Ideological Considerations Research Articles

Ateitininkų nuostatos puoselėjant tautinį identitetą

Docentė socialinių mokslų (edukologijos) daktarėVytauto Didžiojo universitetoSocialinių mokslų fakultetasDonelaičio g. 52–301, LT-44244 KaunasEl. paštas: g.gedviliene@smf.vdu.ltIstorijos katedros doktorantasVytauto Didžiojo universitetoEdukologijos katedraLietuvos istorijos magistrasBaltijos g. 92–41, LT-48217 KaunasEl. paštas: aurimas_sukys@yahoo.com Straipsnyje nagrinėjama ateitininkų samprata lietuvių emigrantų bendruomenės atžvilgiu bei jų pastangos išsaugoti savo identitetą sukuriant stiprios tautinės bendruomenės – diasporos – veikimo modelį po Antrojo pasaulinio karo. Taip pat pateikiamos lietuviškumo išsaugojimo programinės gairės. Straipsnis parašytas remiantis J. Girniaus, M. Krupavičiaus, A. Maceinos, A. Sužiedėlio ir kitų ateitininkų idėjų teorine analize.

Ethics, Ideology, and Reproductive Health Policy in the United States

The 1994 International Conference on Population and Development held in Cairo recognized the centrality of reproductive health to human rights and development. Progress on the Cairo agenda has slowed for numerous reasons, however. The United States, once an enthusiastic promoter of this agenda and still the world's leading reproductive health donor, has revised its reproductive health policies radically since the 2000 presidential election of George W. Bush. This study examines how policies have been reconfigured in five key reproductive health areas, sparking controversy both in the United States and internationally. These categories are the content of sex education, access to emergency contraception and to abortion services, condom effectiveness, and HIV/AIDS prevention. The analysis presented here elucidates how ideological considerations have superseded public health and ethical concerns and reflects on health and ethical consequences.

5 - Vying for Legitimacy: Academic vs. Corporate Culture

Following the general trend already existing in the Western world, state universities in South Africa, in seeking other sources of income and in meeting policy demands for transformation, have embraced the corporate model as the most efficient system of organising education today, thus opening the door to activities and processes such as commercialisation, applied and contract research, and the development of stronger links with external stakeholders. This paper questions the legitimacy of the commodification of intellectual enquiry. Do financial or ideological considerations justify the adoption of a corporate system in education? Can cost efficiency, which is global in nature and which is accelerating social change, legitimise corporate practices in the university in South Africa without affecting a) its character as a public institution, and b) the role of each individual member? The author argues that claims for legitimacy of the present form of rationalisation of the university serve to institutionalise corporate power in educational institutions, making it ap- pear valid and acceptable. Complex though the term may be, however, the generic meaning of ‘legitimacy’ refers to ‘rights’: the right to claim, the right to question whether correct procedures have been followed, and, ultimately, the right to assess whether a policy or a system serves the good of all concerned. In this sense, in determining the notion of the ‘right thing to do’, any discourse on legitimacy, by taking into account a wide diversity of viewpoints, will deal primarily with values and the recognition of human aspirations.

Organizational epistemology, education and social theory

Organizational learning or epistemology has emerged in order to manage the creation of knowledge and innovation within contemporary capitalism. Its insights are being applied also to the public sector. Much of the research in organizational learning has drawn upon the discipline of psychology, particularly constructivist theory. Two approaches in organizational epistemology are considered here: Nonaka’s theory of knowledge creation, and Engeström’s expansive learning theory. Notwithstanding the reference to ‘learning’, these approaches have so far had little application to schools, especially at the level of pedagogy. But there are indications that re‐culturing, ‘workforce re‐modelling’ and inter‐agency working are becoming more prominent within the public services in England. In these endeavours, government may come to regard organizational epistemology as an important new procedure in the management of change. Thus far, sociology has had two kinds of ‘relationship’ with organizational epistemology: first, social phenomenology and ethnomethodology have been of practical use; and, second, critical theory objects to the near‐absence of a consideration of power and ideology within the discourse of organizational epistemology.

