bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Rate‐reduction transcoding design for wireless video streaming
Authors: Vetro Anthony , Cai Jianfei , Chen Chang Wen
Published: November 2002

Owing to the heterogeneity existing in wireless video streaming, such as terminal capabilities, network conditions, user preferences, and the natural environment in which a user is located, rate‐reduction transcoding is usually necessary to adjust the coding rate to the available channel bandwidth. We begin this paper by reviewing existing approaches and addressing several issues related to transcoding. Next, two types of rate‐reduction coding techniques are studied. The first type is based on standard coding schemes and specifically considers transcoding from MPEG‐2 to MPEG‐4 with a reduced spatial resolution. A method for drift compensation based on an intrarefresh technique is also presented. The second type of scheme is a rate‐reduction transcoder that makes use of frame‐level R‐D information that has already been extracted at the server before transmission. This R‐D‐based approach can be applied to architecture simplification, rate control, frame dropping control, and channel adaptive transcoding. We conclude this paper by pointing out that transcoding is an integral part of wireless video streaming because it provides a flexible interface between the wired network and the wireless network. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Wireless meets multimedia
Authors: Yrjänäinen Jukka , Neuvo Yrjö
Published: November 2002

Mobile person‐to‐person speech communication has turned out to be extremely popular with more than one billion users today. Currently, mobile networks are evolving to support efficient and flexible data communications. This development will also enable an efficient use of multimedia elements in mobile communication. New content types, applications and services are emerging. Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS) is one key element in this development. From the user point of view, it is the continuation of a very popular mobile messaging paradigm and it offers a framework for mobile person‐to‐person multimedia communication. New mobile phones, with graphical color displays and integrated cameras, will provide a natural platform for a large set of multimedia applications. Including multimedia capabilities for small portable devices is driving the new development on display, imaging and processor technologies. Open software architectures in these terminals are giving new possibilities to the developer community. Evolution of the mobile multimedia will create new challenges and opportunities for related research and development activities. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Interpreting Berlin’s Liberalism
Authors: Riley Jonathan
Published: November 2002

I argue that Isaiah Berlin’s pluralistic liberalism is best interpreted as a sophisticated form of liberal rationalism, as Berlin himself suggests. His value pluralism, even if it is viewed (as his critics typically view it, with considerable justification) as claiming that any choice between conflicting incommensurable values cannot be a rational choice, does not subvert his liberalism. Rather, this agonistic pluralism emanates from his liberal rationalism, which pictures reason as too weak to resolve conflicts of incommensurables. Yet, reason remains strong enough to discover that certain basic liberal values, including those associated with some minimum core of equal rights, are far more important than any competing values created by mankind. Berlin apparently sees his pluralistic liberal rationalism as a genuine rationalism that, in stark contrast to mainstream utopian rationalisms which wildly exaggerate the power of reason, makes suitable room for the valid insights provided by the romantics.
Why Are Japanese Judges So Conservative in Politically Charged Cases?
Authors: Ramseyer J. Mark
Published: November 2002

Theory suggests that Japanese politicians have weaker incentives than U.S. politicians to keep lower court judges independent. Accordingly, we hypothesize that Japanese lower court judges who defer on sensitive political questions will do better in their careers. To test this, we assemble several new data sets and measure the quality of the assignments received by about 400 judges after deciding various types of cases. We find that judges who deferred to the ruling party in politically salient disputes obtained better posts than those who did not, and that judges who actively enjoined the national government obtained worse posts than those who did not. We also hypothesize that judges with forthrightly leftist preferences do worse in their careers. We measure the speed at which the 500 judges hired during the 1960s moved up the pay scale and find indications that judges who joined a leftist group were promoted more slowly than their peers.
Cabinet Decision Rules and Political Uncertainty in Parliamentary Bargaining
Authors: Huber John D.
Published: November 2002

We investigate how cabinet decision-making rules interact with political uncertainty to affect the outcomes of bargaining processes in parliamentary systems. Our formal models compare two types of decisions rules: (1) those that give prime ministers unilateral authority to demand a vote of confidence and (2) those that require prime ministers to obtain collective cabinet approval for confidence motions. We examine these models under assumptions of complete information and of political uncertainty, that is, party leaders lack information about the precise policies that others in the governing coalition will support. Our analysis suggests that the nature of the cabinet decision rules should influence the distribution of bargaining power, the ability to exploit political uncertainty, the likelihood of inefficient government terminations, the circumstances surrounding such failures, and, indirectly, the political considerations that parties face when choosing prime ministers during government formation. Simple empirical tests support some of these insights.
Plausibility of Signals by a Heterogeneous Committee
Authors: Krehbiel Keith
Published: November 2002

