Reviews

Anders Aslund, How Russia Became a Market Economy. Washington, DC: The Brookings Institution, 1995, xviii + 378 pp., £25.75/£9.95.

Boris Kagarlitsky, Restoration in Russia: Why Capitalism Failed. London: Verso, 1995, 172 pp., £39.95/£11.95.

Simon Clarke (ed.), Management and Industry in Russia: Formal and Informal Relations in the Period of Transition. Aldershot: Edward Elgar, 1995, xii + 244 pp. £45.00.

Jan Adam, Why Did the Socialist System Collapse in Central and Eastern European Countries? The Case of Poland, the Former Czechoslovakia and Hungary. London: Macmillan, 1996, xii + 244 pp., £40.00.

? Bogeti? & Arye L. Hillman (eds), Financing Government in the Transition: Bulgaria. The Political Economy of Tax Policies, Tax Bases, and Tax Evasion. Washington, DC: The World Bank, 1995, xv + 254 pp., £19.95.

Vladimir Tismaneanu (ed.), Political Culture and Civil Society in Russia and the New States of Eurasia. Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 1995, xiii + 384 pp., $22.95.

Alexander Maksimovich Yakovlev, Striving for Law in a Lawless Land—Memoirs of a Russian Reformer. New York: M. E. Sharpe, 1996, xvi + 237 pp., $62.95.

Tuomas Forsberg (ed.), Contested Territory: Border Disputes at the Edge of the Former Soviet Empire. Aldershot: Edward Elgar, 1995, xi + 267 pp., £45.00.

Graham Smith (ed.), The Nationalities Question in the Post‐Soviet States. London: Longman, 1996, xiv + 524 pp.

Aleksandr’ G. Savel'yev & Nikolai N. Detinov, The Big Five: Arms Control Decision‐making in the Soviet Union. Westport, CT: Praeger, 1995, xiv + 204 pp., £47.95.

Keith L. Nelson, The Making of Detente: Soviet‐American Relations in the Shadow of Vietnam, Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995, xvii + 217pp., £29.00.

George Ginsburgs, Alvin Z. Rubinstein & Oles M. Smolansky (eds), Russia and America: From Rivalry to Reconciliation, New York: M. Sharpe, 1993, xi + 353 pp.

Diego Cordovez & Selig S. Harrison, Out of Afghanistan: The Inside Story of the Soviet Withdrawal. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995, ix + 450 pp., $35.00.

Andrei S. Grachev, Final Days. The Inside Story of the Collapse of the Soviet Union. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1995, xviii + 222 pp., £22.50.

Ilya Prizel & Andrew A. Michta (eds), Polish Foreign Policy Reconsidered. Challenges of Independence. Basingstoke, Macmillan, 1995, xiii + 174 pp., £25.00.

James Riordan, Christopher Williams & Igor Uynsky (eds), Young People in Post‐Communist Russia and Eastern Europe. Aldershot: Dartmouth, 1995, xvi + 215 pp., £39.50.

James von Geldern & Richard Stites (eds), Mass Culture in Soviet Russia: Tales, Poems, Songs, Movies, Plays and Folklore 1917–1953. Bloomington and Indianapolis, IN: Indiana University Press, 1995, xxix + 492 pp., £39.50 h/b, £19.50 p/b.

Katerina Clark, Petersburg, Crucible of Cultural Revolution. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995, xii + 377 pp., £25.50.

Anna Feldman Leibovich, The Russian Concept of Work: Suffering, Drama, and Tradition in Pre‐ and Post‐Revolutionary Russia. Westport, CT and London: Praeger, xv + 166 pp., £44.95.

R. Antony French. Plans, Pragmatism & People. The Legacy of Soviet Planning for Today's Cities. London: UCL Press, 1995, xi + 233 pp.

Roger Brunet, Denis Eckert & Vladimir Kolossov, Atlas de la Russie et des pays proches. Montpellier‐Paris: Reclus‐La Documentation Franchise, 1995, 208 pp., 220Ff.

Bruce Grant, In the Soviet House of Culture: A Century of Perestroikas. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995, xvii + 225 pp., £12.00.

Michael Bourdeaux (ed.), The Politics of Religion in Russia and the New States of Eurasia, The International Politics of Eurasia, Volume 3. Armonk, NY and London: M.E. Sharpe, 1995, xiv + 321 pp., $49.95 h/b, $19.95p/b.     

