviet Criminal Justice under Stalin. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997, xvii + 494 pp., £55.00 h/b, £19.95 p/b.

Richard G. Hovannisian, The Republic of Armenia, Volume III, From London to Sèvres, February‐August 1920, xx + 534 pp., and Volume IV, Between Crescent and Sickle: Partition and Sovietization, xii + 496 pp. Berkeley, University of California Press, 1996. £35.00 each volume.

Ian D. Thatcher & James D. White (eds), Journal of Trotsky Studies. Glasgow: Institute of Russian & East European Studies, 1993–1996, Nos. 1–4, £10.00 (Institutions), £5.00 (Individuals).

Mikhail Baitalsky, Notebooks for the Grandchildren. Recollections of a Trotskyist Who Survived the Stalin Terror, Edited and translated by Marilyn Vogt‐Downey. Atlantic Highlands, New Jersey, 1996, xviii + 447 pp.

Leopoldina Plut‐Pregelj & Carole Rogel, Historical Dictionary of Slovenia. London: The Scarecrow Press, Inc, 1996, xxvii + 345 pp., £63.65.