Krishna and Morgan propose “amendments” to two of Gilligan and Krehbiel’s theoretical studies of legislative signaling. The new results for homogeneous committees do not significantly change the empirical expectations of prior works, but the results for heterogeneous committees contradict earlier claims. This note gives primary attention to heterogeneous committees and compares and contrasts the new and old equilibria and their empirical implications. The notion of signaling is somewhat nebulous in all such games but seems distinctly less plausible in the key Krishna-Morgan proposition than in previous legislative signaling games. Furthermore, the empirical literature on choice of rules—specifically, the finding of a positive relationship between committee heterogeneity and restrictive rules—is inconsistent with the Krishna-Morgan analysis but consistent with Gilligan-Krehbiel analyses, even though the former is informationally efficient and the latter are not.
Congressional Decision Making and the Separation of Powers
Authors: Martin Andrew D.
Published: November 2002

To what extent does the separation of powers affect congressional roll call voting behavior? To answer this question, I offer a strategic model of congressional decision making that asserts members of Congress pursue public policy goals when casting roll call votes. From the equilibrium predictions of a formal model, I generate testable hypotheses by computing the expected net amount of sophisticated (nonsincere) congressional behavior given changes in decision context. I test the predictions of the theoretical model with data from all civil rights roll call votes from the 83d to the 102d Congress. The results demonstrate that both the other legislative chamber and the Supreme Court profoundly constrain House members and senators when casting roll call votes. This is strong evidence of the importance of policy outcomes to members of Congress when voting on the floor.
An Extension and Test of Converse’s “Black-and-White” Model of Response Stability
Authors: Hill Jennifer L.
Published: November 2002

In one of the most influential works in the public opinion literature, Philip Converse proposed a “black-and-white” model that divided respondents into two groups: opinion holders and unstable opinion changers. We extend the model by allowing for a group that makes rational opinion changes over time. This enables us to (1) explore hypotheses about the adequacy of Converse’s original model, (2) estimate the percentage of the population that belongs to each of the groups, and (3) examine the evidence for Converse’s basic claim that unstable changers truly exhibit nonattitudes. Contrary to Converse’s suggestion that the unstable group is essentially giving random responses, the results imply that the response behavior of this group may be best interpreted in terms of Zaller’s notion of ambivalence. The results also undermine the measurement-error model, which maintains that unstable responses are mainly attributable to deficient survey instruments, not individual opinion change. We use data collected at four time points over nearly two years, which track Swiss citizens’ support for pollution reduction.
Political Ignorance and Collective Policy Preferences
Authors: Gilens Martin
Published: November 2002

In contrast with the expectations of many analysts, I find that raw policy-specific facts, such as the direction of change in the crime rate or the amount of the federal budget devoted to foreign aid, have a significant influence on the public’s political judgments. Using both traditional survey methods and survey-based randomized experiments, I show that ignorance of policy-specific information leads many Americans to hold political views different from those they would hold otherwise. I also show that the effect of policy-specific information is not adequately captured by the measures of general political knowledge used in previous research. Finally, I show that the effect of policy-specific ignorance is greatest for Americans with the highest levels of political knowledge. Rather than serve to dilute the influence of new information, general knowledge (and the cognitive capacities it reflects) appears to facilitate the incorporation of new policy-specific information into political judgments.
State Supreme Courts in American Democracy: Probing the Myths of Judicial Reform
Authors: Hall Melinda Gann
Published: November 2002

I address the controversy over how judges should be selected by analyzing the electoral fortunes of incumbents on supreme courts from 1980 through 1995 in the 38 states using elections to staff the bench. Court reformers argue that partisan elections fail to evidence accountability, while nonpartisan and retention elections promote independence. Thus, issue-related or candidate-related forces should not be important in partisan elections, and external political conditions should not be important in nonpartisan and retention elections. Results indicate that reformers underestimated the extent to which partisan elections have a tangible substantive component and overestimated the extent to which nonpartisan and retention races are insulated from partisan politics and other contextual forces. On these two fundamental issues, arguments of reformers fail. Moreover, the extraordinary variations across systems and over time in how well incumbents fare with voters, which bear directly upon the representative nature of elected courts, merit further explanation.
East Meets West: Human Rights and Democracy in East Asia. By Daniel A. Bell. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000. 396p. $65.00 cloth, $19.95 paper.
Authors: Dallmayr Fred
Published: November 2002

"I continue to believe," states Brian Barry (Justice as Impar-
tiality, 1995, p. 3), "in the possibility of putting forward a
universally valid case in favor of liberal egalitarian princi-
ples." Barry's belief is not idiosyncratic but widely shared by
Western intellectuals. In fact, a traditional trademark of
Western philosophy has been to insist on the universal
validity of its teachings, while relegating other cultures and
ideas to a merely contingent or particularistic status. The
belief tends to be shared by much of Western social science.
The Measurement of Voting Power: Theory and Practice, Problems and Paradoxes. By Dan S. Felsenthal and Moshé Machover. Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar, 1998. 322p. $90.00.
Authors: Kilgour D. Marc
Published: November 2002

In the 2000 U.S. presidential election, the Electoral College,
for the first time in a long while, did not smoothly and
seamlessly select the popular vote winner. This phenomenon
did not figure in the immediate controversy over the election,
but it may yet have an effect, and part of that effect may be
long-overdue attention to the rules for aggregating individual
votes into a group decision. Those who design institutions for
group decision making, or who study such institutions, may
be reminded that aggregation procedures can fail to reflect
important principles, even principles as simple and funda-
mental as one person, one vote.
Poisoning the Minds of the Lower Orders. By Don Herzog. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1998. 559p. $29.95.
Authors: Harris Ian
Published: November 2002

