Reviews

Scribe, Griot and Novelist: Narrative Interpreters of the Songhay Empire by Thomas A Hale. University of Florida Press, Gainesville (Florida, U.S.A.), 1990. xiv plus 313 pp. including notes, bibliography and index. £23.06. Hardback.

General History of Africa VII. Africa under Colonial Domination 1880–1935 (abridged edition) edited by A. Adu Boahenforthe UNESCO International Scientific Committee for the Drafting of a General History of Africa. UNESCO (Paris), University of California Press (Berkeley) and James Currey (London), 1990. xxi plus 387pp. including illustrations, bibliography and index. £4.95. Paperback.

South Africa: Constitutional Development ‐ A Multi‐disciplinary Approach by Donovan Marais. Southern Book Publishers, Johannesburg, 1989. 315pp. Notes and index. R37.50. Paperback.

Transport Planning for Third World Cities edited by Harry T. Dimitriou. Routledge, London, 1990. xxii plus 432pp. including figures, tables, notes, bibliography and index. £40.00. Hardback.

The Founder: Cecil Rhodes and the Pursuit of Power by Robert I. Rotberg with Miles F. Shore. Oxford University Press, New York, 1989. xxii plus 800pp. including maps, illustrations and bibliography. $35.00 and £25.00.

The Development of the Executive underthe Nigerian Constitutions, 1960–81 by J.D. Ojo. Ibadan University Press, Ibadan, 1985.189pp.

Cultural Forces in World Politics by Ali A. Mazrui. James Currey, London 1990.262pp. R46.60. Paperback.

Urban Markets ‐ Developing Informal Retailing by David Dewar and Vanessa Watson. Routledge, London, 1990. xii plus 154pp. £30.00. Hardback.

State‐Administered Rural Change: Agricultural Cooperatives in Kenya by Björn Gyllström. Routledge, London and New York, 1991. xvii plus 319pp. including figures, tables, appendices, notes, bibliography and index. Hardback.

The African Frontier: The Reproduction of Traditional African Societies. Edited and with an introduction by Igor Kopytoff. Indiana University Press, Bloomington and Indianapolis. 1987. vii plus 288pp. including maps, notes and index. R70.15. Hardback.

Studies in the Economic History of Southern Africa. Volume Two: South Africa, Lesotho and Swaziland edited by Z.A. Konczacki, Jane L Parpart and Timothy M. Shaw. Frank Cass & Co. Ltd., London, 1991. xvii plus 290pp. including maps, figures, tables, notes, bibliography and index. £35.00 Hardback. £19.50 Paperback.

Incentives and Agriculture in East Africa by Mats Lundahl. Routledge, London, 1990.223pp. Hardback.

African Agriculture: The Critical Choices edited by HA Amara and B. Founou‐Tchuigoua. UN University Press, Tokyo and Zed Books, London, 1990. 227 pp. Paperback.

A History of Agriculture in West Africa: A Guide to Information Sources by S.C. Saha. Studies in African Economic and Social Development, Volume 6, The Edwin Mellen Press, New York and Lampeter, Wales. 136pp. $49.95. Hardback.

Ethnographic Decision Tree Modelling by Christina H. Gladwin. Sage University Paper Series on Qualitative Research Methods Vol.9. Beverly Hills CALSage, 1989.96pp. $6.50. Paperback.

Samora Machel: A Biography by lain Christie. London: Panaf 1989. 181pp including photographs, bibliography and index. Paperback.

Mozambique: Norwegian Assistance in a Context of Crisis by Grete Brochmann & Arve Ofstad. Fantoft: Christian Michelsen Institute, 1990. vii plus 173pp. including tables, bibliography and index. Paperback.

Self‐Employment for Disabled People: Experiences from Africa and Asia by Malcolm Harper and Willi Momm. International Labour Office, Geneva, 1989. viii plus 85pp. Swiss Francs 15. Paperback.

Technology, Gender and Power in Africa by Patricia Stamp. Ottawa, Ontario, International Development Research Centre, 1989. x plus 185pp. Paperback.

