Abstract
Journalists have little cause to be optimistic about the future of their profession, according to many of the analysts featured in this volume. Anderson and Ward's compilation of fifteen essays paints a grave picture of high-quality journalism under siege from the triple threat of economic deregulation and increasing centralisation of journalistic resources in the hands of a few players, the rise of soft news and ‘edutainment’ (propelled by market forces) and an increasing blurring of the lines of journalistic authority with the rise of the internet.
This volume, clearly normative in its approach, tackles three key questions: is hard news losing ground to soft news and if so, what can be done to reverse the trend? Is the manner and content of news presented in the advanced democracies sufficient to create informed voters and citizens? And is the news presented in a balanced manner within the various advanced democracies? These questions are thoroughly answered in the six chapters focusing on the UK and are answered to a lesser extent in the individual chapters focusing on Japan, Germany, Italy, France and the United States.
The author's normative approach and focus on presenting solutions to the ‘crisis’ in contemporary journalism is both the greatest strength and greatest weakness of the volume. As analyst Paolo Mancini notes, the notion that an ideal of quality, objective journalism even exists rests on many assumptions, both cultural and theoretical. For a reader who adopts a constructivist perspective towards these questions, the call by many analysts to return to a golden age of journalistic excellence may seem misguided. Unfortunately, Mancini is the only analyst to address these assumptions which other writers in the volume seemingly take as given.
Undoubtedly, in a rapidly evolving journalistic landscape, any volume on this subject will contain some gaps. In this volume, the discussion might have benefited from a consideration of how political parties and political leaders have used new media to appeal directly to voters and how candidates in particular have using blogging to appeal to citizens.
The book works best in introducing a general reader to debates about the role of journalism in a democracy and provides a wealth of research evidence to support claims about how the average citizen understands and utilises the media today.
Mary Manjikian
(Regent University, Virginia)
This book addresses the question of whether the retrenchment of the welfare state in many Western states can be attributed to the rise of multicultural policies. By multicultural policies (MCPs) the editors Keith Banting and Will Kymlicka mean the granting of group rights to immigrants, national minorities and indigenous people which go beyond the civil and political rights which all members of a state enjoy. The book comprises a lengthy introduction by the editors in which they set out their argument. In a sense, the whole book is geared towards refuting the claims of some authors of the ‘social democratic’ school of the welfare state that MCPs have undermined national solidarity with the needy and thus contributed to the crisis of the welfare state.
The volume is divided into three sections, the first containing two comparative studies and the second comprising eight case studies of the relationship between MCPs and the welfare state. The concluding section contains two essays which critically examine the whole undertaking. The cross-national study by Banting and Kymlicka in particular aims to prove that there is no causal relationship between MCPs and the shrinking of the welfare state in the advanced industrial states. By analysing public opinion data on MCPs and the welfare state, Markus Crepaz can find no support for the claim that MCPs erode the concept of the redistributive welfare state, but he also notes that the public does not support lasting cultural separateness of minorities and immigrants. The case studies lend more rather than less support to the argument of the editors. Indeed, the retrenchment of the welfare state has little to do with MCPs and more with the recent economic downturns and general retreat of the state from the provision of public goods.
One cannot avoid noting that the normative thrust of Banting and Kymlicka's intervention – that MCPs are good not only for minorities, but also for nations and their states – does not follow from the findings presented in this volume or in other studies. David Miller sums up the issue convincingly: as far as people are concerned, they favour ethnic and cultural diversity in most advanced countries, but they also want migrants and minorities to integrate in the state. Special group rights for minorities do not resonate positively with citizens in most countries, whether they pursue active MCPs or not. And as far as states are concerned, they tend to treat MCPs as a variable in their pursuit of legitimate political rule, and that variable does not have any normative thrust.
Jost Halfmann
(TU Dresden)
This book raises important questions on the nexus between politics and economics, and let this be said at the outset: the authors’ main conclusion is that markets are affected by the predictability of political events. The book also reminds us that interdisciplinary work can be very fruitful! Beginning from the premise that uncertainty has an effect on market behaviour, the authors argue that economists have yet to give an account of how this uncertainty is related to market behaviour in stable democracies.
Three early chapters use a cross-national design to ask how the uncertainty that arises from cabinet formation affects investor choices between stocks and bonds (ch. 3); whether there are spillover effects across nations caused by political uncertainty (ch.4); and how the probability that a cabinet will dissolve affects interest rates (ch. 5). Using state-of-the-art quantitative analyses, the authors show that political uncertainty does have pronounced effects on whether investors are attracted to bonds over stocks, that political events in a given country influence economic activity in another, and that unexpected cabinet failures have a direct effect on interest rates.
