A Case Study in U.S. Government Financial Management in Cross-Disciplinary Teams

Following the example of the private sector, the public sector in the United States has been undergoing process-reengineering, most notable in the Federal Government with the National Performance Review (NPR). The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) asked its overseas missions for volunteer participation as Country Experimental Laboratories (CELs) during USAID's NPR efforts. USAID/ Senegal, in French West Africa, became a CEL in the spring of 1994. The reengineering, occurring over a two-year period, created multi-disciplinary teams centered around Strategic Objectives (SOs). This article describes the experience and lessons learned from developing and implementing financial management policies and procedures to support the SO Teams, while concurrently ensuring that accountability requirements were met. The article uses the case study format, delineating the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats faced by the Mission Controller, the trade-offs between the decentralization of program management and accountability, and the organizational relationships established to reengineer the financial management processes at USAID/Senegal.     

Reviews

Curtis Keeble, Britain and the Soviet Union, 1917–89. London: Macmillan, 1990, xiv+387 pp., £40.00.

Baruch Hazan, Gorbachev's Gamble: The 19th All‐Union Party Conference. Boulder, San Francisco, and London: Westview Press, 1990, 485 pp., $42.50.

Martin Crouch, Revolution and Evolution: Gorbachev and Soviet Politics. New York, London: Philip Allan, 1989, x+245 pp., £24.50 h/b, £8.95 p/b.

Adam Westoby, The Evolution of Communism. Oxford: Polity Press, 1989, vii+333 pp., £29.50 h/b, £9.95 p/b.

Mikael Sandberg, Learning from Capitalists. A Study of Soviet Assimilation of Western Technology. Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell International, 1989, xi+264 pp., SEK 148.00 p/b.

Stephen Fortescue, Science Policy in the Soviet Union. London: Routledge, 1990, ix+230 pp., £35.00.

Zhores Medvedev, The Legacy of Chernobyl. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1990, 344 pp., £19.95.

Jonathon R. Adelman & Christiann Lea Gibson, eds., Contemporary Soviet Military Affairs: The Legacy of World War II. London: Unwin Hyman, 1989, viii+193 pp., $39.95.

Ellen Brun & Jacques Hersch, Soviet‐Third World Relations in a Capitalist World: The Political Economy of Broken Promises. London & Basingstoke, Macmillan Press (in association with the Danish International Development Agency, Danida), 1990, x+335 pp., £35.00.

Douglas A. Macgregor, The Soviet‐East German Military Alliance. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989, xii+178 pp., £25.00 ($34.50).

Stanislaw Gomulka, Yong‐Chool Ha, Cae‐One Kim, eds., Economic Reforms in the Socialist World. Basingstoke & London: Macmillan, 1989, x+244 pp., £35.00.

Jacques Sapir, Les fluctuations économiques en URSS 1941–1985. Paris: Editions de l'Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, 1989, 239 pp., 200 Francs.

Eugene Shirley, Jr. & Michael Rowe, eds., Candle in the Wind: Religion in the Soviet Union. Lanham, MD: Ethics and Public Policy Center Publishers, 1989, xxvii+356 pp., $39.50 h/b., $21.95 p/b.

Nikki R. Keddie & Mark J. Gasiorowski eds., Neither East Nor West: Iran, the USSR, and the USA. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1990, ix+295 pp., £30.00, h b., £9.95 p b.

R. Craig Nation, War on War: Lenin, the Zimmerwald Left and the Origins of Communist Internationalism. Durham & London: Duke University Press, 1990, xiv+313 pp., £42.25.     

Wife Abuse in Hong Kong Chinese Families: A Community Survey

The present study aimed to explore the extent and pattern of wife abuse in Hong Kong Chinese families. The sample included 1,132 married women aged 18 or older randomly selected from the community. Results showed that 67.2% of the surveyed women reported at least one incident of verbal abuse, and 10% experienced at least one incident of physical abuse by their husbands during the surveyed year. Husband-to-wife minor physical violence was almost seven times more than husband-to-wife severe physical violence (9.8% vs 1.4%). Couples' age and their age differences were related to physical wife abuse but not verbal wife abuse. Specifically, physical wife abuse in the form of minor violence occurred most frequently among married men and women aged 30 or below; and both minor and severe physical violence to wife was found most frequently among couples whose ages were more than 20 years apart. Couples' education level, differences in education, occupation, family income, and number of children were not related to various forms of wife abuse; whereas the length of marriage and marital satisfaction were significant correlates of wife abuse. Results were discussed with regard to relevant local and Western studies.     

Democracy Without Parties? Political Parties and Regime Change in Fujimori's Peru

Political parties are critical to Latin American democracy. This was demonstrated in Peru, where an atomized, candidate-centered party system developed after Alberto Fujimori's 1992 presidential self-coup. Party system decomposition weakened the democratic opposition against an increasingly authoritarian regime. Since the regime collapsed in 2000, prospects for party rebuilding have been mixed. Structural changes, such as the growth of the informal sector and the spread of mass media technologies, have weakened politicians' incentive to build parties. Although these changes did not cause the collapse of the party system, they may inhibit its reconstruction.