Book notes

Public Administration: A Comparative Perspective (Second Edition), Ferrel Heady, Marcel Dekker Inc., 1979, pp. 429, price unknown.

Programme Evaluation at H.E.W., Research versus Reality: Part 2, Education, James G. Abert (Ed.), Marcel Dekker Inc., 1979, pp. 395, price unknown.

Public Sector Decision Making, David Pearce (Ed.), Special issue of OMECA, The International Journal of Management Science (Vol. 7, No. 5, 1979), Pergamon Press, pp. 101, £9.00 paperback.

Why Policies Succeed or Fail, Helen M. Ingram and Dean E. Mann (Eds), Sage Publications, 1980, pp. 312, £12.50 cloth, £6.25 paper.

Supplementary Benefits and the Consumer, Eric Brigg and Anthony M. Rees, Occasional Papers on Social Administration No. 65, Bedford Square Press, 1979, pp. 172, £5.95.

More Bad News, Glasgow University Media Group, Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1980, pp. 483, £17.50.

The Road and Christ Church Meadow: The Oxford Inner Relief Road Controversy 1923–1974 — A Study of the Relationship between Central and Local Government, Roland Newman, Oxford Polytechnic, 1980, pp. 71, £1.00.

Planned Safety Management: A Guide to Action, A. Stevenson, Alan Osborne and Associates, 1980, pp. 116, £4.50 paperback.

Public Policy Research: A Review of Qualitative Methods, Ken Young and Liz Mills, Social Science Research Council, 1980, pp. 43, £1.00.

The Practice of Urban Economics, Alfred J. Watkins, Sage Publications (Vol. 107 of Sage Library of Social Research), 1980, pp. 247, £11.25 hardback, £5.50 paperback.     

Police interrogation

Abstract

We describe a study of more than 1000 interrogations by Metropolitan Police Officers. Obtaining a confession is found to be the paramount reason for interviewing a suspect. However, few suspects who did not initially confess changed their minds during the interview. 42% of suspects admitted their guilt—about the same number as obtained before tape recording of interviews was introduced. Strength of evidence and legal advice were the principal factors associated with confessing. The confession rate also varied according to which police station hosted the “interview”. An “accusatorial” style of questioning was associated with the possession of strong evidence against the suspect.     

The state of East Timor studies after 1999

Taking stock of the state of knowledge on East Timor since the UN intervention of 1999, this article traces the rise of a hegemonic discourse especially around development issues notably as promoted by the World Bank. In turn, the World Bank discourse of lean government, market-oriented economic policies, and export-oriented agriculture is reflected in a number of publications. As a formidable patronage machine in East Timor, it would not be surprising if arriving international staff along with East Timorese returnees would emerge as Bank collaborators or even employees. The thriving NGO community which emerged in East Timor as the underbelly of the UN mission also found common cause with human rights discourse and, especially, sustainable development discourse from within the UN mission. Meanwhile, a number of foreign anthropologists embedded themselves within and without the UN mission producing a major corpus of writings. Amidst this “clash of paradigms” East Timor muddled along, dependent on donor support, but prey to vagaries of seasons, international markets, and predatory outsiders. To a large extent, the international agency, NGO, and academic literature tracked these vagaries but, outside of linguistic studies, we await a critical mass of autonomous writings by East Timorese about East Timor.     

Remembering the Southeast Asian Chinese massacres of 1941-45

This article examines a series of wartime massacres (sook chings) conducted at various Southeast Asian sites with a view to teasing out broader lessons about justice, compensation, apology and the uses of memory both on the side of the victims as well as the nation that perpetrated the crimes. Characteristically, the sook chings of Southeast Asia, occurring in ethnically complex societies with mostly Chinese as victims, displayed a planned character of strictly ethnic and political “cleansing” that meets broad definitions of genocide. This article also considers historical memory. Obviously, as with Japanese war crimes in China, the sook chings of Southeast Asia are remembered locally. But also, as in China, remembrance of the sook chings has been modulated by the state, mostly in the interest of good relations and business links with Japan (with some notable exceptions). But, alongside the Nanjing Massacre, much contested in Japanese historiography, the sook ching massacres remain virtually unknown to the Japanese public, and have not become an issue between Japan and the Southeast Asian countries where these events occurred.     

Minority manipulation in colonial Indochina: Lessons and legacies

Abstract

As one student of the ethnohistory of the highlands of Indochina, Hickey, has written, the French “penetration” of Kontum, Ban Me Thuot, and Dalat had achieved a certain success by the beginning of the First World War. Central to the viability of the French colonial project of economic exploitation in the highlands was the need for road construction and other public works, including labor for privately owned French plantations. Not only did the subject peoples of the remote villages of the interior—broadly designated Montagnards in this essay—find themselves obliged to pay taxes, but they were also expected by the French to provide corvée labor or labor dues (prestation). Colonialism indubitably demands the services of local collaborators, and such was the case in the highlands where local chiefs were vested with new authority by the French administration. Even though by the 1930s the French “pacification” of the interior had reduced armed opposition to the nuisance level, pacification's twin imperative of administrative penetration of the conquered zones and peoples posed equally serious ethical questions.     

Democratization in Mozambique: Trends and practices

This article explores the nature of party political competition four years after Mozambique's first democratic national elections, with particular attention being accorded to the democratization of local government. It commences with an overview of the nature of contemporary party politics in Mozambique. Secondly, the democratization of local government is reviewed. Thirdly, recent political developments are located within the context of major economic reconstruction and escalating corruption. It is concluded that whilst Mozambique does have a stable multi‐party system in the formal sense at least, the substance of genuine multi‐partyism remains elusive, given the near‐total lack of policy alternatives and the proliferation of corruption at the highest levels of political life.