Readers of Don Herzog's earlier volumes, Happy Slaves
(1989) and Without Foundations (1985), will know that they
should expect a bracing time when they open his books. They
will not be disappointed. This is, without a doubt, a book
buoyant in tone and in content. It marks a new departure in
the author's manner of writing, displays a wide historical
learning, and shows a striking lack of cant in its attitude
toward political thought.
Plato’s Democratic Entanglements: Athenian Politics and the Practice of Philosophy. By S. Sara Monoson. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000. 252p. $39.50.
Authors: Arnhart Larry
Published: November 2002

Sara Monoson challenges the common view of Plato as a
strong opponent of democracy. Although she acknowledges
his severe criticisms of democracy, she argues that his re-
sponse to Athenian democracy shows ambivalence rather
than complete hostility. Not only does Plato offer some
qualified endorsements of democratic politics, she contends,
but also he presents the practice of the philosophic life as
rooted in Athenian democratic culture. Karl Popper's cri-
tique of Plato as a proto-totalitarian enemy of the "open
society" is not as influential as it once was, but the assump-
tion that Plato and Platonic philosophy are incompatible with
democracy persists. Monoson wants to overturn that view and
thus convince modern democratic readers that they may have
something to learn from Plato.
Political Theory and Partisan Politics. Edited by Edward Bryan Portis, Adolf G. Gunderson, and Ruth Lessl Shively. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2000. 226p. $59.50 cloth, $19.50 paper.
Authors: Fishkin James S.
Published: November 2002

What is the role of political theory in a world of partisan
politics? Various approaches to this long-standing problem
are raised in this stimulating collection of essays. Arlene
Saxonhouse begins the volume by usefully reminding us of
Plato's metaphor of the ship in book 6 of the Republic, in
which self-interested sailors fight over the boat's direction
"while the one who knows how to guide the boat, who can
read the stars, stands aft staring upward and is considered
useless" (p. 19). Similarly in the Assembly, self-interested
rhetoricians may sway the crowd, without any concern for the
pursuit of truth.
Congress at the Grassroots: Representational Change in the South, 1970–1998. By Richard F. Fenno, Jr. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2000. 170p. $34.95 cloth, $16.95 paper.
Authors: Loomis Burdett A.
Published: November 2002

Not long ago, Richard Fenno was at an American Political
Science Association convention, wondering aloud whether
anyone might want to publish a case study of a single
congressional district over almost three decades. The Uni-
versity of North Carolina Press did, and congressional schol-
ars and students of representation are indebted to the editors
there. Just when we suspected that Fenno could not wring
one more set of insights from his "soaking and poking"
political anthropology, he produces a book that tells a
profound tale of political change in the South (and in
suburbia), gives us a grounded study of what it means to
represent a constituency, and offers an understanding of both
the Rayburn and Gingrich eras in the House of Representa-
tives. In addition, students of Congress can enjoy this book in
its nuanced referencing of Home Style, Fenno's still-relevant
study of House members in their constituencies, published in
1978.
Acceptable Risks: Politics, Policy, and Risky Technologies. By C. F. Larry Heimann. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1998. 188p. $44.50.
Authors: Desveaux James A.
Published: November 2002

After a promising start by Martin Landau more than 30 years
ago, and advances by a small coterie of mostly Berkeley and
Stanford political scientists and organization theorists, the
study of organizational reliability has largely been orphaned
by American political science. One reason such an important
area of research has been given short shrift is that many
political scientists do not think of reliability as a subject based
in politics. It has been deemed more worthy of the attention
of other disciplines, especially engineering and operations
research. Another reason is that we have become even more
obsessed with transactional efficiencies than was the case
when Landau issued his warnings in 1969. Larry Heimann
presents a nuanced study on the problem of reliability that
incorporates politics, organization, and technology and offers
a series of convincing arguments about some reliability
paradoxes in policymaking. His book centers on the connec-
tion between bureaucratic structure, reliable decision mak-
ing, and the incentives public agencies have for responding to
risk in one way or another.
Lobbying Together: Interest Group Coalitions in Legislative Politics. By Kevin W. Hula. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2000. 208p. $55.00 cloth, $23.95 paper.
Authors: Ainsworth Scott
Published: November 2002

