Experiments in filtering political opinions

Changes in the wording of core measures of political attitudes in the American National Election Studies have generated a good deal of controversy about artifactual sources of change in the U.S. electorate. This research, based on several field experiments and replications, investigates the effects of using or not using various types of opinion filter questions that have appeared in the SRC/CPS series over the years. The analysis shows that the use of a filter interacts significantly with a respondent's level of education and interest in politics, particularly the latter, in determining whether a respondent will offer an opinion on a given public policy issue. But the study also demonstrates that such an interaction occurs primarily when the question about interest in politics is askedafter, rather thanbefore, a set of political issue items. In interpreting these order-and-context effects the authors develop a self-perception model of how respondents infer their interest in politics from information that isavailable in memory about their own behavior in the survey interview.     

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.

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

B. Reviews: general

A HISTORY OF THE ARAB PEOPLES. By ALBERT HOURANI. London, Faber and Faber, 1991. xviii, 551pp. £25 (hb).

STUDIES IN ARAB HISTORY. Edited by DEREK HOPWOOD. (St.Antony's/Macmillan series.) London, Macmillan, 1990. 189pp. 5 plates and 3 figures.

A HISTORY OF THE SELJUKS: ?BRAHIM KAFESOGLU'S INTERPRETATION AND THE RESULTING CONTROVERSY. Translated and edited By GARY LEISER. Carbondale and Edwardsville, Southern Illinois University Press, 1988. 208pp. Genealogical charts, maps in end covers. $29.95.

THE HISTORY OF THE JEWS IN THE LATIN KINGDOM OF JERUSALEM. By JOSHUA PRAWER. Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1988. xv, 310pp. 5 maps.

ARAB HISTORY AND THE NATION STATE: A STUDY IN MODERN ARAB HISTORIOGRAPHY 1820–1980. By YOUSSEF M. CHOUEIRI. (Exeter Arabic and Islamic Series.) London & New York, Routledge, 1989. xix, 238pp. £35.00

THE END OF EMPIRE IN THE MIDDLE EAST: BRITAIN'S RELINQUISHMENT OF POWER IN HER LAST THREE ARAB DEPENDENCIES. By GLEN BALFOUR‐PAUL. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1991. xxiv, 278pp. £30.00.

THE LETTERS OF T.E. LAWRENCE. Edited by MALCOLM BROWN. Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1991. xi, 564pp. £8.95 (pb).

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UN GRAND RABBIN SEPHARADE EN POLITIQUE 1892–1923. Presented and edited by ESTHER BENBASSA. Mesnil‐sur‐l'Estrée, CNRS, 1990. 263pp.

THE SUPREME MUSLIM COUNCIL: ISLAM UNDER THE BRITISH MANDATE FOR PALESTINE. By URI M. KUPFERSCHMIDT. Leiden, Brill, 1987.

AFTER THE EAGLES LANDED: THE YEMENITES OF ISRAEL. By HERBERT S. LEWIS. Boulder, Westview Press, 1989. xix, 277pp., photographs, glossary.

LAND BEFORE HONOUR: PALESTINIAN WOMEN IN THE OCCUPIED TERRITORIES. By KITTY WARNOCK. (Women in Society: A Feminist List.) London, Macmillan Educational Press, 1990. 199pp.

PEASANT POLITICS IN MODERN EGYPT: THE STRUGGLE AGAINST THE STATE. By NATHAN BROWN. New Haven and London, Yale University Press, 1990. 280pp. 2 maps. £25.00.

SOCIETY AND STATE IN THE GULF AND ARAB PENINSULA. By KHALDOUN HASAN AL‐NAQEEB. London and New York, Routledge, 1990. xvii, 206 pp. £35

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MAJOR POLITICAL EVENTS IN IRAN, IRAQ AND THE ARABIAN PENINSULA 1945–1990. By TREVOR MOSTYN. New York & London, Facts on File, 1991. xii, 308pp. £14.95.

WOMEN AT WORK IN THE GULF: A CASE STUDY OF BAHRAIN. By MUNIRA A. FAKHRO. London, Kegan Paul International. 184pp. £45.00

THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF TURKEY: DEBT, ADJUSTMENT AND SUSTAINABILITY. Edited by TOSUN ARICANLI and DANI RODRIK. Basingstoke, Macmillan, 1990. 275pp. £40 (hb).

AFGHANISTAN: A COUNTRY LAW STUDY. By GHOLAM H. VAFAI. Washington, Library of Congress, 1988. 63pp.

RESISTANCE AND CONTROL IN PAKISTAN. By AKBAR S. AHMED. London & New York, Routledge, 1991. xxiii, 207pp. £12.99 (pb).

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OGHUSICA AUS IRAN. By GERHARD DOERFER, WOLFRAM HESCHE, JAMSHID RAVANYAR. Wiesbaden, Harrassowitz, 1990. ix, 146pp. DM 56.‐

ABBASID BELLES LETTRES. Edited by Julia Ashtiany, T.M. Johnstone, J.D. Latham, R.B. Serjeant and G. Rex Smith. (The Cambridge History of Arabic Literature, Vol.II, 1.) Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1990. xiii, 517pp.

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THE MEADOWS OF GOLD: THE ABBASIDS. By MAS'UDI. Tr. and ed. by PAUL LUNDE and CAROLINE STONE. London and New York, Kegan Paul International, 1989. x, 469pp. £30.00

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ISLAM, THE STRAIGHT PATH. By JOHN L. ESPOSITO. Oxford University Press, 1988. viii, 230pp. £6.95.

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IN A CALIPH'S KITCHEN: MEDIAEVAL ARABIC COOKING FOR THE MODERN GOURMET. By DAVID WAINES. London, Riad el‐Rayyes Books, 1989. 119pp. 44 colour plates. £14.00.     

The history of conditional agenda-setting in European institutions

Abstract. The purpose of this article is twofold. Our first goal is to make explicit an institutionalist theory of European integration. This theory is based on the concept of 'conditional agenda setting', which we argue has played an important role in European integration. According to this theory, the fact that Commission proposals are more easily accepted than modified by the Council has accelerated the pace of integration. This finding brings us to the second goal of this article which is to investigate, by studying the history of EU institutions, whether or not these institutions were the result of conscious planning. We demonstrate that while some of the founding fathers (Hallstein, Spaak) and opponents of the EU (de Gaulle) had an accurate understanding of the institutional structures created in Rome, later participants in the integration process did not. In particular, the arguments surrounding the Single European Act indicate a lack of understanding of the full implications of the institutions selected.