Book reviews

Hélène Carrère d'Encausse, Une Révolution, une victoire. L'union soviétique de Lénine à Staline 1917–1953. Paris: Editions Richelieu, 1972. 446 pp. 60 F.

Joel C. Moses, Regional Party Leadership and Policy‐Making in the USSR. (Praeger Special Studies in International Politics and Government.) New York: Praeger Publishers, 1974, and London: Pall Mall Press, 1975. xv+263 pp. £8.00.

Robert J. Osborn, The Evolution of Soviet Politics. Homewood, Ill. and London: The Dorsey Press, 1974. xiii+574 pp. $10.95.

Robert H. Donaldson, Soviet Policy toward India: Ideology and Strategy. (Russian Research Center Studies, 74.) Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard UP, 1974. x+338 pp. £7.50.

Lloyd G. Churchward, Contemporary Soviet Government. Second Edition. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1975. 368 pp. £6.95.

Otto Ul?, Politics in Czechoslovakia. San Francisco and Reading: W. H. Freeman, 1975. xi+181 pp. £4.70.

Ivan Volgyes (ed.), Environmental Deterioration in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. (Praeger Special Studies in International Politics and Government.) New York: Praeger, 1974, and London: Pall Mall Press, 1975. xiii+168 pp. $14.00. £6.00.

Rolf Freund, Investitionskriterien als Mittel zur Realisierung eines Entwick‐lungspfades. Dargestellt am Beispiel der UdSSR. Berlin: Osteuropa‐Institut an der Freien Universität Berlin, 1974. v+202 pp. DM 12.00.

László Szamuely, First Models of the Socialist Economic Systems. Principles and Theories. Budapest: Akadémiai Kiádó, 1974. 109 pp. £2.60.

Iain F. Elliot, The Soviet Energy Balance. Natural Gas, Other Fossil Fuels, and Alternative Power Sources. (Praeger Special Studies in Economics and Development.) New York: Praeger Publishers, 1974, and London: Pall Mall Press, 1975. xv+277 pp. £8.00.     

Service Efforts and Accomplishments Reporting: Has Its Time Really Come?

In April 1994 GASB released Concepts Statement No. 2, Service Efforts and Accomplishments Reporting , bringing required SEA external financial reporting a very large step closer to reality. Before long, public financial officials may be required to annually report measures of performance. We are now about halfway through the experimentation phase established in Statement 2. This article summarizes the status of GASB's SEA experimentation process. It then suggests important behavioral, auditing, and other issues which GASB ought to address before proceeding with any formal pronouncements regarding SEA reporting requirements.     

The Effects of Capital Mobility, Trade Openness, and Democracy on Social Spending in Latin America, 1980–1999

Empirical studies measuring the impact of globalization on social spending have appeared recently in leading journals. This study seeks to improve upon previous work by (1) employing a more sophisticated and comprehensive measure of financial openness; (2) using a more accurate measure of trade openness based on purchasing power parities; and (3) relying on social spending data that are more complete than those used by previous studies on Latin America. Our estimates suggest that several empirical patterns reported in previous work deserve a second look. We find that trade openness has a positive association with education and social security expenditures, that financial openness does not constrain government outlays for social programs, and that democracy has a strong positive association with social spending, particularly on items that bolster human capital formation.     

Representations of the family in postwar British amateur film: family histories in the Lane and Scrutton collection at the East Anglian Film Archive

This article examines the construction of the postwar British family in amateur film with reference to the Sidney Lane and Cecil Scrutton collection held at the East Anglian Film Archive (EAFA), particularly the films covering 1948 – 1961. Heather Norris Nicholson argues that home movies contribute to ‘an understanding of leisure and visual-related practices of consumption as well as the social processes by which people came to give themselves, and others, identities’ in the mid-twentieth century (Nicholson, H. N. [2004]. At Home and Abroad with Cine Enthusiasts: Regional Amateur Filmmaking and Visualizing the Mediterranean, ca. 1928 – 1962’. Geojournal, 49, 323–333). By considering the social and historical contexts in which these home movies were produced, and using accompanying notes by one of the filmmaker’s sons, the leisure time films of Lane and Scrutton can be analysed in order to understand how the amateur cine hobby ideologically constructed family, community and national identity in postwar Britain. The images of Christmas parties, daytrips and holidays in these films reveal much about this particular family, and are therefore very illuminating to the social historian and film scholar of today.     

Congressional certification: How firms use former Congress members to lobby on their behalf

This paper models the effect of firm-level profitability (earnings before interest and taxes and return on sales) against certification by former members of the U.S. Congress. Although some scholars have studied certification, none have studied certification in the public policy market as is done in the current work. Likewise, although scholars have studied the effects of lobbying and political connections on firms' outcomes, none have studied lobbying through former Congress members specifically. The findings confirm that, after controlling for numerous factors, firms can use former Congress members to effectively lobby and certify their intentions. Both firm-level earnings before interest and taxes and return on sales were significantly associated with prior lobbying efforts by these former elected federal officials in several different estimation techniques employed in the study.     

THE ANTI-CORRUPTION STRUGGLE IN XI JINPING’S CHINA: AN ALTERNATIVE POLITICAL NARRATIVE

The fact that the extensive anti-corruption struggle that has consumed China since 2013 is highly political is widely accepted and understood. But the question is precisely what political strategy it is directed at – that of bolstering the position of the current supreme leader, Xi Jinping. Or for the preservation of the Party itself. There is a huge difference between these. The first simply means in effect the replacement of one corruptible elite by another. The second means a titanic struggle to change the Chinese communist party culture of power, and to make it enduring and sustainable.     

The Tradition Industry: Hofstadter and Santayana on Politics,Culture and Capitalism

Richard Hofstadter’s provocative interpretation of what he called The American Political Tradition has long interested students and scholars. Often read as a response to the crisis times of the depression 1930s and interventionist 1940s, the book’s origins are actually rooted in deeper cultural changes in the United States. This paper argues that George Santayana’s earlier essay, “The Genteel Tradition in American Philosophy” (1911), anticipated several key aspects of Hofstadter’s argument and proved to more accurately foresee the ideological course of twentieth century American politics.     

Ideology in the Era of Xi Jinping

Journal of Chinese Political Science - After 1978, Maoism as a living mass ideological and social force in the People’s Republic of China largely died away. The Party state’s legitimacy...     

The implementation of case formulation by probation officers: service user and carer views

Background: The recent UK Government strategy on high-risk offenders with personality disorders (PD) proposes improved identification of this group, assessment of their treatment needs through case formulation (CF) and the subsequent provision of treatment pathways. Little is known about service user and carer views on this strategy. Aims/Hypotheses: This study sought to identify the views of personality-disordered (PD) offenders and carers on the proposed role of Probation staff in CF. Methods: Three focus groups were carried out, two with service users and one with carers, with a total of 10 participants overall. Results: Five themes emerged: ‘power’, ‘conflicting roles’, ‘trust’, ‘building a relationship through consistency of care’ and ‘hope and possibility’. Conclusions/Practical implications: Offenders and carers were sceptical regarding the proposed role of Offender Manager (OMs) in CF and this could pose a potential barrier to the successful implementation of the strategy.