Many political scientists like institutions, in particular exog-
enous institutions, which guide and constrain actions and
allow scholars to concentrate more narrowly on behaviors
within well-defined settings. For the interest groups subfield,
institutions tend to be more mercurial than those in other
areas of American politics. For instance, fundamental aspects
of Congress may be institutionalized, but groups and lobby-
ists come and go. The environment of interests is ever
changing. Characterizing the interactions between legislators
and lobbyists is made more difficult because of the lack of
clear institutional structures that guide or constrain behav-
iors. The iron triangle concept was powerful and meaningful
because it provided at the least a loose framework for the
analysis of legislator-lobbyist interactions. Kevin Hula's new
book follows the reasoning of Hugh Heclo and William
Browne, who argue that the iron triangle concept is outdated
and inappropriate. That convenient metaphor suggested an
informal institutional structure that is simply no longer
appropriate. Without the iron triangle, what can fill the void?
Outside Lobbying: Public Opinion and Interest Group Strategies. By Ken Kollman. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1998. 215p. $55.00 cloth, $19.95 paper.
Authors: McKissick Gary
Published: November 2002

In an age when commercials bombard us with plain folk
(from central casting) ruminating about the latest proposal in
Congress and when "astroturf" more often refers to syn-
thetically manufactured grassroots activity than to stadium
playing fields, evidence that groups frequently "go public" is
easy to come by. Nevertheless, these efforts to reach and use
the public have received little systematic attention from
political scientists. Ken Kollman aims to fill this substantial
gap in interest group scholarship. Outside Lobbying is an
impressive effort, one that should invigorate further inquiry
into this important aspect of interest group advocacy.
Social Cleavages and Political Change: Voter Alignments and U.S. Party Coalitions. By Jeff Manza and Clem Brooks. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999. 342p. $55.00.
Authors: Kennedy Carole
Published: November 2002

This work is touted as the only book-length examination of
the sociological model of vote choice in American politics
since David Knoke's The Social Bases of Political Parties
(1976), and it is, indeed, a well-researched examination of the
role that race, class, religion, and gender play in our under-
standing of voter alignments in the United States. At the
same time, I have concerns about some of the methodological
decisions made by the authors and the effect of these
choices on their conclusions.
America’s Congress: Actions in the Public Sphere, James Madison through Newt Gingrich. By David R. Mayhew. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2000. 257p. $30.00.
Authors: Binder Sarah A.
Published: November 2002

America's Congress is a deceptively simple work. At its most
basic, it is an exploration of the public moves of members of
Congress over the course of American history. With a newly
built database of 2,304 observations of members' publicly
noted moves stretching back to 1789, Mayhew offers an
innovative portrait of how and when American legislators
have made their mark on the public record, as recorded by
eminent historians of the middle to late twentieth century.
What makes this a deceptively simple work? Mayhew's aim
and effect in writing America's Congress go far beyond his
perceptive reading of the fascinating patterns uncovered.
Instead, the book is really a call for a new way of studying
Congress and legislative politics more generally. It is a
commentary, Mayhew says, on political scientists' treatment
of Congress, and it is an appeal to legislative scholars to
rethink the dominant modes and methods by which they
typically approach the task of explaining legislative behavior
and outcomes. To understand how America's Congress makes
this contribution, a more detailed exploration of Mayhew's
mode and methods of inquiry is in order.
Dividing Citizens: Gender and Federalism in New Deal Public Policy. By Suzanne Mettler. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1998. 239p. $52.50 cloth, $18.95 paper.
Authors: Sapiro Virginia
Published: November 2002

Dividing Citizens is an important contribution both to the
burgeoning literature on the historical development of the
American state and citizenship and to the lively field of work
on gender within that corpus. Like the best studies of this
sort, Mettler's book ably demonstrates not only how the
transforming institutions and practices affected women but
also how gender norms and practices were built into the new
structures, making gender a basic element of their architec-
ture.
Policy Entrepreneurs and School Choice. By Michael Mintrom. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2000. 324p. $60.00 cloth, $24.95 paper.
Authors: Mossberger Karen
Published: November 2002

Policy entrepreneurs or issue advocates figure prominently in
major theories of the policy process (e.g., Frank R. Baum-
gartner and Bryan D. Jones, Agendas and Instability in
American Politics, 1993; John W. Kingdon, Agendas, Alterna-
tives, and Public Policies, 1995; Paul A. Sabatier and Hank
Jenkins-Smith, Policy Change and Learning: An Advocacy
Coalition Approach, 1993). This book explores in depth the
phenomenon of policy entrepreneurs, the individuals who
invest their time and resources in trying to bring an idea to
fruition. The controversial issue of school choice is a partic-
ularly apt example of a policy that has spread through the
efforts of entrepreneurs laboring in a number of states. A
good overview sets the scene in the first chapter and describes
such variants as public school choice (within and across
districts), charter schools, private voucher plans, and publicly
funded vouchers. But the book emphasizes building and
testing a theory of policy entrepreneurship. This carefully
crafted study presents a number of significant arguments and
findings that will be of interest for scholars (or graduate
students) concerned with policy diffusion, policy change, and
agenda setting as well as education policy.
Founding the Criminal Law: Punishment and Political Thought in the Origins of America. By Ronald J. Pestritto. Dekalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2000. 191p. $36.00.
Authors: Bunger Amy
Published: November 2002