Beyond anti-terrorism: Metaphors as message strategy of post-September-11 U.S. public diplomacy

This research analyzed the major metaphors the U.S. government created to define the post-September-11 world realities, including “Second Front,” “Axis of Evil,” “Old Europe,” “Responsible Stakeholder,” and “Color Revolution.” The metaphors are found to be rhetorically advocating and share the archetypal metaphor of “democracy vs. tyranny” and “freedom vs. oppression.” The metaphors had their origins in the U.S. national security strategies, and the images they created highlighted aspects of the moral and ideological considerations but hide certain aspects of the realpolitik motivations.

Response

Response Robert Alter A response by the author of The Art of Biblical Narrative to the preceding articles. The main thing I should say is how deeply gratified I am by all these generous responses to my work. I think the keenest satisfaction a writer can have is to discover he has good readers, and these seven richly various essays are evidence that I have had very good readers indeed. Some of the essays show that their authors have understood me, at least in some respects, better than I understand myself. Others place my work on the Bible in revelatory contexts that had not clearly occurred to me, or carry it in new and surprising directions. I had not at all thought of Herder when I was writing The Art of Biblical Narrative, but of course we are all inescapably creatures of the large historical era that we inhabit, and the correspondence between my project and Herder's that Jonathan Sheehan proposes seems to me both persuasive and instructive. As for Mara Benjamin's illuminating discussion of Buber and Rosenzweig, though I avowed my debt to their concept of Leitwortstil in my book, I was less conscious of the broader connections she so ably delineates between what they aspired to do and what I was doing. I am especially taken with what she says about the invocation of Midrash in their work and in mine as a gesture of "grant[ing] legitimacy to a literary tradition that has only recently been understood as worthy of secular attention." My own continuing engagement since adolescence in the Hebrew literary tradition has proved to be a frequent intellectual resource for me, and I definitely wanted to make that clear to readers, implicitly arguing against the [End Page 365] notion once cherished in English departments (and egregiously articulated by T. S. Eliot) that the Western literary tradition is essentially Christian. In recent years, moreover, when I found myself in the unanticipated role of exegete, I discovered that Rashi and ibn Ezra and the Midrash Rabba were often more useful to me than Gunkel and Noth, and hence the commentary I wrote is, at least in my eyes, definitely a Jewish commentary. Two essays here by former students and dear friends, Ilana Pardes and Robert Kawashima, vividly show me aspects or implications of my work that had largely eluded me. I am also pleased, never having wanted to create disciples, to note in what different directions they go both from each other and from me. Ilana is right in seeing my view of Job as a touchstone for the literary approach to the Bible that I have attempted to trace, and I like the idea of Melville as well as Herder anticipating my own project precisely in regard to this defining text. Robert's notion that the existence of certain literary universals provides the ground for comparing ancient and modern is a clearer and more cogent rationale for the critical procedure than I myself offered. At the same time, as a few of the contributors indicate, I have been engaged in a kind of literary archeology, trying to unearth certain distinctive literary conventions, long buried, that inform biblical narrative and poetry. I was struck by the phrase near the end of Robert's paper that my work is "a sober refusal of intellectual fashion and fantasy." That goes to the heart of my whole critical enterprise, including my writing on the novel, and I would like to return to this notion when I comment on Steven Weitzman's framing essay. Chaya Halberstam's application of some of my categories of analysis to biblical law is a surprising development for me, and her skillfully attentive treatment of the two passages suggests that this could turn out to be a productive new area of literary investigation. Finally, I am delighted to see that after a long hiatus Menakhem Perry has come back to the study of biblical narrative. His essay, which introduces ideological considerations absent from his early work, is original, ingenious, provocative, and, as he surely knows, in some respects debatable. Rather than embark on a debate, I would like to register here my debt to...

