Review Article: Hot War,Cold War,New War

STANLEY KARNOW. Vietnam, A History. New York: Penguin, 1984. Pp. xi, 752. $10.95 (US); GABRIEL KOLKO. Anatomy of a War: Vietnam, The United States, and the Modern Historical Experience. New York: Pantheon Books, 1985. Pp. xvi, 628. $25.00 (US); TIMOTHY J. LOMPERIS. The War Everyone Lost-and Won: America's Intervention in Vietnam's Twin Struggles. Baton Rouge and London: Louisiana State University Press, 1985. Pp. x, 192. $22.50 (US); R.B. SMITH. An International History of the Vietnam War: The Kennedy Strategy. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1985. Pp. xii, 429. $25.00 (US); HARRY O. SUMMERS, Jr. On Strategy: A Critical Analysis of the Vietnam War. New York: Dell, 1984. Pp. 288. $3.95 (US).     

A double first from Scotland

Hughes, E.J., Camus: Le Premier Homme and La Peste (Glasgow, 1995), 90pp., ISBN 0 85261 447 0

France, P., ed., The New Oxford Companion to Literature in French (Oxford University Press, 1995), 865pp., £30, ISBN 0 19 866125 8     

Participation in Policy Streams: Testing the Separation of Problems and Solutions in Subnational Policy Systems

The multiple streams theory of national policymaking has been influential in the study of public administration and public policy—if not without a fair bit of controversy. While some laud the model for its openness to the important role of policy entrepreneurs and the irrationalities of the decision‐making processes, others criticize the model for its lack of readily testable propositions. This article identifies a series of testable propositions in the multiple streams model (particularly that discussed by Kingdon). We assess whether participation in local policymaking (focusing on school district policymaking related to violence prevention) is characterized by “separate streams” of participants or is dominated by organized participants like interest groups or policy specialists. We found evidence of unity (rather than separation) in the policymaking process and scant evidence of elite, organized interests dominating the policymaking process. The results call into question a key assumption of the multiple streams model.     

Contemplating the Role of Precision and Range in Homeland Security Policy Analysis: A Response to Mueller

In an effort to address some of the gaps in homeland security policy analysis—at present a relatively understudied topic from an analytic perspective—Professor Mueller offers an examination of policy decision making for a subset of low probability–high consequence events; particularly the idea of passive asset defense. This article provides a critical examination of Professor Mueller's work, tendering what we identify as a number of critical limitations with his framework and argues it does not provide an adequate basis for sound analysis in this policy area. We also offer several suggestions where one could build upon a portion of the groundwork his paper lays, especially in moving toward a greater appreciation of what terrorism means for an all-hazards management system.     

Book Notes

Michael Ghertman and Margaret Allen, An Introduction to the Multinationals, London, Mac‐millan, for the Institute for Research and Information on Multinationals, Geneva, 1984, pp.143. $11.95 (paper).

June M. Hearn and W.A. Howard, Australian Industrial Relations: Case Studies, South Melbourne, Macmillan, 1984, pp.vi, 136. $12.95 (paper)

Felix Guattari, Molecular Revolution: Psychiatry and Politics, Harmondsworth, Penguin, 1984, pp.308. $10.95 (paper).

W.E. Connolly, The Terms of Political Discourse, second edition, Oxford, Martin Robertson, 1983, pp. 257. $16.50 (paper)

W.E. Connolly (ed.), Legitimacy and the State, Oxford, Basil Blackwell, 1984, pp. 281. $15.95 (paper)

B. Guy Peters, The Politics of Bureaucracy, 2nd edition, London, Longman, 1984, pp. 294. $29.95 (paper)     

POISSON GRAVITY MODELS OF SPATIAL FLOWS*

ABSTRACT The purpose of this paper is to bring together a number of results on spatial flow models, and to reformulate them within a unified probability framework based on Poisson frequencies. To do so, a class of discrete stochastic processes, designated as independent flow processes, is developed which not only yields a complete characterization of Poisson flow frequencies, but also allows a wide range of gravity-type flow models to be formulated within this distributional framework. In particular, a hierarchical classification of 12 model types is developed, and each model type is shown to be characterizable directly in terms of behavioral axioms on independent flow processes.