Abstract
In recent debates over US foreign economic policy, much has been made of the supposed ‘securitisation’ of trade policy and the concurrent shift away from multilateralism and towards bilateralism and regionalism. According to Jae Wan Chung, however, a more consistent and significant change in US trade strategy is currently being articulated via the doctrine of ‘fair trade’. As he states in the introduction to this book, the objective of US policy today is not to promote free trade but ‘free but fair trade’ (p. xvii, emphasis added). ‘Free but fair trade’ in this usage refers to trade policy which seeks to gain for the US ‘open, fair, and equitable access to foreign markets on the one hand and protection of the domestic firms or industries from foreign competition on the other hand’ (p. xvii). This twin-pronged strategy, argues Chung, has since the passage of the Omnibus Trade and Competitiveness Act of 1988 become the cornerstone of US trade policy and has been enshrined – via trade remedies and other legal instruments – in every significant piece of subsequent trade legislation.
Despite the somewhat misleading title of the book, the approach that Chung employs to support the above thesis is a legal and quantitative rather than a political economy one. That is to say, what we are offered is a series of formulaic chapters that, first, examine the constitutional and bureaucratic basis of the US trade policy-making process, second, provide a lengthy review of various trade acts and, third, offer an examination of ‘fair trade’ law in practice and its attendant social and economic costs. Regrettably, it is only in the third section of the book that Chung's thesis is really explored. At this point we are offered a critique of the ‘fair trade’ doctrine, which mainly focuses on the financial costs associated with prosecuting antidumping and countervailing duty measures. Rather oddly, Chung seems to conclude that such measures are in many circumstances justified – especially in industries characterised by high levels of intra-firm trade and oligopolistic competition – but that they should be conducted on the basis of internationally agreed rules, rather than imposed unilaterally by the US.
All in all, The Political Economy of International Trade is a useful contribution to the trade literature. It will be of particular value to those interested in the legal and constitutional basis as well as the bureaucratic machinery of US trade policy. A final warning, though – do not be misled by the title.
Tony Heron
(University of Sheffield)
This book aims to explore the question of why Europeans contest the United States. The main argument pursued by the contributors to the volume states that the reason for European discontent with North America lies in the unilateral turn of US foreign policy during George W. Bush's presidency. According to the authors the driving force behind current American foreign policy is a new radical conservative nationalism. This nationalism is described as a mix of white Anglo-Saxonism and fundamentalist Protestantism. The authors analyse different internal and external factors that have contributed to the emergence of this ethno-religious nationalism, which is not unlike Ulster Protestantism. In their view the conservative US, which stresses the value of independence and sovereignty, seems to lag behind the European Union, which is based on a post-Westphalian concept of international relations, which must lead to tensions. They hope, however, that due to various factors the conservative hegemony will not last long in the US, and this will pave the way for better relations with the EU.
However, there is some contradiction within the arguments presented in this book, since the authors state on the one hand that tensions between the European Union and the US are caused by structural factors, while on the other they attempt to argue that these tensions will not last long. The authors must also be criticised for having fixed on a very limited number of EU member states, mainly the UK, Germany, France and Italy; and for using the terms ‘Europe’, ‘European Union’ and ‘Western Europe’ synonymously. Furthermore, they overlook the differences and tensions within the European Union itself, and do not have much to say about the phenomenon of pro-Americanism. Even in the countries that, by and large, are sceptical towards US foreign policy, there are large segments of the population which support the war in Iraq.
In conclusion, despite its shortcomings, this book provides an interesting and balanced analysis of current transatlantic relations and sheds some light on the neglected subject of the role of nationalism in international relations. The volume is written in an accessible style and may be helpful not only for experienced scholars but also for students and all those wanting to have a better understanding of relations between the US and EU.
Krzysztof Jaskulowski
(Warsaw School of Social Psychology, Poland)
Most political scientists I know refuse to consider movies as relevant for the study of the social sciences, although some academics such as Norman Denzin and Stephen Prince have published important research about film and society in the early 1990s. In his fourth scholarly book, Daniel Franklin also argues that ‘we need to think of films as being influenced by and influencing public opinion’ (p. 16).
The corpus of popular movies used here will seem familiar, from The Grapes of Wrath and The Planet of the Apes to The Coneheads. Topics cover the political economy of film, criticism and censorship. I appreciated chapter 2 that reiterates the monopolistic status of the Hollywood movie industry, which has little to do with ‘art': ‘It is not the artistic talent that is in control but the financiers, distributors, and exhibitors’ (p. 50).
However, I also have some quibbles. First, I would disagree with the author's use of the verb ‘reflect’ when arguing that ‘movies also often reflect modern sensibilities through metaphor’ (p. 28). I would rather say that popular movies contain selected themes that are subjectively chosen by a few people and then massively distributed through the media to large audiences. Audiences watch what they are being offered; they do not necessarily select, believe, care or agree with what they see. Also, I understand what the author means when he refers to ‘a free market’, but the Hollywood film industry is not really ‘free’, since it is not usually accessible to foreign productions (p. 138). Exceptions are exceptional.
