Book reviews

Australian Politics

J.M. Baxter, M. Emmison and J. Western, Class Analysis and Contemporary Australia (Melbourne: Macmillan, 1991) pp.xiii + 394. $29.95 ISBN 0 7329 0335 1.

Clive Bean, Ian McAllister and John Warhurst (eds.), The Greening of Australian Politics: The 1990 Federal Election (Melbourne: Longman Cheshire, 1990) pp.xvi + 229. $22.99. ISBN 0 582 87031 3.

Peter Cullen, with an introduction by Clem Lloyd, No is Not an Answer: Lobbying for Success (Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 1991) pp.vii + 166. $19.95 ISBN 0 04 442294 6.

Peter Sekuless, Lobbying Canberra in the Nineties: The Government Relations Game (Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 1991) pp.vii + 165. $19.95 ISBN 0 04 442303 9.

Hugh V. Emy and Owen E. Hughes, Australian Politics: Realities in Conflict, Second Edition, (Melbourne: Macmillan, 1991) pp.ix + 577. $34.95 ISBN 0 7329 0392 0.

Brian Galligan, J.R. Nethercote and Cliff Walsh (eds.), The Cabinet and Budget Processes (Canberra: ANU, 1990) pp.141. $n.p. ISBN 0 7315 08815.

Adam Jamrozik, Class, Inequality and the State (Melbourne: Macmillan, 1991) pp.xx + 348. $29.95 ISBN 0 7329 0245 2.

Bruce Muirden, The Diggers Who Signed on For More: Australia's Part in the Russian Wars of Intervention, 1918–1919 (Adelaide: Wakefield Press, 1990) pp.115. $14.95 ISBN 1 86254 260 0.

Hugh Smith (ed.), Australia and Peacekeeping (Canberra: Australian Defence Studies Centre, 1990) pp.viii + 137.$10.00 ISBN 0 7317 0129 1.

David Wells, In Defence of the Common Wealth: Reflections on Australian Politics (Melbourne: Longman Cheshire, 1990) pp.126. $14.99. ISBN 0 582 86913 7.

Kenneth Wiltshire, Tenterfield Revisited: Reforming Australia's System of Government for 2001 (Brisbane: University of Queensland Press, 1991) pp.47. $9.95 ISBN 0 7022 2349 2.

Comparative and International Politics

Adam Ashforth, The Politics of Official Discourse in Twentieth‐Century South Africa (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990) pp.xiv + 296. $120.00 ISBN 019 827702 4.

Stefano Bartolini and Peter Mair, Identity, Competition and Electoral Availability: The Stabilization of European Electorates, 1885–1985 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990) pp.xix + 363. £45.00/$US59.50 ISBN 0 521 38292 0.

Gerard Braunthal, Political Loyalty and Public Service in West Germany (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1990) pp.xvi + 249. $27.50 ISBN 0 87023 707 1.

Grant Evans and Kelvin Rowley, Red Brotherhood At War (revised edition) (London: Verso, 1990) pp.xxii + 322. $29.95 ISBN 0 86091 501 8.

Ron Eyerman and Andrew Jamison, Social Movements: A Cognitive Approach (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1991) pp.184. $29.95 ISBN 0 7456 08671.

Brian Head and Elaine McCoy (eds.), Deregulation or Better Regulation? (Melbourne: Macmillan, 1991) pp.vii + 183. $24.95 ISBN 0 7329 0563 X.

Ewan Jamieson, Friend or Ally (Sydney: Permagon Press, 1990) pp.x + 139. $19.95 ISBN 0 08 040081 7.

Boris Kagarlitsky (Translator, Rick Simon), The Dialectic of Change (London and New York: Verso, 1990) pp.xi + 393. $29.95 ISBN 0 86091 973 0.

Samuel Kernell (ed.) Parallel Politics: Economic Policymaking in Japan and the United States (Tokyo: Japan Center for International Exchange, and Washington: The Brookings Institution, 1991) pp.xiii + 390. $US36.95 ISBN 0 8157 4892 2.

Chandran Kukathas, David W. Lovell and William Maley (eds.), The Transition From Socialism: State and Civil Society in the USSR (Melbourne: Longman Cheshire, 1991) pp.viii + 227. $24.99 ISBN 0 582 87046 1.

James Minchin, No Man Is An Island: A Portrait of Singapore's Lee Kuan Yew (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1990). pp.407. $17.95 ISBN 0 04 4000028.

Chris Moore and J.J. Richardson, in association with Jeremy Moon, Local Partnership and the Unemployment Crisis in Britain (London: Unwin Hyman, 1989) pp.163. $n.p. ISBN 0 04 352220 3.

Neil Nevitte and Roger Gibbins, New Elites in Old States: Ideologies in the Anglo‐American Democracies (Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1990) pp.xi + 209. $24.95 ISBN 0 19 540803 9.

Philip Norton (ed.), Legislatures (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990) pp.xi + 336. $28.95 ISBN 019 8275811.

Amin Saikal and William Maley, Regime Change in Afghanistan: Foreign Intervention and the Politics of Legitimacy (Bathurst, Australia: Crawford House Press, 1991).pp.viii + 190. $37.50 ISBN 1 86333 029 1.