Political theory reminds us that punishment is a fundamentally
political action, an exercise of political power. This book
is about penal reform and the philosophy of punishment as
both were debated in postrevolutionary America. Pestritto
combs through original writings of the founders and state
constitutions in an effort to elucidate leading philosophies
about the purpose of the criminal law and punishment. At a
macro level, the book provides a window into how the
American system, in Pestritto's venues of Pennsylvania, New
York, and Virginia, mediates between the tensions of the
preservation of individual liberty and maintenance of public
order. The book attempts to bridge the historical gap from
our founding to current issues in sentencing, such as the
three-strikes rule, determinate or mandatory sentencing laws,
and state experimentation in marrying sentences to available
prison space, or the cost of incapacitation. Pestritto's greatest
contribution is to mine new material in these historical
conversations on punishment, which allows them to be heard
in our contemporary debates.
The Presidency and the Politics of Racial Inequality: Nation-Keeping from 1831 to 1965. By Russell L. Riley. New York: Columbia University Press, 1999. 373p. $49.50 cloth, $22.50 paper.
Authors: Moore Nina M.
Published: November 2002

Russell L. Riley offers an insightful account of how American
presidents have grappled with race. His main concern is the
causal forces that shape the institutional role of the presi-
dency in American politics. The discussion centers specifi-
cally upon the determinants of presidential policy that affects
the advancement of African Americans toward first-class
citizenship. Riley asks what operative dictates and constraints
shape presidential behavior vis-a -vis racial inequality politics.
Campaign Warriors: Political Consultants in Elections. Edited by James A. Thurber and Candice J. Nelson. Washington, DC: Brookings. 216p. $42.95 cloth, $17.95 paper.
Authors: Donovan Todd
Published: November 2002

The study of political campaigns has an awkward place in
political science. At one level, we have grown to accept that
"campaigns matter." A growing literature now provides many
different tests of this proposition. At another level, a cliche?
sometimes mouthed by campaign professionals and journal-
ists is that 90% of what campaigns do does not matter-it is
the remaining 10% that is critical. The relative accuracy of
these proportions aside, this cliche? raises an important
question: What is the critical part of modern campaigns that
"matters"?
The New England Town Meeting: Democracy in Action. By Joseph F. Zimmerman. Westport, CT: Praeger, 1999. 248p. $59.95.
Authors: Bryan Frank
Published: November 2002

With the exception of Jane Mansbridge's important and
groundbreaking analysis of "Shelby," Vermont (Beyond Ad-
versary Democracy, 1980), published scientific investigation of
face-to-face democracy in the New England town meeting is
almost nonexistent. Thus, Zimmerman's volume is not part of
a genealogy of scholarship on what I call "real" democracy, to
distinguish it from the direct democracy of referenda and
initiatives with which it is often confused. For many years his
interest has been what he terms (accurately) "law-making by
assembled citizens." Given the general misuse of the term
town meeting by politicians (which began with Carter and
was perfected by Clinton), intent on cloaking a variety of
self-serving public relations ploys in the robes of "pure"
democracy, Zimmerman provides at the very least a much
needed reality check for political scientists. In fact, in the
popular American lexicon (and even in the understandings of
many political scientists) town meeting has taken on a totally
new meaning, as exemplified in Andrew Fergurson's essay
("Ye Olde Town Meeting Gimmick," Time, March 2, 1998).
Inventing Local Democracy: Grassroots Politics in Brazil. By Rebecca Neaera Abers. Boulder, CO, and London: Lynne Rienner, 2000. 269p. $59.95.
Authors: Covin David
Published: November 2002

In this case study of participatory democracy in Porto Alegre,
Brazil, Rebecca Neaera Abers examines one aspect of the
participatory democracy program implemented by the Par-
tido dos Trabalhadores (PT), the Workers' Party, in Porto
Alegre: the participatory budget process. In that process,
people at the grassroots make policy decisions that the
government is committed to implement. The PT took office
in 1989, and Abers follows its participatory budget process
from 1989 to 1997.
Saddam’s Word: Political Discourse in Iraq. By Ofra Bengio. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998. 266p. $49.95.
Authors: Baram Amatzia
Published: November 2002

Ofra Bengio's book is a scholarly and methodical endeavor to
analyze the way in which Ba`thi Iraq (1968-present) has been
using (or misusing) the Arabic language, symbolism, history,
and myths in order to legitimize its rule and policies. Bengio
demonstrates how language has been twisted and manipu-
lated in an attempt to terrorize political enemies, paralyze
and enchant the vast majority of the Iraqis, induce them to
perform or tolerate atrocities, and risk their lives in battle for
leader and country. Sometimes, the regime is entrapped in its
own rhetoric. The book shows how discourse, art, and
symbols have been used to construct a cult of personality for
Saddam Husayn, unmatched in the contemporary Middle
East.
The State against the Peasantry: Rural Struggles in Colonial and Postcolonial Mozambique. By Merle L. Bowen. Charlottesville and London: University Press of Virginia, 2000. 256p. $65.00 cloth, $19.50 paper.
Authors: Harrison Graham
Published: November 2002