As with many US authors writing about film and politics, Professor Franklin should be more aware of the salient contribution of French authors in their field. When Franklin writes that ‘Unforgiven is a modern film about the West that tells us as much about America in the 1990s as in the 1890s’ (p. 25), that deduction owes much to the French historian Marc Ferro, who first wrote in Cinema and History (1973) that historical films (with stories set in the past) are related to their present and not only to a past era, taking the case of D. W. Griffith's Birth of a Nation, which according to Ferro told us more about the United States from 1915 than about the Civil War. Some chapters are more like essays, with personal impressions, opinions and anecdotes (‘I watched this film in Greenwich Village, so nobody reacted’ [p. 99]). I have to say I preferred the works of Janet Wasko, for example How Hollywood Works (2003).
Yves Laberge
(Institut québécois des hautes études internationales, Quebec City)
In their pursuit of the Republican presidential nomination, John McCain has delivered speeches to Christian gatherings while Mitt Romney has sought to persuade evangelicals that his devout Mormonism should be no barrier to their support. Among Democrat contenders, both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have emphasised their faith. For many politicians, one of the lessons of the election and re-election of George W. Bush is the importance of conservative Christians in the political process.
But what do conservative Christians believe? The authors of this study argue that commentators who see them as a reactionary monolith are mistaken. The majority of conservative Protestants believe that abortion should be legal if the foetus has a serious defect or if the woman has been raped. Three-quarters approve of sex education in schools, and only a third want to ban pornography.
Although more conservative than many Americans (particularly on homosexuality), conservative Protestants are not all gathered around a Christian Right agenda. Furthermore, Greeley and Hout argue, they are riven by class. Affluent conservative Protestants are far more likely to vote Republican than working-class ones, and appeals to economic justice, the authors contend, can win over Christian votes.
In light of the Democrats’ successful pursuit of some conservative Christian votes in the 2006 elections, this book is particularly well timed. As the shifting language in this review attests, there are problems in the terms used. The conservative Christians of the book's title are white Protestants, and there are differences from African- American conservative Protestants and from conservative Catholics. The term conservative has meanings in theology and politics, and a believer may be conservative in one dimension and not the other. Greeley and Hout go to great pains to make exactly these points, but the terms they deploy still cause problems in how we locate different types of Christian. But if the language presents difficulties, this book rises above them and equips those who want to understand the political role of American evangelicals not only with an array of crucial data but also the tools to make sense of it.
Martin Durham
(University of Wolverhampton)
This edited volume of five chapters explores the impact of increasing inequality and stratification on democratic participation and outcomes in the United States. Theda Skocpol and Lawrence R. Jacobs put the case crisply: namely that ‘it is no longer about whether inequality has risen and reached unparalleled levels in the United States. Discussion has shifted to pinpointing why economic inequality rose’ (p. 5). Motivated by a desire to make peer-reviewed research relevant to public life, the result is an impressive, empirically grounded and in-depth analysis of what is known and not known about inequality and its impact on democratic life in the United States. In this regard, the book's subtitle is particularly apt.
Contributors do not shy away from hard disciplinary questions. In chapter 3, for example, it is readily conceded that research on inequality has suffered from what is termed ‘hyperspecialisation’ within the political science discipline. The work of scholars who advocate synthesis rather than compartmentalisation can therefore be severely hampered.
The book is riddled with fascinating and frequently alarming statistics. For example, in 2000, 95 per cent of substantial political party donors possessed an income of over $100,000 while only 12 per cent of American households fell into this income category (p. 34). Readers will also learn that a political contribution of $6,400 will get a donor 25 minutes of access to a congressman's office. It takes a donation of $72,300 to get a meeting of one hour's duration (p. 116).
The book confirms several what might be described as ‘everyday’ assumptions about the United States. Solid evidence is adduced for the proposition that US politics is deeply ideological and partisan at both a mass and an elite level: more so, in fact, ‘than at any point in the past halfcentury’ (p. 95). Similarly, citizens from lower-income households tend increasingly to identify with the Democratic party, while those from higher-income households gravitate towards the Republican party.
This book provides an excellent scholarly overview of inequality in the contemporary United States. An incredible range of literature is reviewed; chapter 3 alone contains almost sixteen full pages of references. While the book is essential reading for political scientists, it should prove to be an indispensable aid for advocates of egalitarianism in the United States. Rigorous and comprehensive, the book represents United States political science at its very best.
Anthony O'Halloran
(University College Cork)
This useful and nicely written survey of American history, politics and culture represents the combined efforts of a political scientist and a literary scholar. Together they have produced what they term ‘an exploration of American civilization in the period between World War II and the present’ (p. 4). Harry Papasotiriou, a scholar of Greek origin educated at both Oxford and Stanford, provides the odd-numbered chapters on political developments during the time period under study. Paul Levine, an American teaching in Denmark, authors the even-numbered chapters on cultural and social developments.
