The congressional foundations of agency performance

When Congress delegates a policy mandate to a regulatory agency, Congress acts as a principal, choosing the institutional arrangements, or the ‘rules of the game’ for agency decision making. Individuals in the agency, acting as agents, take the rules of the game as given and do the best they can within these institutional arrangements. In this paper we develop a simple model that relates the congressional choice of institutional arrangements to two underlying environmental factors — uncertainty and conflict. We suggest that uncertainty and conflict of interest lead Congress, in delegating, to prescribe a greater scope of permissable regulatory activity, a wider array of regulatory instruments, and more confining regulatory procedures. Increased scope and stronger instruments tend to broaden the overall discretionary authority of the agency, while more confining procedures tend to narrow it. We conjecture that with increased uncertainty or conflict the narrowing tendency more than offsets the broadening tendency, for a net decrease in the agency's overall discretionary authority. Lastly, we argue that the performance of a regulatory agency in fulfilling its mandate is determined in large measure by the foundations Congress constructs for the implementation of delegated authority.     

Allied economic intelligence and strategy during the ‘Phoney War’

This article examines the efforts of French and British intelligence services to assess the German economy before and during the opening stage of World War II. The French and British, attached to a long‐war strategy based on the assumption time worked in their favour, looked to economic intelligence to indicate whether this was in fact the case. Yet for a variety of reasons clear and consistent assessments were impossible. Rather than accept uncertainty, the French and British chose to impose certainty by assuming the worst, a decision which contributed to the abandonment of a long‐war strategy as the Allies began to search for some way to win a short war.     

Where does your coffee dollar go?: The division of income and surplus along the coffee commodity chain

This article analyzes the division of the total income and surplus generated along the coffee commodity chain during the period 1971–1995. Until the late 1980s, coffee growers and producing states retained over a third of the total income and about half of the total surplus that was available. This was due in part to the collective actions of coffee-producing states, which led to the imposition of a regulatory regime involving export quotas, creating rents for the producing countries. By the late 1980s, coffee TNCs had consolidated their control over core markets, and began to use their market power to increase their shares of both income and surplus. This shift was greatly accelerated by the breakdown of the export quota regime in 1989. The article concludes that these results necessitate a reformulation of commodity chain analysis. John M. Talbot received his doctorate in sociology from UC, Berkeley, this year. His dissertation is titled “Grounds for Agreement: The Political Economy of the Coffee Commodity Chain.” This is a revised version of a paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Sociological Association, Washington, D.C., August 19–23, 1995. Portions of this analysis were also presented at the annual meeting of the Pacific Sociological Association, San Francisco, April 6–8, 1995.     

Some impressions of modern Turkey

General

The Trading World of Asia and the English East India Company 1660–1760. By K. N. Chaudhuri. Cambridge, London, New York, Melbourne, Cambridge University Press, 1978. Pp. xviii+629. Tables. Figs. Maps. Appendices. Gloss. Bibliog. Index. £37.50.

Dictionary of Asian Philosophies. By St Elmo Nauman (Jr). New York, Philosophical Library, Inc., 1978. Pp. 372. Chron. Tables. Pref. $20.00.

Middle East

Middle East Contemporary Surrey Vol. I: 1976–77. Edited by Colin Legum and Haim Shaked. New York and London, Holmes and Meier Publishers Inc., 1978. (For The Shiloah Center for Middle Eastern and African Studies, Tel Aviv University) 1978. Pp. 684. Maps. Tables. Notes. Graphs. Index. £32.50.

Pasargadae. A Report on the Excavations conducted by the British Institute of Persian Studies from 1961 to 1963. By David Stronach. Oxford, at the Clarendon Press, 1978. Pp. xii+326. Figs. Fold‐outs. Plates. Maps. Preface. Appendices. Index. £25.00.

The Islamic Pious Foundations in Jerusalem: Origins, History and Usurpation by Israel. By A. L. Tibawi. London, The Islamic Cultural Centre, 1978. Pp. 72. Maps. Illus. Notes. Appendices. £3.00.

Western Civilisation through Muslim Eyes. By Sayid Mujtaba Rukni Musawi Lari of Iran. Trans, by F. J. Goulding. Tehran, Sadr Publishing House, 1977. Optimus Books, Worthing, Sussex. Pp. xii+146. Foreword. Note. Gloss. £1.00.

Gertrude Bell. By H. V. F. Winstone. London, Jonathan Cape, 1978. Pp. 332. Illus. Maps. Notes. Bibliog. Index. £7.50.

South Asia

Politics Mainly Indian. By W. H. Morris‐Jones. Orient Longman, Bombay, 1978. Pp. 392. Intro. Index. Rs. 60.

The Making of the Indian Princes. By Edward Thompson. London and Dublin, Curzon Press, 1978. First published Oxford University Press, 1943. Pp. 304. Illus. Maps. Bibliog. Index. £4.50.

Khyber. By Charles Miller. Macmillan, New York, 1977. Macdonald and Janes, London, 1977. Pp. xix+393. Illus. Maps. Bibliog. Index. £7.50.