Merle Bowen investigates the politics of the changing rela-
tionship between state and peasantry in Mozambique, prin-
cipally through the elaboration of a case study, the Ilha
Josina Machel in the southern province of Maputo. The book
takes as point of departure the "developmental" period of
Portuguese colonialism, from the early 1960s until the
present day, although the main focus is on 1975-83. This is
useful, because that period gives us a relatively clear insight
into the reality of the Frelimo government's policies of
socialism in the countryside, before all aspects of Mozam-
bique's political economy were inundated by the war prose-
cuted by Renamo with South African backing. Although
there has been a marked increase of research interest in
local-level studies recently, few works that take a similar
approach treat this period in such detail. For all those
interested in the realities of rural socialism generally, or
specifically Mozambique's Frelimo period, this book will be
valuable indeed.
Failed Crusade: America and the Tragedy of Post-Communist Russia. By Stephen F. Cohen. New York: W. W. Norton, 2000. 320p. $21.95.
Authors: Beissinger Mark R.
Published: November 2002

Both of these books seek to explain the failure or shortcom-
ings of Russia's postcommunist democratic experiment. Both
are critical of much of the transition literature within political
science, and both identify certain features that make the
prescriptions of that literature problematic within the Rus-
sian and Soviet contexts. But they anchor their criticisms in
contrasting explanations of the current travails. One is rooted
in the importation of inappropriate models of economic and
social development under Western prodding; the other
points to the weakness of Russia's nascent civil society and
the opportunities lost by political leaders to strengthen it.
They provide opposing views not only of the causal processes
underlying failed or incomplete democratization within Rus-
sia but also to some extent of the purposes of the social
scientific enterprise itself.
Democratic Institutional Design: The Powers and Incentives of Venezuelan Politicians and Interest Groups. By Brian F. Crisp. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2000. 294p. $100.00 cloth, $34.95 paper.
Authors: Hellinger Daniel C.
Published: November 2002

Venezuelan politics attracted little attention from political
scientists for thirty years after the defeat of the fidelista
guerrillas in the 1960s, but there has been a surge of interest
in recent years. The country retained civilian, elected govern-
ment through a dark period of authoritarianism in Latin
America, which seemed to make it a good candidate for
deriving lessons about transitions to democracy. In the 1990s,
however, the democratic system entered into crisis. Venezu-
ela experienced urban riots, two unsuccessful coups, removal
of a president from office before completion of his term,
rising electoral abstention, collapse of the traditional parties
at the heart of the system, and the election of a coup leader
to the presidency. Attention shifted from what went right to
what went wrong. These books help us understand the
limitations of the Venezuelan democratic model.
Unions, Employers, and Central Banks: Macroeconomic Coordination and Institutional Change in Social Market Economies. Edited by Torben Iversen, Jonas Pontusson, and David Soskice. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2000. 339p. $64.95 cloth, $22.95 paper.
Authors: Howell Chris
Published: November 2002

Comparative political economy has been transformed since
the end of the 1970s. The explanatory value of class conflict,
the power resources of social classes, and the social base of
particular national models of political economy have been
replaced by an emphasis upon the role of institutions in
explaining both how contemporary political economies func-
tion and their capacity to manage international economic
integration. The fruits of this institutional turn have now
emerged into a fully fledged new approach, as evidenced by
the volume under review, by Continuity and Change in
Contemporary Capitalism (edited by Herbert Kitschelt, Peter
Lange, Gary Marks, and John D. Stephens, 1999), and by a
forthcoming volume, Varieties of Capitalism, edited by Peter
Hall and David Soskice. These three books overlap to a great
degree in both theoretical approach and list of contributors.
The Politics of Duplicity: Controlling Reproduction in Ceausescu’s Romania. By Gail Kligman. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998. 358p. $44.95.
Authors: Wolchik Sharon L.
Published: November 2002

Gail Kligman analyzes the reproductive policies of the
Ceausescu regime and the responses of experts and the
population to those policies. Drawing on extensive interviews
with ordinary men and women as well as experts and on
archival research, the author provides a wealth of informa-
tion about demographic trends and reproductive policies in
Romania from the outset of the communist era to the violent
overthrow of the Ceausescu regime in late 1989. Kligman
traces the way in which communist leaders used legislation,
measures to "protect" women in the workplace, propaganda,
and control of the media and other sources of information to
propagate their desired model of women and influence
reproductive choices. She analyzes the role of key profession-
als, such as demographic experts and, particularly, physicians
and other medical personnel, in the making and implement-
ing of reproductive policies. She also considers the role of
international actors, including the United States, in perpet-
uating the Ceausescu regime.
Changing Channels: Television and the Struggle for Power in Russia. Rev. and exp. ed. By Ellen Mickiewicz. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1999. 372p. $19.95 paper.
Authors: Hahn Jeffrey W.
Published: November 2002

nyone who watched Soviet television before 1985, the
contrast between then and now could not be more striking.
As with all Soviet media, television was centrally controlled
and used by the Communist Party to communicate only the
information deemed necessary by its leaders. The news was
sanitized, dreadfully dull, and politically correct. The collapse
of communist rule in Russia opened up space for alternative
sources of political information to develop. News content
today is certainly more lively and attractively packaged, but
the emergence of autonomous, multiple sources of informa-
tion has only partially been realized, as Ellen Mickiewicz
makes clear. Furthermore, an unfortunate legacy of the
Soviet period remains alive in contemporary Russian practice.
It is the principal thesis of this remarkably well-informed
and readable book that now, as then, television news is a
"zero-sum" game: Whoever controls the news, wins. Consequently,
control over television news remains the critical
mechanism for gaining and holding political power, and it is
the consuming goal of those who would do so.
Moral Purity and Persecution in History. By Barrington Moore, Jr. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000. 158p. $19.95.
Authors: Seligman Adam B.
Published: November 2002