Popular Resistance in the French Wars: Patriots, Partisans, and Land Pirates (review)

Reviewed by: Popular Resistance in the French Wars: Patriots, Partisans, and Land Pirates John Lawrence Tone Popular Resistance in the French Wars: Patriots, Partisans, and Land Pirates. Edited by Charles J. Esdaile. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005. ISBN 1-4039-3826-1. Figures. Notes. Index. Pp. xiii, 233. $74.95. This book contains papers on partisan warfare in Napoleonic Europe by nine scholars who attended a conference at the University of Liverpool in September 2003. The editor, Charles Esdaile, is the leading scholar in Britain on Napoleonic Spain, and his influence lends coherence to what is a difficult topic to handle comparatively. The essays, including an introduction and conclusion by Esdaile, cover examples of partisan warfare in Italy, Germany, Spain, and Russia, and should be of interest to students of the French Revolution, Napoleon, and partisan warfare in general. Following an introduction by Esdaile, Alan Forrest shows us how partisans were seen by the French, who, ever since the Vendée, had called them brigands, "wild beasts of the fields and woods," who were "unworthy of the [End Page 1123] name of humanity" (p. 41). Thus, the ferocity of partisan warfare flowed in part from attitudes shared by French officers before they ever encountered their imperial subjects. What happened in northern Italy illustrates this. According to Martin Boycott-Brown, the French penchant for "ruthless plundering" (p. 60) in villages like Ombriano (p. 52) led to a peasant war in the 1790s shaped less by political and religious ideologies than by the need to survive French predation (p. 59). In contrast, writes Michael Rowe, armed resistance in the Rhineland was "out of the question, given French military power" (p. 73), but subtle forms of resistance driven by self-interest rather than "ideological considerations" did occur (p. 86). Catalonians resisted the French from the beginning, but, according to Antonio Moliner Prada, they were not that effective (p. 110), and their efforts tended to degenerate into banditry (p. 105). Charles Esdaile and Leonor Hernández Enviz present findings for 322 Spanish guerrillas and argue, notably, that most of them were men of property rather than the destitute criminals and bandits they were represented to be by their enemies and even by some recent scholars (p. 119). This chapter represents years of painstaking work by Esdaile of the sort needed if we are to understand the partisans. Vittorio Scotti-Douglas details the various attempts by Spanish revolutionary governments to regulate, interpret, and give meaning to a guerrilla movement that resisted both regulation and ideological straight-jacketing, being related more to a defense of property and a struggle for survival than anything else (p. 154). An essay by Emilie Delivré on anti-Napoleonic catechisms shows that they were ideologically inconsistent and not very effective. Janet Hartley argues that the literature on Russian patriotism in 1812 has paid little attention to the views of ordinary conscripts, who, she says, were not really very patriotic. The thread uniting these diverse essays is their rejection of ideological interpretations of resistance and their focus on the daily struggles of civilians driven to resist the French out of necessity. It is a welcome addition to the literature and provides a blueprint for future comparative work on the subject. John Lawrence Tone Georgia Institute of Technology Atlanta, Georgia Copyright © 2006 Society for Military History

Face au mouvement de libéralisation des échanges : quelles politiques agricoles pour les PMA ?

In the poorest countries, agriculture is often the sector with the largest labour force and it provides the main source of incomes in rural areas wher the majority of poor people continue to live. Should these poor agricultures be protected from the rigour of competition on international markets where, in addition, prices are particularly unstable adding to food insecurity for those countries relying on those international markets to ensure a large proportion of their supplies? This question raises major controversies dominated by a priori ideological considerations. Yet rising to the world food challenge over the coming decades will undoubtedly require relying on domestic agriculture in poor countries because the economic growth of poor countries requires growth of their agriculture. Without it, poor countries wouldl not have the financial resources necessary to fund massive food imports. And this calls for forceful public policies which go well beyond border protection, including the choice of public expenditures, particularly an emphasis on agricultural research, appropriate general economic policies to ensure favourable economic incentives to farmers.

