Book reviews

The Politics of Central Europe by Attila Ágh. London: Sage Publications Ltd, 1998. Pp.xii + 244. £15.99 pb ISBN 0 7619 5032 X.

Legitimacy and the European Union by David Beetham and Christopher Lord. Harlow: Addison Wesley Longman Ltd, 1998. Pp.viii + 144. £11.99 pb ISBN 0 582 30489 X.

Party Discipline and Parliamentary Government edited by Shaun Bowler, David M. Farrell and Richard S. Katz. Columbus, OH: Ohio State University Press, 1999. Pp.ix + 304. $59.95 hb ISBN 0 8142 0796 0; $22.50 pb ISBN 0 8142 5000 9.

Conscience and Parliament edited by Philip Cowley. London and Portland, OR: Frank Cass, 1998. Pp.204 £35 hb ISBN 0 7146 4836 1; £16.50 pb ISBN 0 7146 4388 2.

The House of Lords: Its Parliamentary and Judicial Roles edited by Brice Dickson and Paul Carmichael. Oxford: Hart Publishing Ltd, 1999. Pp.258. £30 hb ISBN 1 84113 020 6.

Namibia's Post‐Apartheid Regional Institutions: The Founding Years by Joshua Bernard Forrest. Woodbridge, Suffolk: University of Rochester Press, 1999. Pp.xviii + 408. £40 hb ISBN 1 58046 028 3.

Bakom Riksdagens Fasad by Magnus Hagevi. Göteburg: Akademiförlaget, Corona, 1998. Pp.314 pb ISBN 91 24 16844 0.

Feminist Perspectives on Public Law edited by Susan Millns and Noel Whitty. London: Cavendish Publishing Limited, 1999. Pp.xviii + 306. £19.95 pb ISBN 1 85941 480 X.

Senates: Bicameralism in the Contemporary World edited by Samuel C. Patterson and Anthony Mughan. Columbus, OH: Ohio State University Press, 1999. Pp.xii + 360. $52 hb ISBN 0 8142 0810 X; $19.95 pb 0 8142 5010 6.

Deliberative Democracy in Australia: The Changing Place of Parliament by John Uhr. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998. Pp.xvi + 265. £45 hb ISBN 0 521 62458 4; £15.95 pb ISBN 0 521 62465 7.

Pursuit of Justices: Presidential Politics and the Selection of Supreme Court Nominees by David Alistair Yalof. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1999. Pp.x + 296. £19.50 hb ISBN 0 226 94545 6.     

Mind the Gap. The Theory and Practice of State Rescaling: Institutional Morphology and the ‘New’ City-regionalism

The repeated reterritorialisation of economic development policy has resulted in a congested institutional environment characterised by a confused, and confusing, nested spatial hierarchy of interventions. Nevertheless, advocacy for perpetual institutional manoeuvring has proceeded largely unchecked leaving important questions unanswered regarding both the desirability of adding to/modifying the institutional landscape of cities and also the viability of such policies in light of existing attachments to long-established administrative geographies. In calling for further research, this paper conducts a preliminary investigation of the mutation of sub-city Urban Regeneration Companies (URCs) into city-regional City Development Companies (CDCs) and suggests the expansive critical realist epistemology as a potentially worthwhile methodological starting-point.     

Congressional Testimony of General Lance W. Lord,USAF, Commander,Air Force Space Command before the Senate Armed Services Committee Strategic Forces Subcommittee United States Senate Washington D.C 16 March 2005

ABSTRACT

The following is the prepared testimony of General Lance W. Lord, USAF, Commander of U.S. Air Force Space Command before the Strategic Forces Subcommittee of the U.S. Senate's Armed Services Committee on 16 March 2005. The prepared testimony can also be found at: http://armed-services.senate.gov/statemnt/2005/March/Lord%2003-16-05.pdf     

Democracy and the European Union: Matching means to standards

In justifying recent European Union Treaty changes, member-state governments have claimed that publics are doubly represented in the EU: through their elected governments and through the European Parliament. This review evaluates ‘dual representation’ as a means of delivering democratic standards. It concludes that present institutional arrangements contain some means of aligning policy outcomes with citizen preferences but they do not match up so well to ‘input’ or procedural conditions for public control with political equality. One troubling aspect of this is that there are good normative grounds for holding ‘input’ standards to be prior to ‘output’ ones. Another is that difficulties of public control are, on Union matters, more acute in relationships between representatives and voters than in those between representatives and other power holders.     

Union Affiliation,Socialization, and Political Identities: The Case of Mexico

The literature on voting behavior has generally accepted that party identification largely determines voter choice. While many studies have found that party identification is largely transmitted through social learning, less studied are the processes of the construction of party identity by way of group membership. This study seeks to understand how group identity influences party identification among Mexican workers through an analysis of the effects of union affiliation on political behavior. It assesses the utility of corporatist legacies in explaining party identity in Mexico and provides a first assessment of party affinities among independent unionists. The evidence draws from original survey data collected during six demonstrations in Mexico City. The study finds that union membership does condition the party identity of corporatist workers but not that of independent unionists.