Family Web. A Story of India. By Sarah Hobson. London, John Murray, 1978. Pp. 284. Illus. Gloss. £5.95.

The Ganges in Myth and History. By Steven G. Darian. University Press of Hawaii, Honolulu, 1978. Pp. 219. Illus. Maps. Notes. Bibliog. Index. $9.95.

USSR

Soviet Political Elites. By Ronald J. Hill. London, Martin Robertson, 1977. Pp. 226. Map. Figs. Tables. Graphs. Notes. Bibliog. Index. £8.25.

The Circumpolar North: A Political and Economic Geography of the Arctic and Sub‐Arctic. By Terence Armstrong, George Rogers and Graham Rowley. Methuen and Co., Ltd., London, 1978. Pp. 303. Maps. Tables. Gloss. Appendices. Bibliog. Index. £5.95 (paper).

Central Asia

The Gilgit Game. The Explorers of the Western Himalayas, 1865–95. By John Keay. John Murray, London, 1979. Pp. 277. Maps. Notes. Bibliog. Index. Illus. Gloss. £7.95.

South‐East Asia

The Army and Politics in Indonesia. By Harold Crouch. Cornell University Press, Ithaca and London, 1978. Pp. 356. Appendix. Gloss. Bibliog. Index. £13.00.

The Indonesian Tragedy. By Brian May. Routledge &; Kegan Paul, London, Henley &; Boston, 1978. Pp. xvii+413. Illus. Maps. Notes. Gloss. Index. £8.95.

The Politics of Administration. The Malaysian Experience. By Mavis Puthucheary. Kuala Lumpur, Oxford, New York and Melbourne, Oxford University Press, 1978. Pp. xii+170. Notes. Tables. Bibliog. Index. £15.25.

Many Reasons Why. The American Involvement in Vietnam. By Michael Charlton and Anthony Moncrief. Scolar Press, London, 1978. Pp. 250. Maps. Notes. Indices. £10.00 (cloth), £4.50 (paper).

A Concise Legal History of South‐East Asia. By M. B. Hooker. Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1978. Pp. 289. Tables. Bibliog. Index. £12.50.

Far East

Revolution and History ‐ Origins of Marxist Historiography in China, 1919–37. By Arif Dirlik. Berkeley, San Francisco and London, University of California Press, 1979. Pp. ix+299. Bibliog. Index. £12.25.

Chang Tso‐lin in Northeast China, 1911–1928: China, Japan and the Manchurian Idea. By Gavan McCormack. Folkestone, Dawson, 1977. Pp. 334. Illus. Maps. Index. £12.50.

Militarism in Modern China: The Career of Wu P'ei‐fu 1916–39. By Odoric Y. K. Wou. (Studies of the East Asian Institute, Columbia University.) Folkestone, Dawson; Canberra, Australian National University Press, 1978. Pp. 346. Index. £12.50.

Sociology and Socialism in Contemporary China. By Siu‐lun Wong. London, Boston and Henley, Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1979. Pp. xvi+147. Tables. Notes. Bibliog. Index. £5.75.

The China Station. War and Diplomacy 1830–1860. By Gerald S. Graham. Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1978. Pp. 444. Maps. Notes. Appendices. Bibliog. Index. £15.00.

Ancient China. The Making of the Past. By Patrick FitzGerald. Oxford, Phaidon Press Ltd., 1978. Pp. 151. Illus. Bibliog. Gloss. Index. £4.95.

Rural Development: Learning from China. By Sartaj Aziz. London, The Macmillan Press, 1978. Pp. 201. Ulus. Intro. Appendices. Notes. References. Bibliog. Index. £8.95 (hardback) £5.50 (paperback).

Pacing the Void: T'ang Approaches to the Stars. By Edward H. Schafer. Berkeley, Los Angeles. London, California University Press, 1978. Pp. xi+352. Illus. Appendices. Notes. Bibliog. Gloss. Index. £18.75.

Confucianism and Christianity; a comparative study. By Julia Cheng. Tokyo, New York and San Francisco, Kodansha International in cooperation with the Institute of Oriental Religions of Sophia University, Tokyo 1977. (Distributed by Phaidon Press, Oxford, in the United Kingdom). Pp. 234. Notes. Tables. Bibliog. Index. £8.25.

Economic Development of South Korea. The Political Economy of Success. By L. L. Wade and B. S. Kim. Praeger Publishers, New York and London, 1978. Pp. 270. Figs. Index. Notes. £12.50.     

The fallacy of the two-minute acid phosphatase cut off

Research was carried out to determine whether the likelihood of obtaining a positive Acid Phosphatase (AP) test result is affected by the make and type of paper used. Also, we aimed to investigate the frequency of AP positive reactions occurring after 2min using a series of known semen dilutions and to determine whether spermatozoa transfer onto the paper during the act of AP screening. In this research, most brands of paper tested were able to detect a 1 in 40 semen dilution within 2min. Leaving AP test papers for longer will allow the detection of greater dilutions of semen and as the amount of ejaculation is not reliably known in most casework situations and levels of AP activity can vary in different men, this will increase the seminal detection rate in sexual offence allegations.