From time out of mind, people have killed, maimed, and
oppressed one another in two sorts of conflicts: over material
interests (real estate, slave labor, agricultural surplus, war
booty, and so on) and over what Max Weber would have
termed "ideal interests" (conflicts over ultimate meanings,
salvation, principles of justice, definitions of social order).
Barrington Moore's classical and landmark study, Social
Origins of Democracy and Dictatorship: Lord and Peasant in
the Making of the Modern World (1966), explored the first
mode of conflict in the making of modern nation-states. All
social scientists are forever in his debt for that effort. It ranks
as one of the most important contributions to the fields of
comparative and historical sociology.
Organizing Democracy in Eastern Germany: Interest Groups in Post-Communist Society. By Stephen Padgett. Cambridge, UK and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000. 200p. $57.95 cloth, $21.95 paper.
Authors: Soe Christian
Published: November 2002

Stephen Padgett is highly regarded for his scholarship on
parties and other aspects of politics in the Federal Republic
of Germany. In the present work he focuses on the "hesitant"
emergence of associational activity in the postcommunist
societies of eastern and central Europe, with particular
emphasis on economic interest groups in eastern Germany.
His tightly written book seeks to document and, above all,
explain this state of affairs. The retarded growth of interest
groups in the region is an important and relatively neglected
topic, at both the theoretical and empirical levels aimed for
here. It is also a development that has run counter to the
once widely expected emergence of a vigorous pluralist civil
society that would accompany the region's transition to
market economics and democratic politics.
States, Ideologies, and Social Revolutions: A Comparative Analysis of Iran, Nicaragua, and the Philippines. By Misagh Parsa. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. 326p. $54.95 cloth, $19.95 paper.
Authors: Goldstone Jack A.
Published: November 2002

This intriguing volume is a direct challenge to Theda
Skocpol's States and Social Revolutions (1979); by inserting
"ideology" into the title, Parsa claims that Skocpol left out
something important. He makes good on his effort to dem-
onstrate the importance of ideology in recent Third World
revolutions, but the book offers far more than that.
Several authors have compared the Iranian and Nicara-
guan revolutions, which occurred in 1979, but to my knowl-
edge this is the first book-length treatment to add the
Philippines revolution against Ferdinand Marcos in 1986.
People and Parliament in the European Union: Participation, Democracy, Legitimacy. By Jean Blondel, Richard Sinnott, and Palle Svensson. Oxford: Clarendon, 1998. 287p. $70.00.
Authors: Moravcsik Andrew
Published: November 2002

This book seeks to explain why participation rates in elections
to the European Parliament (EP) are low and declining.
Turnout has fallen from 66% in 1979 to 59% in 1994-20-
40% below levels in national elections. This is a critical issue,
the authors insist, because low turnout confirms pervasive
doubts that the European Union (EU) is "democratically
legitimate." Behind this lies the central question of this era in
modern European history, namely, whether a transnational
policy with a common discourse and shared institutions can
form.
The Geography of Money. By Benjamin J. Cohen. Ithaca, NY, and London: Cornell University Press, 1998. 229p. $37.50 cloth, $17.95 paper.
Authors: Porter Tony
Published: November 2002

This new book by one of the most distinguished senior
contributors to scholarship on the international political
economy (IPE) of money is a fascinating and ambitious effort
to remap our understandings of the geography of money.
Cohen argues convincingly that the prevailing mental map
based on one nation/one money is outmoded. Monies are
primarily differentiated today not by territory but by their
function in a hierarchical pyramid-like arrangement; the few
currencies at the top are used widely internationally, whereas
those at the bottom have been displaced even within their
home borders and may now serve only trivial administrative
functions. The great number of theoretical and empirical
insights into an important process of global restructuring, and
the engaging and straightforward style, should make this
book of interest well beyond those who specialize in the
sometimes dauntingly technical literature on global money
and finance.
The Origins of Major War. By Dale C. Copeland. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2000. 322p. $52.00 cloth, $29.50 paper.
Authors: Reed William
Published: November 2002

