CLOZENTROPY AS A MEASURE OF INTERNATIONAL COMMUNICATION COMPREHENSION

An area of international communication research that has beenlargely overlooked is the extent to which a message originatingin one country is understood by receivers in another country.The study described in this article tested the construct validityof Darnell's clozentropy procedure as a measure of monolingualinternational communication comprehension. Results of the studystrongly support the procedure.     

Soviet policy toward Siberian native peoples: some critical remarks on the work of Frances Svensson

A l'encontre du point de vue de Svensson (1978) et d'autres écrivains, la politique soviétique pour les Sibériens natifs n'a pas suivi la politique tsariste. Tandis que cette dernière se prétendait quelquefois avantageuse en principe, elle était en effet affreusement exploitive. La politique soviétique a éliminé en grade partie cette exploitation en transformant les relations productives et la technologie. Dans cet article, on prétend que Svensson ne tient pas suffisamment compte de trois des sources principales de la politique soviétique des Sibériens natifs. Savoir: (I) le rôle joué par les exilés politiques bolshéviques pendant le régime des Tsars afin d'éduquer politiquement les Sibériens; (2) le fait que, d'après l'interprétation soviétique de la théorie marxiste, certains groupes de Sibériens natifs se trouvaient au niveau de développe-ment dit ‘clan patriarchal’ qui a facilité leur acheminement vers le socialisme; et (3) le rôle militaire décisif mis en marche par les natifs pour renverser les forces contre-révolutionnaires en Sibérie pendant la guerre civile qui a suivi la révolution bolshévique. Contrary to the views of Svensson (1978) and others, Soviet policy toward Siberian native peoples did not constitute a continuation of Tsarist policy. While Tsarist policy was sometimes benign in principle, it was viciously exploitative in practice. Soviet policy largely eliminated this exploitation through a transformation of productive relations and technology. It is argued here that Svensson focuses insufficient attention on three major sources of Soviet policy toward Siberian native peoples. These are: (1) the role that Bolshevik political exiles played in politicizing Siberian native people during Tsarist times; (2) the fact that, according to Soviet interpretations of Marxist theory, certain Siberian native groups were at a ‘patriarchal clan’ stage of development which facilitated their advance to socialism; and (3) the crucial military role that native peoples played in defeating Kolchak's counterrevolutionary forces in Siberia during the Civil War which followed the Bolshevik Revolution.     

DETERMINANTS OF PUBLIC OPINION ABOUT AIDS

Findings from analyses presented in this paper, using data froma Roper survey, suggest that the role of attitudes toward homosexualsshould be at the center of future explorations of the relationshipbetween the media coverage of AIDS and public opinion. Whilethe available data are limited, our analyses raise the possibilitythat anti-gay attitudes constrain the ability of the media toeffectively communicate information about risk factors and howthe disease is transmitted. Researchers need to explore thepossibility that anti-gay attitudes stand between media informationand public knowledge and public opinion.     

ELECTORAL POLITICS, INTEREST GROUPS, AND THE SIZE OF GOVERNMENT

This paper considers how government size responds to a change in the influence of interest groups. First, an election model is developed that has an equilibrium and in which interest groups have unequal influence. The authors then show that an increase in a group's influence per se does not cause government size to increase but does cause its size to increase when the government (1) cannot change tax shares or (2) provides a good benefiting one (untaxed) group, whose sole interest is in maximizing its consumption of the good. The paper concludes with a discussion of some of the normative implications.     

SUSTAINABILITY OF THE FRIEDMAN RULE IN AN INTERNATIONAL MONETARY POLICY GAME

This article develops a two-country monetary economy model in order to analyze the international monetary policy game between governments and the domestic monetary policy game between each government and its private sector. We prove that if governments can commit to their own private sectors, the cooperative equilibrium of the game between governments is for them to follow the Friedman rule. When governments lack such ability to commit, we find that the Friedman rule is more likely to be sustained in our open-economy model than in the closed-economy model of Ireland. ( JEL E31, E52, E61)