CSR in the Community: Redefining the Social Role of the Supermarket Giants

The ‘consumer society’ has become a ‘consumer oligopoly’ in Britain as the big four supermarkets, Tesco, Asda, Sainsbury, and Morrison have between them captured a 75% share of the grocery market. This has been achieved through globalisation, the attainment of large economies of scale, and major deployment of buying power. Total annual profits of the ‘big four’ UK supermarkets now stand at £3 billion, and several millions of this is spent on charitable causes and other CSR activities such as promoting sustainable development. However the spectacular growth of the supermarkets over the past fifty years has not been to the benefit of all. Some consumers have seen their access to healthy food curtailed as local shops have closed, and the quality of their diet has fallen; this is often referred to as the ‘food deserts’ phenomenon. The spatial scale of ‘food deserts’, the coping strategies employed by those affected by such ‘deserts’, and the solutions proposed to alleviate food access problems, are profoundly local in character, typically operating over distances of less than two kilometres. This paper suggests that a re‐focussing of the CSR activities of supermarkets towards the local scale can not only boost the social image of the supermarkets in fields where their impact is seen as negative, but can also be profitable for these corporations. Further benefits of a more local perspective include environmental advantages such as the maintenance of biodiversity and support for farmers whose incomes may be in decline. In tandem with a global commercial outlook, supermarkets have engaged with government at a national level to further their business interests. Simultaneously, governmental power within Britain has also moved from the local to the national level. In contrast, many organisations representing disadvantaged groups call for a localised, ‘bottom‐up’, approach. Britain's current centralised ‘top‐down’ approach to governance may be driven by financial pressures or ideological considerations, but this has nevertheless alienated some voters from government. This shift has prompted a certain disengagement with political processes for some individuals, and a shift towards ‘direct action’ tactics which may be damaging to commercial activities. It is argued here that a realignment of the supermarket's engagement with politics from the national to the local level is possible, financed by the resources the supermarkets currently devote to CSR activities. This re‐localisation of supermarket political activity would in fact pay dividends for the ‘big four’ retailers, because by helping to re‐build the legitimacy of national government it would create a more stable environment for business within the UK.

Moving Toward a Co-Management Approach: China’s Policy Toward North Korea and Taiwan

This article analyzes Chinese foreign policy toward two flashpoints in East Asia: the Korean peninsula and the Taiwan Strait. It argues that there has been an evolution in terms of Beijing’s approaches toward these two international crises over time. One can discern three different approaches. First, historical legacies have always played a critical role in the formulation of China’s policy calculations and the Korea and Taiwan issues are no exception. I call this the “history-embedded” perspective. Second, with the recent rise of China’s economic and political might, nationalism in China has correspondingly been on the rise. National interests have been further prioritized over ideological considerations. This approach can be called “national interest-driven” foreign policy. Third, Beijing has become increasingly confident not only about its strengths in the world arena but also about its ability to coordinate with related powers regarding their various interests. This approach can be called “co-management of international crises” with major powers. The article argues that until recently China has emphasized the first two sets of considerations, but seems to be gradually moving toward a new approach, namely co-management with major powers.

Roman Taste

Clearly a precarious topic, ancient Roman tastes were defined by a combination of ideological and sensory considerations. The ancient sources appear to lead to some confusion as to what defines good or proper taste, and this confusion could represent social conflict in Rome. Exotica and elaborate cookery certainly moved elite Romans away from the tastes and eating practices of their agrarian ancestors and sometimes the distance between those Romans who were able to eat elaborately was quite far over those who could not. Other times, elite culinary difference was expressed though simpler foods or subtle flavor notes. In addition, a number of Roman ingredients have been cited by ancient sources as having popular appeal regardless of their generally repulsive flavor characteristics.This article attempts at an understanding of what constitutes Roman elite taste consciousness, or how Roman taste was motivated by forces outside of physiology such as culture or status. This inquiry assumes that there were two criteria for elite food access. First, a Roman noble needed to have the proper “taste” for elite entitlement. Second, this person needed established culinary resources to sustain his or her elite position. Evidence is gathered from across antiquity, although the period of particular interest to this discussion is the late Republic and early Imperial eras, when social power was concentrating into the hands of a few.