Studies of the relationship between the distribution of
power and prospects for conflict or cooperation have a
distinguished history in the field of international politics.
Several competing theories have been offered to explain
variation in foreign policy behavior as a function of power
distributions. Moreover, a wealth of empirical evidence
suggests the crucial role that power plays in international
bargaining. The Origins of Major War is a deeply penetrat-
ing, extraordinarily wide-ranging, and judicious treatment
of the onset of major conflict, and it offers an explanation
and some evidence for the relationship between power
differentials and major power conflict. Copeland provides
a dynamic theory of major power war, building upon
classic realism. In my view, his diagnosis and combination
of prescription are substantially correct.
War and Peace in International Rivalry. By Paul F. Diehl and Gary Goertz. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2000. 319p. $49.50.
Authors: Vasquez John
Published: November 2002

When the intellectual history of international relations in-
quiry is written for our time, War and Peace in International
Rivalry may very well be seen as a seminal book. Along with
Frank Wayman, Diehl and Goertz have been at the forefront
of a major conceptual breakthrough in the way peace and war
are studied. This book is their major statement of the subject
and presents their most important findings.
New and Old Wars: Organized Violence in a Global Era. By Mary Kaldor. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1999. 192p. $45.00 cloth, $16.95 paper.
Authors: Walter Barbara F.
Published: November 2002

The 1990s were characterized by a substantial increase in the
number of ethnic conflicts within states. The international
community, especially the United Nations, responded by
intervening to prevent or resolve violence but frequently
failed to do so. Mary Kaldor attempts to explain why
identity-based violence has increased and why the interna-
tional community's actions have so often failed.
The Political Economy of NATO: Past, Present, and into the 21st Century. By Todd Sandler and Keith Hartley. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999. 240p. $29.95, cloth.
Authors: Palmer Glenn
Published: November 2002

This book has an admirable goal: to present policy-relevant
results of past academic research to "a wide audience of
students, practitioners, policy makers and researchers who
want a modern treatment of NATO" (p. xii). To direct
fruitfully the results of scholarly work to less academic
audiences is a difficult task, because many theoretical as-
sumptions and methodological issues must be skimmed over
and criticisms of the work summarized or ignored. Nonethe-
less, the goal is a good one, and the authors are well
positioned to accomplish their purpose, which they do to a
large extent. For more than two decades Todd Sandler has
been the primary proponent of the "joint product" model of
alliances. This model is possibly the most prominent chal-
lenge to (or modification of) the public-goods approach to
the study of alliances that was pioneered by Mancur Olson
and Richard Zeckhauser. Keith Hartley, director of the
Centre for Defence Economics at the University of York, has
written extensively on defense procurement, disarmament,
and conversion.
How to Democratize the European Union … And Why Bother? By Philippe C. Schmitter. Lanham, MD, and Oxford: Rowman & Littlefield, 2000. 150p. $59.00 cloth, $17.95 paper.
Authors: Bomberg Elizabeth
Published: November 2002

This thoughtful book builds on Schmitter's earlier work on
European integration and, more recently, his interest in
democratization in Latin America and southern Europe.
Schmitter joins the ever expanding ranks of scholars and
practitioners from a variety of backgrounds who have tackled
the devilish issue of European Union (EU) democracy and
legitimacy. This attempt is more hands-on than others. As the
title suggests, Schmitter offers a do-it-yourself checklist of
reforms to improve the EU's democratic credentials. His
larger self-assigned task is to "provoke as wide-ranging a
debate as possible on an issue that has just begun to receive
the attention it deserves" (p. viii).
Russia’s New Politics: The Management of a Postcommunist Society. By Stephen White. Cambridge, UK, and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000. 386p. $65.00 cloth, $25.00 paper.
Authors: Lynch Allen C.
Published: November 2002

After a highly successful series of revisions of his original
Gorbachev in Power (1990), which ultimately became After
Gorbachev (1993 and 1994), Stephen White has written an
entirely new book that takes stock of contemporary Russian
politics after nearly a decade of postcommunist experience.
He draws upon a mass of new and newly available data,
including archival materials, survey data, memoirs and peri-
odical literature, interviews with political principals, and a
series of Russian elections at the national, regional, and local
level. White has written a very solid companion to any course
on the structure, dynamics, and economic and social conse-
quences of Russian and, to a certain extent, postcommunist
politics.
Narratives validate Communicative Development Inventories
Authors: ERIKSSON MÅRTEN
Published: November 2002

The study explores the criterion-related validity of the Swedish version of the Communicative
Development Inventories–Word & Sentences (SECDI-W&S). In two follow-up
procedures, SECDI-W&S was used to assess vocabulary and grammar skills in 32 children at
ages 1;10 or 2;4. At the first follow-up, 14 months later (at ages 3;0 or 3;6), two grammar tasks
from the SECDI-W&S and one narrative task (frog story) were given to 27 children.
Predictive validity ranged from .50 to .60 for most assessed skills over the 14-month period,
whereas concurrent validity scores at ages 3;0 or 3;6 ranged from .48 to .70. The second
follow-up at 26 months (at ages 4;0 or 4;6) was conducted with the narrative task only. Predictive
validity from ages 1;10 or 2;4 for the second follow-up remained high for some of the measures;
however, for other measures it diminished, which could be partly accounted for by ceiling effects.
The overall results confirm that the criterion-related validity of the SECDI is sound.