Although this approach could have resulted in a disjointed text, the book is in fact cohesive and interesting to read. It provides a particularly informative assessment of the very recent period in US history and politics. Sometimes survey authors have a tendency to ‘short change’ more recent events due to the relative lack of secondary literature on them, but the authors avoid that pitfall. Moreover, their writing avoids another common problem, namely that of being over-determined by current events in transatlantic relations and seeing them as characteristic of the time period as a whole.
Unsurprisingly, given Levine's disciplinary background, the book is unusually strong (for a survey text) on the history and development of the American novel. Authors from all decades receive careful attention. And a chronological timeline of events at the start of each of the political history chapters helps to ease the reader's transition from the cultural to the political discussion.
The merits of the book outweigh its weaknesses, but it is worth mentioning a few changes that the authors could make in subsequent editions. The reading suggestions for further study on the part of students could be improved. As it is, older studies are overly represented, and the range of diversity among their authors is limited. The role of television in US cultural development deserves more attention. And the discussion of cultural matters does not pay enough attention to online developments, such as the significance of blogs in the US political process, or the popularity of downloading cultural experiences. Finally, the facile analysis on page 262, suggesting that the construction and destruction of the World Trade Center were tragedies of equal significance, deserves rethinking or at least rephrasing. However, these are relatively minor criticisms of a strong book. Levine and Papasotiriou have provided a useful means of introducing students to American politics and culture.
Mary Sarotte
(University of Southern California)
This book delivers exactly what the title and cover picture, a juicy-looking cheeseburger, promises – a bite-sized ‘brief introduction to US politics’. At less than 200 pages of text, it is significantly shorter than the many other textbooks dealing with American politics. Nevertheless, this succinct volume does provide the reader with interesting and well-written overviews of all the major issues in American politics and government.
The book is structured in four major parts. The first two chapters introduce the constitution and the federal system of government, the basic framework of American politics. The following three chapters turn to look at the major elements of the representative process – elections, political parties and interest groups, and the mass media. Chapters 6 to 8 discuss the primary federal government institutions – the presidency and the executive, Congress, as well as the Supreme Court and judicial politics. The final two chapters focus on domestic and foreign policy outputs. In addition, all ten chapters are liberally sprinkled with illustrative boxes, tables, pictures and cartoons. Each chapter concludes with a useful summary, a list of potential discussion points, suggestions for further reading and, as with most contemporary textbooks, a list of potentially useful websites.
However, as the authors concede, a condensed textbook of the American political system will inevitably be forced to be niggardly with, or exclude altogether, a number of relevant issues and dimensions. In the case of this volume, for instance, there is virtually no discussion of the broader historical development of the United States. Thus, the authors discuss the federal system, but do not explain how and why these different states emerged prior to the 1787 Constitution. There is also no discussion of the US's rapid and occasionally chaotic nineteenth-century enlargement to the west and the south, and its radical impact on the American political system. In a sense, the book leaves the reader with almost as many questions as answers. This makes this book unsuitable for semester-long courses on US politics. It does, however, serve as an adequate, if limited, brief introduction to the subject.
Daunis Auers
(University of Latvia)
This book brings together contrasting contributions within the American political right over the war in Iraq – a dialogue described by the editor as ‘perhaps the most interesting and consequential foreign-policy discussion now going on in the United States’ (p. 1). The contributors range from well-known figures such as Henry Kissinger and Francis Fukuyama, to foreign policy journalists such as Charles Krauthammer and George Will, two names probably recognisable only to those more familiar with the intellectual right in the United States.
As the diversity of the collection would lead one to expect, the form and qualities of the analyses vary widely from punchy, often bombastic editorials to wide-ranging theoretical essays. As a whole, however, the collection succeeds admirably in reflecting the depth and diversity of contemporary American conservative thinking about international politics. Although it probably contains a greater proportion of the war's advocates than its critics, and by limiting itself to the period 2004–5 inevitably risks allowing some very selective re-readings of the debates running up to the war, there is much here that will interest students of American domestic politics and foreign relations.
Written in the heat of the moment of the initial post-war ‘reconstruction’ phase of the Iraq conflict, some of these treatments inevitably risk the harsh judgements of later developments. Many of the more optimistic contributions now look positively self-delusional in light of the subsequent trajectories of Iraqi politics. In a more thoughtful essay, by contrast, Elliot Cohen argues that supporters of the invasion like him need to think hard about the human and political costs of the war and the difficulties that have followed. Yet, he argues, the most basic reason for the war remains justified in its hope that ‘by removing Saddam's regime and replacing it with something reasonable – not Sweden, but, say, Romania circa 1993 – the broader political dynamics of the Arab world could be altered, profoundly and perhaps decisively’ (p. 234). If recent events, including the continuing bloody conflict in Iraq itself and an increased regional role for Iran, are taken into account, the war may well have succeeded in achieving such a decisive alteration – though not, one suspects, in the direction its proponents envisioned. Yet for anyone interested in the role of ideas in political action, and in the intellectual concerns and political impact of American conservatism, this collection is a very valuable resource.
Michael C. Williams
(University of Wales, Aberystwyth)
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