Book reviews

Computer Software — Legal Protection in the United Kingdom, 2nd edition Henry Carr and Richard Arnold Sweet and Maxwell 1992. ISBN 0 421 44380 4 £45

Legal Protection of Computer Programs in Europe — a Guide to the EC Directive Bridget Czarnota and Robert J Hart Butterworths 1991. ISBN 0 406 00542 7

Intellectual Property Rights in Sound Recordings, Film and Video J A L Sterling Sweet and Maxwell 1992. ISBN 0 421 4570 9

The European Market Place James Hogan Macmillan 1991. ISBN 0 333 51858 6

Intellectual Property D Bainbridge Pitman 1992. ISBN 0 273 034265 X     

The balancing act of establishing a policy agenda: Conceptualizing and measuring drivers of issue prioritization within interest groups

Interest groups are important intermediaries in Western democracies, with the potential to offer political linkage and form a bridge between the concerns of citizens and the agendas of political elites. While we know an increasing amount about the issue‐based activity of groups, we only have a limited understanding about how they selected these issues to work on. In this article, we examine the process of agenda setting within groups. In particular, we address challenges of conceptualization and measurement. Through a thorough review of the group literature, we identify five main factors that are hypothesized to drive issue prioritization. We operationalize items to tap these factors and then empirically assess this theoretical model relying on data from a survey of national interest groups in Australia. Our findings, from a confirmatory factor analysis, provide support for the multidimensional nature of agenda setting. We discuss how this provides a firm conceptual and methodological foundation for future work examining how groups establish their policy agenda.     

Investigating the Refugee Health Disadvantage Among the U.S. Immigrant Population

Much health-disparities research focuses on race and ethnicity, but nativity has proved to be a crucial factor in explaining the immigrant health advantage. Foreign-born subgroups with certain immigration statuses, such as refugees, may have an initial disadvantage. Using nationally representative survey data, we explore differences in health outcomes by analyzing two visa category subgroups in the United States: refugees and nonrefugee immigrants. Our findings show that refugees have a significant disadvantage across multiple health outcomes. This suggests that current refugee health-screening practices should be changed to take into account broader issues, such as chronic disease and functional limitation.     

Decomposing the Relationship Between Contiguity and Militarized Conflict

It is well known that the majority of militarized conflicts and wars have been fought by neighbors. Yet, much remains to be learned about the relationship between shared borders and militarized conflict. This article decomposes the effects of territorial contiguity into  ex ante  "observable" and "behavioral" effects. It provides powerful empirical evidence for the claim that although neighbors are more likely to experience conflict because of  ex ante  differences in observable variables such as economic interdependence, alliance membership, joint democracy, and the balance of military capabilities, most conflicts between neighbors occur because of differences in how neighbors and nonneighbors respond to the observable variables.     

Who Cheats? Who Loots? Political Competition and Corruption in Japan, 1947–1993

When do politicians resort to corrupt practices? This article distinguishes between two types of corruption by politicians: illegal acts for material gain (looting) and illegal acts for electoral gain (cheating). Looting generally involves a politician “selling” influence while cheating involves a politician “buying” votes. Individual‐level analyses of new data on financial scandals and election law violations in Japan show that the determinants of cheating differ from the determinants of looting. Most notably, political experience and electoral security increase the probability of looting, but electoral insecurity combined with intraparty competition increases the probability of cheating.     

Bargaining and Fighting: The Impact of Regime Type on War Onset, Duration, and Outcomes

Recent research suggests that democracies have advantages and disadvantages in wars. Democracies are more likely to win the wars they initiate and the ones in which they are targeted. Wars initiated by democracies are also uniformly shorter and less costly than wars initiated by nondemocracies. However, democracies are also less likely to continue fighting and less likely to win as war drags on. Democracies are also particularly likely to be targeted. We present a bargaining model that reconciles these divergent findings. The model explains why democracies are more likely to win but are also more likely to settle and more likely to be targeted than other types of regimes. The model's explanation of these facts differs in important ways from existing explanations. The model also suggests several new hypotheses relating regime type to the terms of settlement and the onset of war .