Britain

Table of Contents

In Essence

Predictable Candidates

Stephen Hess, in The Brookings Re- view (Summer 1987), 1775 Massachusetts Ave. N.W., Washington, D.C. 20036.
In 1888, Oxford law professor James Bryce, author of The American Commonwealth, accused American voters of accepting "mediocrity" in their presidential candidates. Powerful political organizations, he wrote, only supported candidates from large states since "the objective was win-ning, not governing." Today, "political parties are in decline," argues Hess, a...

Pulpit Power?

relying increasingly on "enhanced bureaucratic structures," and "legal accountability mechanisms."
The Challenger exploded, Romzek and Dubnick argue, not because
such "mechanisms" failed, but because, for a technology-oriented agency
like NASA, they are inappropriate altogether.
Pulpit Power? "An Experimental Study of the Influence of Reli-gious Elites on Public Opinion" Bruce Mc- ~eownand James M. ~aison,in Political Com- munication and Persuasion (Vol....

Novelties

the local environ- ment." For example, in some less-developed countries, workers refuse to increase their productivity for fear of increasing unemployment. Indian mill hands during the 1920s refused to operate more spindles because they did not want to deny jobs to unemployed countrymen. Indian workers, wrote one American observer, "cannot be persuaded" to work harder "any exhortation, ambition, or the opportunity to increase their earnings."
"Gross National Products"...

The Devil You Know

than the devil you don't," the old adage goes. But what can we truly know about the Devil?
Pelikan, a Yale professor of history, argues that "diabology," the study of the Devil, is a useful way to examine an age-old question: How can evil persist if men can freely choose God?
In the Old Testament, the Devil "functioned as one deity among many others." But the third century A.D., the Devil had become, to theolo- gians, the chief agent of evil in the world. Manichean heretics...

Regulatory Chaos

"Electricity and the Environment: In Search of
Regulatory Authority" Peter Huber, in Har-vaid ~aw~eview
(~ar.1987),an nett House, Cambridge, Mass. 02138.
By now, electric power regulation has become extremely fragmented. Three competing federal agencies control their respective portions of the electric power industry in "regal isolation" from bureaucratic competitors. State agencies and federal courts also act as regulators determining where and when new plants can be built.
"The...

Siesta for Mexico

Jeffrey
Bortz, in Current History (Mar. 1987), 3740
Creamery Rd., Furlong, Pa. 18925.
Mexico's collapsing economy requires major rebuilding of that nation's industries. But Bortz, coordinator of the Program on Mexico at the Univer- sity of California, Los Angeles, argues that Mexico's entrenched labor relations system, which "promotes industrial inefficiency, does not repre- sent workers democratically, and maintains a highly privileged labor bu- reaucracy," may block needed reforms.
In...

RESEARCH REPORTS

public agencies and private institutions

"Is There An Economic Rationale for Subsidizing Sports Stadiums?"
The Heartland Institute, 59 East Van Buren St., Ste. 810, Chicago, 111. 60605. 27 pp. $3.00.
Author: Robert A. Baade
Twenty major U.S. cities are now planning to build new sports arenas and stadiums, some of which will cost more than $200 million. Many city planners, contractors, and sports fans argue that the price is well worth it. The new arenas and stadiums, they say, will p...

Book Reviews

WASHINGTON

by James Reston
Macrnillan, 1987
272 pp. $17.95

Essays

CLEANING UP THE CHESAPEAKE

CLEANINGUPTHECHESAPEAKE
Before sunrise on Chesapeake Bay, some 4,300 watermen are already offshore in their boats- raising crab pots near Annapolis, hauling nets near Solomons, dredging up mollusks off Tilghman Island. Since the 19th century-the heyday of Bay fishing-Chesapeake watermen have supplied U.S. markets with up to half the annual harvest of oysters, clams, and blue crabs.
Lately the catch is getting skimpy. This year, oystermen will bring fewer than one million bushels to market, c...

LEARNING THE LESSONS

by Robert W.Crandall
"It's one of the greatest success stories in American history," said Russell E. Train, former administrator of the US.Environmental Pro-tection Agency (EPA).
Train's enthusiasm in 1976 over the cleanup of the Great Lakes may have been excessive, but it was not wholly unwarranted. In 1965, Lakes Erie, Michigan, and Huron were so polluted that hundreds of beaches were closed. Fish perished in waters choked with algae, and raw sewage washed up on the shores.
Today, E...

Robert W. Crandall
BACKGROUND BOOKS

Trade with its Money, its credit, its Steam, its Rail- roads, threatens to upset the balance of Man, and establish a new, universal Monarchy more tyrannical than Babylon or Rome."
Ralph Waldo Emerson's cri de coeur in his Journals (1840) reflected the fear among 19th-century naturalists that the rise of industry was threatening the American wilderness.
the late 19th century, a new breed of "conservationists," notably George Perkins Marsh, author of Man and Na-ture (1864), was beginning...

THE ENGLISH DISEASE, 1945-79

, "America, and I trust Soviet Russia. . . must be the friends and sponsors of the new Europe."
Churchill's condescension reflected an odd view: Britain could still be an independent power, retaining the role bestowed by an empire. He saw Britain as the intersection of three overlapping circles: the Anglo- American world, the Commonwealth, and Europe. That idea was barely plausible after World War II. Itmade no sense at all after the 1956 Suez Crisis, which showed that neither the Commonwealth...

Paul Johnson
THATCHER'S HALF-REVOLUTION

's prime minister in 1979. Her reply: "Everything."
Eight years later, both before and after her re-election this past June, she outlined what she had accomplished, or hoped to, with a series of catch phrases. "People's capitalism." A "lame-duck economy. . . [turned]...bulldog economy." "Every earner an owner." "An England free of socialism."
Pundits lumped it all together: The "Thatcher Revolution."
Revolution is not a term to be used...

Will Hutton
BACKGROUND BOOKS

"Few ideas are correct ones, and what
are correct no one can ascertain; but with words we govern men."
So said Benjamin Disraeli, as Gertrude Hirnrnelfarb notes in Victorian Minds (Knopf, 1968), a collection of her essays on British men of ideas. British histori- ans also valued word power. Their island nation had seen much change under many leaders, now including 75 mon- archs, beginning with Ethelbert of Kent (560-616), and 72 prime ministers, starting with Robert Walpole (1721-42)....

The Old House

The blooming of Latin American literature during the past 15 years (four Nobel Prizes) has introduced readers around the world to "magical real- ism," a literary blending of commonplace events with strong elements of fantasy. One of the genre's founding fathers is Chile's distinguished novelist Jose Donoso. In this memoir of Santiago during the 1930s, Donoso shows that "magical realism" may in fact more truly reflect Latin perceptions of reality than most Northerners imagine.

A sad...

Jose Donoso

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