Land is for people—experiences of the community of Khuis

This study is an investigation into the social history of the Tlharo, with the aim of articulating and clarifying the particular nature of their experiences in respect of land-related issues. Their circumstances are described against the background of the course of events as directed and influenced by colonisation, apartheid and the ‘new democratic dispensation’. Apart from the pervasive ideological considerations and hegemonic interests that will be outlined, it will also be shown that the Tlharo have undergone radical changes which have fundamentally altered their world, and that they have often been placed at the mercy of bureaucratic whims.

Gender and Presidential Judicial Selection

Abstract This study traces the gender-based patterns of judicial selection for four presidents from 1976 to 2000. The differences among the presidents are discussed in terms of the number of women they appointed, their selection process, and eligible pool, partisan and ideological considerations. Career and educational background characteristics of women judges appointed by Carter, Reagan, G.H.W. Bush, and Clinton are compared and clear differences emerge. The study concludes that women's paths to the federal bench have not changed much in the last 25 years and that women appointees appear to have “climbed” a judicial ladder that men have not.

Alexander B. Rossino. Hitler Strikes Poland: Blitzkrieg, Ideology, and Atrocity. Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 2003. xv, 343 pp.

Historians of the Third Reich have long noted that Nazi Germany's actions on the battlefield and occupation policies were governed both by conventional military and radical ideological considerations. Much attention has been devoted to the problem of separating the two strands analytically, to determining which actions and policies should be labeled as primarily one or the other and which elements within the regime thought and behaved mainly according to conventional versus ideological notions. In recent years it has become common to place German military operations before June 1941 under the “conventional” rubric and to date the “ideological” war from the invasion of the Soviet Union, which began in that month. On the other hand, whereas the German army was once widely thought to have constituted a bastion of conventional thinking even after the ideological war had been launched, scholars have increasingly implicated it in the perpetration of ideologically rooted crimes (particularly the murder of Jews on the eastern front).

Ivan the Terrible by Andrei s> Pavlov Maureen Perrie (review)

