International Social Science Review articles from March 2008

International Social Science Review archives from March 2008

Explaining the democratic trust conundrum: the sources of institutional trust in the reunited Germany.
March 22, 2008... Introduction Democracies depend on trust more than any other form of government, but they are also the most successful at earning the trust of their citizens. Paradoxically, democratic governments try to engender trust by...

Turnips and war memorials: E.J. Gumbel's critique of German militarism, 1919-1932.
March 22, 2008... In late summer 1932, University of Heidelberg statistician E.J. Gumbel was dismissed from his academic post and lost his "right to teach" at any German university for "conduct unbefitting his position" as a professor. (1) His offense:...

'Of great utility to the people of Cincinnati': The Centinel of the North-Western Territory reports the French Revolution.
March 22, 2008... By all accounts, life on the American frontier at the end of the eighteenth century could be very lonely, especially in an area as large and pristine as the Northwest Territory. The isolation of life at the fringes of civilization could be...

Legal determinacy as presumptive fiction: the Blackmun papers on the primacy of life and the machinery of death.
March 22, 2008... Concerns for rationality and consistency have informed contemporary legal philosophy in no small measure. So-called "non-skeptic" jurists such as Ronald Dworkin (1) and Nell MacCormick (2) have been characterized as "formalist standard bearers"...

Earnings determinants for self-employed women and men in the informal economy: the case of Bogota, Colombia.
March 22, 2008... Introduction Every nation, regardless of its level of development, has an informal economy; what varies is the degree of informality present in each economy. Informal economic activity represents a large proportion of the Gross Domestic...

Ahmed, Shamima, and David M. Potter. NGOs in International Politics.(Book review)
March 22, 2008... Ahmed, Shamima, and David M. Potter. NGOs in International Politics. Bloomfield, CT: Kumarian Press, Inc., 2006. 285 pages. Paper, $24.95. In the book's foreword, political scientists Shamima Ahmed and David M. Potter promise "a...

Carter, Prudence L. Keepin' It Real: School Success Beyond Black and White.(Book review)
March 22, 2008... Carter, Prudence L. Keepin' It Real: School Success Beyond Black and White. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005. 219 pages. Cloth, $29.95; paper, $15.95. In Keepin' It Real, sociologist Prudence L. Carter examines the...

Collier, Paul. The Bottom Billion: Why the Poorest Countries Are Failing and What Can Be Done About It.(Book review)
March 22, 2008... Collier, Paul. The Bottom Billion: Why the Poorest Countries Are Failing and What Can Be Done About It. New York: Oxford University Press, 2007. xiii + 205 pages. Cloth, $28. Complex issues of development, poverty, and development-resistant...

Fattah, Moataz A. Democratic Values in the Muslim World.(Book review)
March 22, 2008... Fattah, Moataz A. Democratic Values in the Muslim World. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2006. xi + 209 pages. Cloth, $49.95. Observers of northern Africa, the Balkans, and southern Asia with an affinity for "clashes of...

Genovese, Michael A. Memo to a New President: The Art and Science of Presidential Leadership.(Book review)
March 22, 2008... Genovese, Michael A. Memo to a New President: The Art and Science of Presidential Leadership. New York: Oxford University Press, 2008. 252 pages. Paper, $29.99. Political scientist and presidential scholar Michael A. Genovese has written a...

Gumport, Patricia J., ed. Sociology of Higher Education: Contributions and Their Contexts.(Book review)
March 22, 2008... Gumport, Patricia J., ed. Sociology of Higher Education: Contributions and Their Contexts. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007. xii + 382 pp. Cloth, $50; paper, $25. This work has something of the feeling of an in-house...

Kaufman, Edy; Walid Salem, and Juliette Verhoeven, eds. Bridging the Divide: Peacebuilding in the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict.(Book review)
March 22, 2008... Kaufman, Edy; Walid Salem, and Juliette Verhoeven, eds. Bridging the Divide: Peacebuilding in the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2006. xi + 323 pages. Cloth, $57.50. The Palestinian-Israeli struggle is...

Levinson, Sanford. Our Undemocratic Constitution: Where the Constitution Goes Wrong (and How We the People Can Correct It).(Book review)
March 22, 2008... Levinson, Sanford. Our Undemocratic Constitution: Where the Constitution Goes Wrong (and How We the People Can Correct It). New York: Oxford University Press, 2006. 471 pages. Cloth, $28. The fictional conceit that organizes Levinson's book...

Miskel, James F., and P.H. Liotta. A Fevered Crescent: Security and Insecurity in the Greater Near East.(Book review)
March 22, 2008... Miskel, James F., and P.H. Liotta. A Fevered Crescent: Security and Insecurity in the Greater Near East. Gainesville, FL: University Press of Florida, 2006. 149 pages. Cloth, $34.95. A Fevered Crescent explores the nexus between emergent...

Scholar, Richard, ed. Divided Cities: The Oxford Amnesty Lectures 2003.(Book review)
March 22, 2008... Scholar, Richard, ed. Divided Cities: The Oxford Amnesty Lectures 2003. Oxford, U.K.: Oxford University Press, 2006. 238 pages. Paper, $24.95. The world's cities have gone from accounting in 1900 for ten percent of human population to...

Schram, Sanford F., and Brian Caterino, eds. Making Political Science Matter: Debating Knowledge, Research, and Method.(Book review)
March 22, 2008... Schram, Sanford F., and Brian Caterino, eds. Making Political Science Matter: Debating Knowledge, Research, and Method. New York: New York University Press, 2006. viii + 304 pages. Paper, $24. The essays in this volume directly respond to...

Sniderman, Paul M., and Louk Hagendoorn. When Ways of Life Collide: Multiculturalism and Its Discontents in the Netherlands.(Book review)
March 22, 2008... Sniderman, Paul M., and Lonk Hagendoorn. When Ways of Life Collide: Multiculturalism and Its Discontents in the Netherlands. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2007. 155 pages. Cloth, $24.95. When Ways of Life Collide examines the...

Stern, Fritz R. Five Germanys I Have Known.(Book review)
March 22, 2008... Stern, Fritz R. Five Germanys I Have Known. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2006. 546 pages. Cloth, $30. At the age of eighty-one, Fritz Stern, former provost of Columbia University and now professor emeritus of European history there,...

Troy, Gil. Hillary Rodham Clinton: Polarizing First Lady.(Book review)
March 22, 2008... First lady, senator from New York State, presidential candidate, and, if one has seen the opening scene of The Simpsons: The Movie, vice president of the United States in a White House headed by Itchy the Mouse. Such is the past, present, and...