New occupations,old demands: The public regulation of paraprofessionals

Like doctors, lawyers, and architects before them, many new paraprofessionals occupations are rapidly being defined and regulated, raising the time-worn questions regarding the virtues of free labor markets versus those of regulated labor markets. The trend to regulation is growing rapidly as the paraprofessionals increase in number. The new regulation may improve the quality of services that paraprofessionals provide. But the costs threaten to exceed the benefits. There are less costly ways to deal with the problems that have given rise to the demands for regulation. The success of these demands is due in part to inadequate consideration of their implications.     

Mitigating impacts of HIV/AIDS on rural livelihoods: NGO experiences in sub-Saharan Africa

HIV/AIDS is having profound impacts on livelihoods in sub-Saharan Africa. These include the deaths of working-age adults, the diversion of resources to caring, and the rupture of traditional chains of knowledge transmission. NGOs are responding by providing assistance to communities affected by the epidemic in the fields of agriculture, skills training, and microfinance, as well as by offering home care and support. A key feature of such initiatives is the focus on previously neglected groups such as women, school dropouts, and orphans. Factors of success include the use of participatory processes to identify target groups, and the involvement of local political leaders and adults trusted by young people in project activities. Challenges include improving monitoring systems, effectively disseminating lessons learned, and persuading donors, whose responses to the epidemic are currently focused on preventive and curative health services, to support livelihoods interventions as a matter of urgency.     

Book reviews

Branko Lazitch and Milorad M. Drachkovitch, Lenin and the Comintern, Volume I. Stanford, Calif.: Hoover Institution Press, 1972. (Publications Series 106.) xiii + 683 pp. $17.50.

Karl‐Eugen Wadekin, The Private Sector in Soviet Agriculture. Edited by George Karcz. Second, enlarged, revised edition of Privatproduzenten in der sowjetischen Landzoirtschaft. Translated by Keith Bush. Berkeley, Calif, and London: University of California Press, 1973. xviii + 407 pp. $17.50.

Richard H. Ullman, The Anglo‐Soviet Accord. (Vol. III of Anglo‐Soviet Relations, 1917–1921.) Princeton, N.J. and London: Princeton UP, 1972. xv + 509 pp. £7.00.

Eloise Engle and Lauri Paananen, The Winter War. (The Russo‐Finnish Conflict, 1939–40.) New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1973. xv+176 pp. $7.95.

Allen F. Chew, The White Death: the Epic of the Soviet‐Finnish Winter War. East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 1971. x + 313 pp. $12.50.

Geoffrey Jukes, The Soviet Union in Asia. Sydney: Angus & Robertson, 1973. 304 pp. £2.95.

Jaroslaw A. Piekalkiewicz, Public Opinion Polling in Czechoslovakia, 1968–69. Results and Analysis of Surveys Conducted During the Dubcek Era. (Praeger Special Studies in International Politics and Government.) New York: Praeger Publishers, 1972, and London: Pall Mall Press, 1973. xxix + 357 pp. £7.75.

Deborah D. Milenkovitch, Plan and Market in Yugoslav Economic Thought. New Haven and London: Yale UP, 1971. (Yale Russian and East European Studies, 9.) x + 323 pp. $10.00. £4.50.

Robert G. Wesson, The Soviet Russian State. New York and London: John Wiley & Sons, 1972. x + 404 pp. £4.00. Condensed edition £1.95.

Joseph Nedava, Trotsky and the Jews. Philadelphia: The Jewish Publication Society of America, 1972. 299 pp. $6.00.

Joshua Rothenberg, The Jewish Religion in the Soviet Union. New York: KTAV Publishing House (for Brandeis University), 1972. (Series: Institute for East European Jewish Studies.) viii + 242 pp. $10.00.

Vladimir Petrov, Escape from the Future. Bloomington & London: Indiana UP, 1973. xiii + 470 pp. £3.75.     

A variable geometry of enforcement?

This paper locates the control of fraud against the Community budget within the wider context of the tensions engendered by fiscal crises and successive enlargements of the European Union. Funds allocated to the Member States for agriculture, whether in the form of subventions or structural grants, take up more than half of total budget expenditure, so the Common Agricultural Policy has been at the heart of the discussion on budgetary control. Since the 1980s the Common Agricultural Policy has been blamed for the repeated fiscal crises affecting the Community budget, and for frauds and irregularities. In this historical context, the control of fraud has not been static, but has gone through distinct phases, beginning with benign neglect in the 1960s and 70s, followed by transitional and active phases up to and including today's media focus on the Community budget, and the fraud affecting it. The paper analyses the prospects for future enforcement.     

Social perception of rape victims

Since 1975, 40 states have enacted “rape shield” statustes which limit the admissibility of a rape victim's prior sexual history in court. These reforms have assumed that jurors regard prior sexual history evidence as much too probative of a victim's credibility and moral character, and that such perceptions have a prejudicial impact on the outcome of the jury decision process. The present research adopted an attributional analysis in order to examine the extent to which the types of legal reform affect social perception of the victim as well as the conviction rate in a videotaped consent defense rape trial. A large-scale jury simulation experiment was conducted with qualified jurors from the Minneapolis-St. Paul metropolitan area. Jurors either viewed an Improbable or Probable Likelihood of (victim) Consent version of the trial, with admission of prior sexual history evidence governed by one of three types of exclusionary rules. The results lend credence to the reformist contention that a rape victim is “on trial” along with the accused. Jurors were reluctant to convict when any testimony about prior sexual history was introduced. Moreover, jurors' close scrutiny of the victim's credibility and moral character was directly related to the conviction rate. Only the most restrictive evidentiary rule, when applied to an Improbable Consent case, curtailed the inference of victim consent, enhanced victim credibility, and increased the likelihood of conviction. Some of the legal and attributional implications of these findings were discussed.