Alan Tapper, The Family in the Welfare State (Sydney: Allen and Unwin in association with the Australian Institute of Public Policy) pp.x + 284. $17.95 ISBN 0 04 442309.

Elise K.Tipton, The Japanese Police State: Tokko in Interwar Japan (Sydney: Allen & Unwin 1991) pp.vii + 209. $24.95 ISBN 004 442258 X.

Wang Jiye and Terence H. Hull (eds.), Population and Development Planning in China (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1991) pp.xx + 311. $24.95 ISBN 0 04 442323 3.

Political Theory and Methodology

John Dunn: Interpreting Political Responsibility: Essays 1981–1989 (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1990), pp. vii + 274. $32.95 ISBN 0 7456 0828 0.

David Held (ed.), Political Theory Today (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1991) pp.ix + 360. £12.50 ISBN 0 7456 0856 6.

Fredric Jameson, Late Marxism: Adorno, or, The Persistence of the Dialectic (London: Verso, 1990) pp.x + 270. $29.95 ISBN 0 86091 981 1.

Eugene Kamenka, Bureaucracy (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1989) pp.ix + 192. $24.95 ISBN 0 631 14579 6.

Ernesto Laclau, New Reflections on the Revolution of Our Time (London: Verso, 1990) pp.xvi + 263. $34.95 ISBN 0–86091–919–6.

Alan Moran, Andrew Chisholm and Michael Porter (eds.), Markets, Resources and the Environment (Sydney: Allen and Unwin in association with National Priorities Project, Tasman Institute, Melbourne, 1991) pp.ix + 290. $19.95 ISBN 1 86373 025 7.

Joseph Raz (ed.), Authority (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1990) pp.330. $34.95 ISBN 0 631 15944 4.

Ian Shapiro, Political Criticism (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990) pp.xii + 338. $n.p. ISBN 0 520 06672 3.

David West, Authenticity and Empowerment (London: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1990) pp.xv + 198. $n.p. ISBN 0 7450 0516.

Jonathan Wolff, Robert Nozick: Property, Justice and the Minimal State (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1991) pp.168. $29.95 ISBN 0 7456 0603 2.     

Recent Advances in Maya Archaeology

This paper focuses on the discoveries of the last decade in Maya archaeology, and assesses their impact on previous models and synthetic frameworks. Although the bibliography includes 700 items published during the last 10 years, it is not exhaustive; on the contrary, a frustratingly large number of discoveries had to be omitted. Two areas exploding with new research are (1) the elicitation of a greater variety of data from hieroglyphic texts, and (2) a series of chemical and biological breakthroughs in the analysis of human burials. The former make it easier to assess the role of elite actors or agents in processes of sociopolitical change. The latter hold out the hope of documenting warfare (through skeletal trauma), migration (by tracing tooth enamel isotopes to ground water), status or gender differences in diet (through bone chemistry), and biological connections of individuals to each other and to earlier populations (through DNA). By combining these new data, we are on our way to integrating humanism and science, and to treating Maya polities as case studies in primary or secondary state formation.     

A comment on Steele’s (2010) “radiocarbon dates as data: quantitative strategies for estimating colonization front speeds and event densities”

We show that Steele’s (2010) criticisms of Hamilton and Buchanan (2007) and Buchanan et al. (2008) do not hold water and demonstrate that his re-analyses of Hamilton and Buchanan’s (2007) and Buchanan et al'.s (2008) datasets are flawed. In the process, we highlight some important issues for researchers interested in using radiocarbon dates to reconstruct population movements and demography. Most notably, we explain why OLS regression is preferable to RMA regression when estimating diffusion velocity, and demonstrate that the summed probability distributions yielded by CalPal are more reliable as guides to past demographic change than those produced by Calib and OxCal.     

Criticism of Henry II's expedition to Ireland in William of Canterbury's miracles of St Thomas Becket

The long collection of miracles of St Thomas Becket written by William, a monk of Christ Church, Canterbury, between 1172 and c.1179 is, like many other examples of the genre, a rich source for attitudes towards sanctity, relics, and pilgrimage. A far more unusual feature of William's text is the author's criticism of the recent English presence in Ireland. William's comments on this score amount to a loaded stretching of the normal parameters of his textual medium, resulting in an evaluative engagement with current affairs of the sort that we would more normally associate with reflective forms of history-writing. William's criticism focused in particular upon the expedition to Ireland undertaken by King Henry II (October 1171–April 1172), inverting the very rhetoric that Henry had used to justify his Irish adventure. William was not himself Irish, as has sometimes been supposed, nor was he registering his institution's frustrations about its exclusion from the new ecclesiastical order in Ireland, as might be implied by the traditional but questionable ‘Canterbury plot’ interpretation of the much-debated papal bull Laudabiliter. Instead, William was skilfully engaging with current debates about the rectitude of Henry II's Irish expedition, and more broadly contesting emerging prejudices about England's ‘uncultivated’ neighbours, in order to effect a subtle critique of the king's involvement in Becket's murder.