964 SEER, 82, 4, 2004 Pavlov, Andrei and Perrie, Maureen. Ivan the Terrible. Profiles in Power. Pearson-Longman, London and New York, 2003. ix + 234 pp. Figures. Maps. Notes. Chronology. Glossary. Bibliography. Index. ?JI4 99 (paperback). ANDREI PAVLOV of the Institute of Russian History, St Petersburg, and Maureen Perrie of the University of Birmingham have taken on the timely taskof writinga new book on politics under Ivan IV intended for the Western reader.The importance of the authors'undertakingis apparentin the context of the revisionist discourse which has exerted an ambiguous effect on the Westernscholarshipof Ivan IV. The revisionists,who are sometimes vaguely referred to as the Harvard sceptical school, have given a new impulse to source studiesby questioningthe validityof some traditionalsourceson Ivan's reign, mainly the correspondence between Ivan IV and A. M. Kurbskii.At the same time, the outright scepticism of revisionists prevented them from producing a book-length study of Ivan IV's reign and thereby caused stagnation in Western studies of Ivan. The Western reader thus had to be content with the Englishtranslationsof the biographiesof Ivan by the Russian imperial historian S. F. Platonov and the Soviet Marxist historian R. G. Skrynnikov.The Russian reader was in a more favourableposition after the appearance of the updated biography of the tsar written by B. N. Floria. Pavlov'sand Perrie'sbook is thus the firstmajor reinterpretationof the reign of Ivan IV publishedin the Westin the post-Soviet period. The main themes of the book under consideration are the territorial expansion of the Muscovite state under Ivan, the relationsbetween the ruler and the boyars, and the rituals and symbols of power. Pavlov and Perrie arrangetheir materialchronologically. They share a rational attitudeto Ivan IV's policy. The authorsalsopreferto interpretIvan'sbehaviourin termsof a semiotic analysisratherthan psychological explanations. They thinkthat the correspondence between the tsar and Kurbskii and Kurbskii's Histoy are genuine, though they acknowledge the need to verify these sources by using other materials. According to the authors, the main reasons behind the territorial expansion of Muscovy at the expense of the Kazan' and Astrakhan'khanates were the political and ideological (religious)considerations of the Muscovite ruling circles. The conquest of the Tatar states led to a major shift in the balance of power on the international arena, something which allowed Ivan to launch a war against his western neighbours. The authors explain the outbreak of the Livonian war in terms of the attempts of the Russian government to end the isolation of Muscovy from the Baltic trade routes and European markets. Russia stood at a crossroadsin the middle of the sixteenth century and the dynamic of relations between the ruler and his subjects depended on 'the balance of power in the countryand on the politicalwill of its leaders'(p. 55). The authors argue that the I 550S reforms were prompted both by the requirementsof the stateand the interestsof the nobility, the townspeople and peasantry who began to acquire a sense of their common identity as estates (sosloviia). They also contend that duringthe reforms'the leading role in local REVIEWS 965 government [. . .] passed to the elected institutionsof estate self-government' in the main territoryof centralRussia (p. 75). According to the authors, the boyars and embryonic social estates posed some constraintson the tsar'spower, somethingwhich causedIvan to establish his Oprichnina. 'The essence of the Oprichnina conflict lay [... ] in a disagreement between the tsar and his former associates concerning the way in which centralisationshouldbe implemented'(p. I 23).Since the Oprichnina was designed to suppressthe political independence of the estates, the I566 Assemblyof the Land 'cannotbe consideredto be a trulyestate-representative institution' (pp. 131-32). The authors agree with Platonov that Ivan's Oprichnina was directedagainstthe old princelyaristocracy. Not all readers will apparently be convinced by the social rationale for Ivan's politics proposed by Pavlov and Perrie. Their discussion of estates would have benefited from a definition of an estate. Muscovite local administrationwas a rathercomplex mixtureof elected and appointedofficials with considerableregionalvarietieseven in the heartlandof the realm. Pavlov and Perrie are very successful in integrating recent studies of Muscovite culturein theiraccount of Ivan'spolitics.Ivan'sregimemaintained itselfnot only through coercion, but also throughpublic ritualswhich 'helped to promote the integration and cohesion of...

Judicial Selection: Ideology versus Character

Part I of Judicial Selection: Ideology versus Character sets the stage for an argument that character and not political ideology should be the primary factor in the selection of judges. Political ideology has played an important role in judicial selection, from John Adams's entrenchment of federalists as judges after the election of 1800 to the Roosevelt's selection of progressives, liberals, and New Dealers, the contemporary era, from the failed nominations of Fortas, Haynsworth, Carswell to the defeat of Robert Bork, the narrow confirmation of Clarence Thomas. But until recently, political ideology has played its role behind the scenes - mostly off the official record of the judicial nomination and confirmation process. Perhaps the most important evidence of the new emphasis on political ideology in judicial selection is Senator Charles Schumer's op/ed Judging by Ideology, which argued for the proposition that political ideology and not character or competence should be the explicit on-the-record basis for Democratic opposition to Republican judicial nominees. Part II investigates the case for the ideological selection of judges. This investigation begins with Senator Schumer's argument for explicit consideration of political ideology in the confirmation process and then proceeds to the development of a two dimensional model of judicial attitudes. The first dimension is a simple left-right measure of political ideology. The second dimension represents judicial philosophy as a position on a continuous real line, the origin of which is perfect instrumentalism (decisions are entirely a function of ideology) and the endpoint of which is perfect formalism (decisions are entirely a function of the legal materials). Given a scenario in which Democrats can block Republican nominees (or vice versa), the simple model yields a confirmation space, defined as the set of judges whose position in the two-dimensional attitude space are acceptable to both parties. Part III presents the case for the primacy of character in judicial selection. The argument begins with the uncontroversial observation that almost every theorist of judicial decision can accept a thin theory of judicial vice. No one believes that cowardly, stupid, foolish, or corrupt characters are suitable for the position of judge. The next move is to argue that similar agreement can be reached on a thin theory of judicial virtue, the characteristics of mind and will that are necessary for excellent judging given any reasonable theory as to what constitutes a good judicial decision. Part IV moves beyond a theory of judicial virtue by investigating the particular virtue of justice. The paper argues that justice is best understood as lawfulness. A good judge is nominos; she grasps and respects the nomos, the laws, norms, and customs generally accepted by her community. Part V answers a series of objections to character-driven judicial selection. These include the objections (1) that judicial selectors lack sufficient evidence of character, (2) that there are no objective criteria for good character, (3) that character is a private matter, and (4) that selection on the basis of character is not politically feasible. In each case, the objection, while it might be apropos of some character-driven theory of judicial selection, is inapplicable to the kind of aretaic theory developed in Parts III and IV of the paper. Part V concludes by noting that when ideological struggle is intense, nonideological judging becomes all the more necessary to realize the rule of law.

