Book Notes

Published date01 September 1975
Date01 September 1975
DOIhttp://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9299.1975.tb00225.x
Book
Notes
Local Government in Britain
Central Office of Information.
loth ed
HMSO,
1975.
Pp.
43.
65p.
This latest edition in
a
distinguished
series of reference pamphlets from
COI
provides
a
concise factual account of
the reorganized local government sys-
tems in England, Wales, Scotland and
Northern Ireland.
It
briefly outlines
the recent historical development of
local government, and describes the
principal types
of
local authority,
local election procedures, internal or-
ganization, local services and finance.
The Essex Reference Index
:
British
Journals
on
Politics and Sociology,
1950-73
K.
I
.Macdonald (ed.) Macmillan,
1975.
pp.
397. 159’50.
Researchers will welcome this compre-
hensive subject index to articles and
research notes published between 1950
and 1973 in eleven major British
politics and sociology journals, among
them
Public Administration.
The
method used is
a
modification of the
KWIC
(‘key-words-in-context’) system,
whereby the title of each article
is
listed separately under every non-
trivial word which appears in it.
Those familiar with
a
similar compu-
terized index of the
American Political
Science Review,
an earlier forerunner
in this subject area, will find distinct
improvements in the typographical
presentation in the
Essex Register
-
complete title lengths, clearer highlight-
ing of key words, and full bibliographic
references rather than cryptic code
numbers. The Editor and the Depart-
ment of Government of the University
of Essex are to be congratulated on
the production
of
a
most valuable
reference tool.
Mayors
in Action
:
Five Approaches
to Urban Governance
John P.Kotter and Paul R.Lawrence.
John Wiley, 1974. Pp. 287. 157435.
What is the role of the mayor in
American cities? How and why does
a
mayor establish
a
particular approach
to his job? What impact do mayors
have on the cities they govern? The
authors explore these questions in an
inter-disciplinary study of the
behaviour of twenty urban mayors
and their administrations
in
the 1960s.
They identify five distinctly different
approaches to the job
of
mayor and
create an empirically based model to
help account for the circumstances in
which these are used.
Contemporary Soviet Government
L.G.Churchward. 2nd ed.
Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1975.
Pp. 368. 156.95.
As in the first edition, Mr.Churchward
is
particularly concerned with
a
con-
temporary as opposed to an historical
view of Soviet politics, and the book
presents an analysis
of
Soviet gover-
ment since Stalin’s death. Considerable
emphasis is placed
on
the role of state
as distinct from party organizations.
This new edition preserves the original
structure, but has been revised to
take account of changes since 1966.
333

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