The Devils are Among Us: The War for Namibia by Denis Herbstein and John Evenson. Zed Books Ltd., London, 1989. ix plus 202pp. including maps, photographs, bibliography, glossary and index. Paperback.

Zimbabwe: A Model for Namibia? A Comparison of Events in Zimbabwe‐Rhodesia 1979–1980 with the Situation in SWA in 1989by Ted Sutton‐Pryce. Academica, Pretoria, 1989. vii plus 77pp. including photographs and acknowledgements. R12.50 plus VAT. Hardback.

The Failure of the Centralised State: Institutions of Self‐Governance in Africa edited by James S. Wunsch and Dele Olowu. Westview Press, Boulder, San Francisco and Oxford, 1990. viii plus 334pp. including tables, notes, bibliography and index. Paperback.     

Environmental remediation technology implementation decision patterns

Each year, environmental technology implementation involves many millions of dollars in the United States alone. The economics of making decisions to continue research, to make changes to processes, or to introduce new products is a critical element in the success of organizations. In previous work by Paladino and Longsworth (1996), the importance of economic factors has been postulated to increase according to a set pattern throughout the implementation process. The authors seek to validate this theory and develop a better understanding of decision patterns related to technology implementations in the environmental remediation business area.     

LOCAL INDUSTRIAL DEVELOPMENT GROUPS: PERSPECTIVES AND PROFILES

Local industrial development groups (LIDGs) are often among the most visible organizations involved in community economic development. LIDGs annually spend billions of dollars directly or indirectly in various promotional and community improvement efforts. Yet relatively little is known about their organizational forms, their operating strategies, or their real impact on the economic development of communities. The study reported here was undertaken by researchers from three academic backgrounds in order to capture a rich, comprehensive view of this organizational type. In this paper, we discuss the research perspectives which informed our overall approach to the study, and subsequently, we present and discuss a preliminary profile of LIDGs, based on our recent national survey.     

Devolution: Where's the Revolution?

This study assesses the impacts and implications for U.S. citiesof the set of congressional actions, presidential orders, andjudicial decisions which, together, comprise the so-called "devolutionrevolution." Based on a survey of chief administrative officersof all cities with a population over 100, 000, the study attemptsto assess the impacts of these various devolution policies.Although for a few local officials, devolution policies areseen as being effective; for most, these policies are viewedas having had very little significant policy or programmaticconsequences. The study identifies the characteristics of thosecities where local officials believe devolution policies are,and are not, having significant impacts and conclude that themost important long-term implications of devolution policiesmay be the impacts they are having, and will continue to have,on the changing political and administrative leadership skillsrequired in the urban arena.     

The influence of economic factors on police crime recording behavior in the United States between 1960 and 1980

This study examines the influence of certain economic factors (inflation, unemployment, credit, competition, profit and inequality), total social welfare expenditures, and total number of full-time officers, derived from a radical theory of police behavior, on police crime recording behavior in the United States between 1960 and 1980. In contrast to previous research, which has failed to provide a single model that explains over fifty percent of the variance in the dependent variable (Sherman, 1980), this study found three models that explain over fifty percent of the variance in police crime recording behavior.     

Barriers to Efficiency and the Privatisation of Township-Village Enterprises

Qian (2000 Qian, Y. 2000. The process of China's market transition (1978–98): the evolutionary, historical, and comparative perspectives. Journal of Institutional and Theoretical Economics, 156(1): 151–171. [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) and others suggest that post-1994 tax and banking reforms in China, combined with the development of markets for allocating resources, influenced the economic performance of township-village enterprises (TVEs) and private enterprises (PEs). This paper uses Chinese provincial level data to search for evidence of advantages and/or disadvantages offered to TVEs and PEs before and after the 1994 reforms. We define a sectoral net income-based measure of overall efficiency and decompose the measure into components that highlight the existence of credit constraints, output target constraints and labour hiring constraints. The results offer empirical support for Qian and others explanation of why private enterprises eventually emerged as the dominant institution for allocating resources in post-1994 rural China.