Brave New Liberal: Percy Spender

Percy Spender's pioneering work as External Affairs Minister is often held up as a significant contribution to Liberal policy-making and Australian foreign policy more generally. A closer look at his life and thinking illuminates some of the factors behind his policy-making. Some of the more prominent, shaping factors can be organised under the headings of his overseas travels before becoming External Affairs Minister at the end of 1949; his sense that the mid-twentieth period was one in which Asia suddenly played a big role; and his determination that Australians should be proactive in their relations in their region, rather than merely reactive in foreign policy.     

Fact Checking is About What we Change not Just Who we Reach

This article explores how the UK’s fact-checking organisation Full Fact has sought to tackle misinformation since its inception in 2010. Full Fact describes itself as a ‘second generation’ fact-checking organisation with dual aims of seeking to stop the spread of specific pieces of inaccurate information and using the evidence base from fact checking to secure systemic changes that help make misinformation rarer and less harmful. Ultimately, we are pursuing culture change. We are trying to create institutions in societies that can help anchor public debate to reality and to challenge the casual acceptance of deceptive and misleading behaviour.     

The Dynamics of Political Attention: Public Opinion and the Queen's Speech in the United Kingdom

This article represents the effect of public opinion on government attention in the form of an error-correction model where public opinion and policymaking attention coexist in a long-run equilibrium state that is subject to short-run corrections. The coexistence of policy-opinion responsiveness and punctuations in political attention is attributed to differences in theoretical conceptions of negative and positive feedback, differences in the use of time series and distributional methods, and differences in empirical responsiveness of government to public attention relative to responsiveness to public preferences. This analysis considers time-series data for the United Kingdom over the period between 1960 and 2001 on the content of the executive and legislative agenda presented at the start of each parliamentary session in the Queen's Speech coded according to the policy content framework of the U.S. Policy Agendas Project and a reconstituted public opinion dataset on Gallup's "most important problem" question. The results show short-run responsiveness of government attention to public opinion for macroeconomics, health, and labor and employment topics and long-run responsiveness for macroeconomics, health, labor and employment, education, law and order, housing, and defense .     

RECONCILING PUBLIC ACCOUNTABILITY AND ABORIGINAL SELF-DETERMINATION/SELF-MANAGEMENT: IS ATSIC SUCCEEDING?

Abstract: Since the early 1970s commonwealth governments have been pursuing policies of self-determination/self-management in relation to Aborigines. In 1987, the Hawke government announced its intention to establish an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission (ATSIC) to further this policy goal. During the debates over ATSIC's formation, the issue of public accountability in the existing administration of Aboriginal affairs came to public prominence. The result was some extensive reworking of the ATSIC proposal, which in 1989 reemerged with a strengthened emphasis on public accountability. This article traces the events and arguments surrounding ATSIC's formation and then goes on to examine ATSIC in practice. It asks whether ATSIC is succeeding in reconciling the two imperatives of Aboriginal self-determination/self-management and public accountability.     

THE DEPARTMENT OF SOCIAL SECURITY'S TREATMENT OF ABORIGINAL POLYGYNY AND TRIBAL MARRIAGE: A SAGA OF ADMINISTRATIVE DEBATE

Abstract: Since the inclusion of Aborigines in the Australian social security system, the treatment of Aboriginal polygyny and tribal marriage by the Department of Social Security (DSS) has been a recurring minor issue of departmental, and at times extra-departmental, debate. This article traces the history of that debate from the early 1960s to the present day. Although the article is primarily historical, there is also some attempt made to analyse both the nature of the administrative processes involved and the types of administrative argument deployed in the debate.     

Physical and chemical evidence remaining after the explosion of large improvised bombs. Part 1: firings of ammonium nitrate/sugar and urea nitrate

Recent criminal acts in the United Kingdom, United States and other countries have demonstrated the dangers to public safety from the criminal use of improvised explosives on a large scale. Four sets of trials were carried out over four years, partly in collaboration with the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation, involving the firing of large bombs, mostly fertilizer based. The principal objectives of the firings were to measure the physical effects of the explosions upon objects representative of those that would be found at a real bomb scene and to recover any chemical traces deposited on these objects. The results are intended for use as an aid in determining the approximate size and type of an explosive employed in a terrorist attack. This paper describes the background behind the trials, the procedures for preparation of witness materials and charges, and the collection and analysis of physical and chemical evidence.