The Babylonian Gap: The Archaeological Reality

The extent of the Babylonian destruction in the Kingdom of Judah in 586 BCE is today essentially an archaeological question. It may be examined by comparing pottery and other remains found in First Temple period destruction layers in the City of David in Jerusalem, Lachish, En-Gedi, Arad and at dozens of other recently excavated or surveyed sites, both large and medium-sized towns and agricultural settlements. The results of all of these excavations and surveys clearly affirm that Judah was almost entirely destroyed and that its Jewish population disappeared from most of the kingdom’s territory (except, perhaps, for the area of Benjamin). One of the results was that two thirds of the destroyed kingdom’s area was subsequently occupied by Edomites, turning it into ‘Idumea’. With the growth in the number of excavations and surveys across Judah in recent years, our view of the total destruction of Judah by the Babylonians has been strengthened. This view is based upon purely archaeological considerations and is not motivated by hidden ideological considerations.

A Preference for Deference? The Supreme Court and Judicial Review

The power of the Supreme Court to declare laws unconstitutional remains as troubling today as when first introduced in Marbury v. Madison. While the normative arguments will perhaps always remain unsettled, the empirical question of when and how often justices actually use this power also continues unanswered. Using data derived from briefs filed by litigants over ten terms, we develop systematic tests of how requests for judicial review of state and federal laws influence U.S. Supreme Court justices. We find that while many appear to base their decisions to strike or uphold state or federal laws on ideological considerations, the Court itself can be called restraintist in that it never appears to strike laws sua sponte, and most requests for the review are voted down. Finally, we find little evidence of strategic considerations in the justices’ decisions.

POWs and the Great War: Captivity on the Eastern Front by Alon s> Rachamimov (review)

