The “new” social history and the anthropological history of modern Mexico

Tutino, John. From Insurrection to Revolution in Mexico: Social Bases of Agrarian Violence 1750–1940. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986. xvii + 425 pp. including appendices, bibliography, and index. $42.50 cloth.

Beezley, William H. Judas at the Jockey Club and Other Episodes of Porfirian Mexico. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1987. ix + 181 pp. including notes, bibliography, and index. $19.95 cloth.     

Campaign Promises,Democratic Governance,and Environmental Policy in the U.S. Congress

One important criterion for assessing the quality of democratic governance is the extent to which the policy process effectively translates citizen preferences into collective choices. Several scholars have observed a discrepancy between citizen preferences for strong environmental protection and weak policies adopted in the United States, indicating that the United States may fall short on this criterion. We examine one possible mechanism contributing to this discrepancy—legislator defection from campaign promises. Our data indicate that legislators in the U.S. Congress routinely defect from their campaign promises in environmental protection, undermining the link between citizen preferences and policy choice. We also find that legislators are much more likely to defect from pro‐environmental campaign promises, which moves government policy toward less stringent environmental programs. Finally, the propensity of legislators to defect from their campaign promises is systematic, with defection affected by partisanship, constituency influence, the influence of the majority party, and the likely consequences of defection for policy choice. These findings contribute empirical evidence relevant to the “mandate theory” perspective on how citizen preferences are translated into collective choices through the policy process. These findings may also complement research in comparative politics concluding that legislatures selected through single member districts adopt less stringent environmental policies than do legislatures chosen via proportional representation in that the mechanism for this effect may go through legislator defection from campaign promises.     

Sir Ivor Jennings and the Malayan Constitution

This article examines the role of the British jurist, Sir Ivor Jennings, in the drafting of the Malayan independence constitution. Jennings was part of a five-man constitutional commission appointed in 1956 and led by the Scottish lord of appeal, Lord Reid. Unlike other such commissions, but at the request of Malaya's chief minister, its members were selected from a range of Commonwealth countries. The article discusses the principles which shaped the final document as well as the process of drafting, and argues that, while the constitution was the collective effort of five distinguished lawyers, Jennings' contributions were significantly greater. His working papers on governance served as the basis for the commission's discussion and his influence is most discernible in the provisions relating to the distribution of legislative and financial powers between the federal government and the states and in the section on fundamental liberties. This article concludes that Jennings not only provided the intellectual leadership for the Reid Commission but was also the master draftsman of the new constitution.     

Graptolite faunas and monaxonid demosponges of the Cyrtograptus lundgreni event (late Wenlock,Silurian) interval from the Orange district,New South Wales

Muir, L.A. & Botting, J.P., December, 2007. Graptolite faunas and monaxonid demosponges of the Cyrtograptus lundgreni event (late Wenlock, Silurian) interval from the Orange district, New South Wales. Alcheringa 31, 375-395. ISSN 0311-5518.

Three monograptid and five retiolitid graptoloids, and one species of sponge, are described from late Wenlock sections (Cyr. lundgreni and Co. ludensis biozones) at Spring Creek and Wallace Creek, near Orange, New South Wales, Australia. The sponge Janussenia orangense gen. et sp. nov. is the first monaxonid demosponge to be described from the Australian Silurian. An object containing broken Testograptus testis, and interpreted as the faecal pellet of a predator or scavenger on graptoloids, is described.

Lucy A. Muir [l.muir@nhm.ac.uk], Department of Palaeontology, Natural History Museum, Cromwell Road, London SW7 5BD, UK. Joseph P. Botting [joe@asoldasthehills.org], 2C Roslyn Close, Mitcham CR4 3BB, UK. Received 28.4.2006; Revised 10.10.2006.     

From Cowards and Subversives to Aggressors and Questionable Allies: US Army Perceptions of Zionism since World War I

For most of the twentieth century, the attitudes and policies of the US army were consistently anti-Zionist. From World War I into the 1950s, army anti-Zionism was inextricably interrelated with a mutually reinforcing anti-Semitism that ranged from political and ethnic bias to extremist versions of biological racial and conspiratorial thinking. Army officers perceived Zionist objectives in the Middle East as detrimental to America's national interest regarding wartime security and geopolitical stability in a crucial region, as well as concerning oil resources and communist containment. In supporting Zionism and later Israel, America Jews revealed their suspected disloyalty. Although anti-Semitic concepts gradually disappeared from official army analyses, striking continuities remained in the army's anti-Zionist position. Until the end of the Cold War, the army rejected the “special relationship” argument based upon shared values or Israel as a military asset. The image of the cowardly, weak Jew incapable of establishing and defending a Jewish state in Palestine had been replaced by that of a militarily superior, potentially aggressive Israel destabilizing a strategic area.     

Editorial

For John Stuart Mill, Matthew Arnold, and their later Victorian respondents, the Stoic writer and second-century CE Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius represented a test-case for the sufficiency of the ostensibly masculine practices of askesis and detachment as ethical ideals, specifically in the context of Christianity. A brief passage in Mill's On Liberty (1859) comparing Stoic ethics with Christian ethical practice provoked an extended response from Arnold in an 1863 review essay. Mill and Arnold both used comparisons with Christianity to trace the contours and to explore the limits of Marcus Aurelius's ‘lovable’ nature; in doing so, Arnold in particular enacted a peculiar kind of historical sympathy for both the Marcus Aurelius that was and for a missed rapprochement between classical and Christian ethics. For a series of later writers, including freethinkers, religious conservatives and liberal Christians, Marcus Aurelius either promised or threatened to reconcile Stoicism with Christianity. Assessing the emperor in the light of Christianity became a means both for producing or denying a link to the classical past and for describing the condition of Christianity in England. A key point of contention for these writers and a landmark in the broader debate over Victorian secularization was the question of Marcus Aurelius' role in the torture and killing of 48 Christians at Lugdunum (Lyons) in 177 CE.