Reviews

Vojtech Mastny, Russia's Road to the Cold War: Diplomacy, Warfare, and the Politics of Communism, 1941–1945. New York: Columbia University Press, 1979. xix + 409 pp. $16.95.

Hugh Seton‐Watson, The Imperialist Revolutionaries: Trends in World Communism in the 1960s and 1970s. Stanford, California: Hoover Institution Press, 1979. x + 157 pp. $6.95.

Egbert Jahn (ed.), Soviet Foreign Policy: Its Social and Economic Conditions. London: Allison and Busby, 1978. 160 pp. £6.50.

Stephen White, Political Culture and Soviet Politics, London: Macmillan, 1979. xi + 234 pp. £10.00 and £4.95.

Donald R. Kelley (ed.) Soviet Politics in the Brezhnev Era, New York: Praeger Publishers, 1980, vii + 269 pp. £14.25.

Morton Kaplan (ed.), The Many Faces of Communism, New York: The Free Press, 1978. x + 366 pp. $14.95.

David H. Howard, The Disequilibrium Model in a Controlled Economy, Farnborough: Lexington Books, 1980. x + 112 pp. £9.50/$20.50.

Felicity Ann O'Dell, Socialisation through children's literature: The Soviet example, Cambridge: Cambride University Press, 1978, x + 277 pp. £14.00.

Martin McCauley, Marxism‐Leninism in the German Democratic Republic. The Socialist Unity Party (SED), London: Macmillan, 1979. xix + 267 pp. £12.00.

R. W. Makepeace, Marxist Ideology and Soviet Criminal Law, Croom Helm, Barnes & Noble, 1980. 319 pp. £13.95.

Jan Tomasz Gross, Polish Society under German Occupation: The General‐gouvernement, 1939–1944, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1979. xviii + 343 pp. £11.00     

The forecasting potential of complex models

The nature and use of complex models for forecasting and policy simulation are analyzed on theoretical and empirical-performance grounds. The analysis suggests that while the accuracy of complex models in forecasting trends in such fields as economic and energy is, and will remain, undistinguished, complex models' special virtues of preserving counter-intuitive results and representing subsystem interdepedence could be used to better advantage than current practice permits. Suggestions for such improvements, through more diversified model structures, micro-process models in addition to the typical macro models, a mix of mechanically- and judgmentally-operated models, and the modeling of policy response, are reviewed.     

Book reviews

A. L. Meiendorf, Optimizatsiya khozyaistvennykh reshenii: metod analiza prirashchenii. Series: Aktual'nye problemy sel'skogo khozyaistva. Moscow: ‘Ekonomika’, 1976.

Oliver H. Radkey, The Unknown Civil War in Soviet Russia. A Study of the Green Movement in the Tambov Region, 1920–21. Stanford, Calif.: Hoover Institution, 1976. xiv+457 pp. $12.95.

Roy and Zhores Medvedev, Khrushchev—The Years in Power. London: OUP, 1977. xi+198 pp. £3.95.

Daniel F. Calhoun, The United Front: the TUC and the Russians, 1923–1928. Cambridge: CUP, 1976. 450 pp. £10.50.

Gabriel Gorodetsky, The Precarious Truce. Anglo‐Soviet Relations 1924–27. Cambridge: CUP, 1977. 289 pp. £9.00.

Herbert S. Dinerstein, The Making of a Missile Crisis: October 1962. Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins UP, 1976. 302 pp. $14.95.

Donald R. Kelley, Kenneth R. Stunkel, Richard R. Wescott, The Economic Superpowers and the Environment: The United States, The Soviet Union, and Japan. San Francisco: W. H. Freeman & Co., 1976. 335 pp.

Fred Singleton (ed.), Environmental Misuse in the Soviet Union. New York and London: Praeger Publishers, 1976. xvii+103 pp. $13.50. £8.80.

Peter H. Juviler, Revolutionary Law and Order. Politics and Social Change in the USSR. New York: The Free Press, and London: Collier MacMillan, 1976. xii+274 pp. £11.05.

Richard Szawlowski, The System of the International Organizations of the Communist Countries. Leyden: A. W. Sijthoff, 1976. 322 pp.

Jürg Meister, Soviet Warships of the Second World War. London: Macdonald & Jane, 1977. 348 pp. £7.95.     

Decommodification and the Workfare State

Two related concepts have been used to understand the welfare state –'decommodification' and the 'workfare' or the 'competition' state, as it relates to processes of 'recommodification'. I show how these related literatures may be integrated in order to enhance our understanding of current labour market policies. Applying these concepts to an analysis of the ideas and policies of New Labour leads to the conclusion that state welfare services are being reconfigured to serve more effectively the needs of the market, through a process of 'administrative recommodification'.