REVIEWS 757 and women as well as early Soviet social, political, and culturalhistorymore broadly. School ofSlavonic andEastEuropean Studies SUSAN MORRISSEY University College London Rachamimov, Alon. POWsandtheGreatWar.Captivity ontheEastern Front. The LegacyoftheGreatWar.Berg,OxfordandNewYork,2002. Xi + 259 pp. Notes. Tables. Figures.Chart. Bibliography.Index. [42.99; [14.99. ABOUT six million soldiers were captured by their enemies on the Eastern Front during the FirstWorld War. Over two million of these were troops of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. These men constituted a third of all those mobilized by Austria-Hungary.The experience of captivitywas thus a central part of the experience of war on the EasternFront.But public memory of it is dim, if not non-existent. The exploitsof the Czech Legion in the Russian Civil War are the one notable exception. The history of captivity on the Eastern Front remains largely unwritten. In his book POWs andtheGreatWar,Alon Rachamimov addressesthis gap in the historiographyof the FirstWorldWar. In the process he undermines a number of myths regarding the war and its consequences. Rachamimov's book focuses on Austro-Hungariantroops who fell into the hands of the Russiansfrom I 9 I4 to I9 I8. He uses the studyof POWs to draw broader conclusions concerning 'the formation of collective identities and loyalties' (p. 4), and 'the human rights implications of World War I' (p. I 7). To do this, he makes use of letterswritten by POWs, officialdocuments, and the reportsof delegationswho visited the prisonersin theircamps. The evidence of these sourcespermitsthe author to re-examine the loyalty of soldiers to the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Rachamimov convincingly arguesthat there is no indication that Czechs or other Slavswere more likely to desert or surrenderthan other nationalities.As he points out, 'the national distribution of the POW population did not differ significantly from the relative share of each national group in the general population of AustriaHungary ' (p. 43). Troops rarely surrenderedor deserted individually. More commonly, they went into captivity after large formations surrendered en masse. The weaknesses of the Austro-Hungarian leadership were more to blame for the loss of so many men than the disloyaltyof the men themselves. Furthermore, the author's examination of prisoners' letters show that although prisonersdid become lessloyal as theircaptivitycontinued, national or ideological considerations were not important factors in the growing discontentof POWs. Veryfewprisonerscomplained of discriminationbecause of theirnationality,and most Czech POWs did notjoin the Legion. Even after the Russianrevolutionsof i 9 I7, fewPOWs expressedanysocialistsympathies. On the other hand, many did express dissatisfaction with the efforts undertaken by the Austro-Hungarian government to provide aid to its captured troops. These troops felt abandoned by their state, which treated them with suspicion, and appeared to show insufficientconcern for theirfate. The Austro-Hungariangovernment did send severalrepresentativesto Russia 758 SEER, 8 i, 4, 2003 to visit POWs, and did distribute aid to them. However, it provided substantiallyless aid per man than did the Germans. The fact that the Russians, Germans, and Austro-Hungarians permitted representativesof each others'governmentsto visitprisonersis proof that the belligerentpowers were in generalkeen to treatprisonersdecently. Rachamimov makesaverygood case thatthe ruleslaiddown in the Hague Conventions regarding the treatment of prisoners had a positive effect. He devotes an important section of his book to challenging the view put forward by the historianPeterPastorthat Russian POW camps of the FirstWorldWar'could be considered prototypes of those set up later by the communists' and the Nazis (p. 67). According to Pastor,the camps played an importantrole in 'the acclimatization of the European mind to the existence of the concentration camps' (p. 8o). Rachamimov destroys this argument very effectively. He showsthat manyprisonersspentmuch of theirtime workingoutsideof camps. Although therewere 'atrocious'conditions at some sites,these 'do not seem to be the rule' (p. II5), and were in part a consequence of the lack of infrastructureat the startof the war. The Russianshad never expected to take so many prisoners.From I9I6, conditions improvedmarkedly. Rachamimov puts forward a well-researched and well-argued case, in which there are no obvious weaknesses.On page nine he statesthat there are seven stages in capture narratives,but lists only six. Other than this, there is little to criticize in this original and interestingwork, which in 2001 won the FraenkelPrizefor ContemporaryHistory. Centrefor Security Studies P. F...

The USSR and the Former Italian Colonies, 1945–50

This article studies the motives determining Soviet leadership's actions concerning the former Italian colonies. Analyzing the body of documents from the Archive of Russian Foreign Policy (the Foreign Ministry Archive), the author came to the conclusion that Realpolitik imperatives clearly dominated ideological considerations on this issue. The architects of the Soviet foreign policy were interested in the geostrategic position of Libya, Somalia and Eritrea, rather than in the prospects for revolutionary development there. Soviet diplomacy showed remarkable persistence and flexibility (the official position was changed four times), trying to achieve a Soviet presence in the Mediterranean – a traditional priority region of Russian geopolitical aspirations.