{'fraction_non_alphanumeric': 0.027853881278538814, 'fraction_numerical': 0.007762557077625571, 'mean_word_length': 5.224431818181818, 'pattern_counts': {'":': 0, '<': 0, '<?xml version=': 0, '>': 0, 'https://': 0, 'lorem ipsum': 0, 'www.': 0, 'xml': 0}, 'pii_count': 0, 'substrings_counts': 0, 'word_list_counts': {'cursed_substrings.json': 0, 'profanity_word_list.json': 0, 'sexual_word_list.json': 0, 'zh_pornsignals.json': 0}}
Policy-making in a New State: Papua New Guinea, 1972–77 John A. Ballard, ed. St. Lucia: University of Queensland Press, 1981, pp. xx, 331

and the rituals and rules for the treatment of the fallen), the relationship of factional manoeuvring to both policy formulation and implementation, and the history of factional politics in the post-Mao period. Perhaps most interesting is his attempt to link political culture to the structure and operation of Chinese institutions, particularly the communications media. He explains, for example, the exaggerated rhetoric and Aesopian language so frequently used in the media as code-word communication which tests factional loyalties. This "exaggerated rhetoric," he suggests, "provides a symbolic dimension to politics, in the context of which people can reveal that they are supporting particular spokesmen by repeating statements that cannot be confused with reality" (10). It is unlikely that scholars committed to pursuing organizational, ideological, or regional factors will be entirely persuaded by Pye's discussion. The study is undeniably handicapped by the fact that its data base—44 interviews conducted with Chinese emigres in Hong Kong—is far too narrow to support most of his major hypotheses. A more severe conceptual problem is that Pye's marriage of cultural imperatives and power politics, so far as power is an end as well as a means, makes it very difficult to predict future factional alignments or explain past ones without relying on idiosyncratic factors or coincidence. The fact that the book is more interpretive than definitive, more a search for general principles and patterns than their verification, makes it of unique pedagogical value. Despite its weaknesses it is perhaps the most imaginative and provocative one-volume study that attempts to put contemporary Chinese politics into the purview of social science. While it is admirably aware of the dangers of directly applying Western concepts (for example, "group interests," "consensus," the primacy of policy issues) to the Chinese scene, the overall success of the book is that it points to the kind of insight that the psychocultural perspective can generate.