Chapters 6 to 8 are devoted to studies of single events and, like the previous chapters, deal with how political predictability affects economic variables. In chapter 6 the goal is to tap into how the political process and the uncertainties involved with these processes affect government debts; chapter 7 examines how stocks and the US dollar exchange rate were affected by the various pronouncements of a winner in the 2001 US presidential election; and chapter 8 is concerned with the connections between opinion polls and currency volatility.
The book's overall conclusion – and this is a major achievement – is to show that political predictability has a direct effect on various important economic variables. All in all this is a very useful book that deserves to be widely read and used as a source of inspiration for studies of the intersection between politics and economics.
Robert Klemmensen
(University of Southern Denmark)
For contemporary political economy, 1973 is considered a hinge year. The effective end of the Bretton Woods era as well as the beginning of a major global economic slowdown, 1973 is a bookend, commonly the conclusion or the beginning of most works of historic economic analysis. This is because most of these works deal either with the reconstruction period following the Second World War and ending in 1973, or the period of economic turbulence that emerged thereafter. This book is unlike the others. Equal parts history, political science and economics, it combines the two periods into one long analysis of contemporary global economics. And it does so very well.
Picking up from The Boom and the Bubble, in which he criticised popular notions of American economic resurgence, Robert Brenner's preoccupation in The Economics of Global Turbulence is that orthodox economics has steadily moved away from explaining global or national political economies outside of fixed models. His premise, based on a more interdisciplinary approach, is that by tracking profit one may best show patterns of both the global economy and those on the national level. Profit predicts rates of return, growth of capital and employment expansion. Output, productivity and wage growth thus spur demand, which leads back to profit. Brenner shows that the surge in global economics after the Second World War was sustained by profits, which collapsed in the early 1970s. Furthermore, despite signs of recovery at the end of the twentieth century, he argues that this was more illusion that reality, with no real revival of profit in the advanced industrialised economies. Rather, the roots of global capitalism – a competitive, atomistic and unplanned system – have extended the ‘long downturn’ that began in the 1970s. Capital-ism's very nature, which is to extract profit, led to a productivity decline stimulated by wage pressures from labour. There was no balancing, Brenner argues, leading to the current new challenges for labour, including widespread outsourcing and an uncorrected employment drop in the United States. The unintended consequence of the downturn, he points out, was the systemic ‘correction’ that came in the form of low-cost production and labour from abroad. Capital's drive for profit, he concludes, has led to the continuation of the downturn: a different form, but with the same results. Accordingly, he asserts that the prospects for the future are no less dire.
In many ways The Economics of Global Turbulence and The Boom and the Bubble might be read at the same time, given the similar themes of falling profits and the illusion of the so-called ‘new economy’ in the United States and elsewhere. However, the denseness of the books, which is one of the most satisfying aspects of Brenner's analysis, would likely dissuade most readers from doing so. But this is not the same book. Here Brenner departs from his earlier work in his attention to the international economy as a coherent whole, rather than something to be analysed in its constituent parts. From a comparative perspective, for instance, he looks not just at the United States, but also Japan and Germany, showing startlingly similar results. This book should be required reading for anyone concerned about the effects of globalisation. Finally, Brenner provides a clear example, though perhaps unintended, of how an interdisciplinary approach is essential for a balanced and real analysis of global economics.
George A. Maclean
(University of Manitoba)
This edited volume presents the work of a number of eminent scholars on the changing nature of the state and role of agencies within it. The editors state that the ‘aim’ of the volume is to combine existing scholarship concerning ‘the study of regulation and regulatory reforms’ with that on ‘autonomous central agencies’ (p. 3). Two additional claims are developed throughout the book. Firstly, following extensive autonomisation, it is claimed that the ‘centre’ has ‘reasserted’ itself. This reassertion is linked to tensions allegedly inherent to New Public Management (NPM), with its twin goals of ‘more autonomy and more central control’ (p. 359). Chapters examining reforms in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Europe and the Nordic countries are interspersed with a number of stimulating comparative chapters. The book would be of use to many students of comparative public policy, including advanced undergraduates investigating NPM reforms.
The brief of presenting a thorough analysis of different nations’ reforms within the context of cross-national trends is a challenging one. It is perhaps complicated by the failure to articulate a clear definition of ‘agency’ from the outset. This leads to a number of anomalies, such as the exclusion of sub-national agencies from the analysis in some chapters and their inclusion in others. Aucoin's chapter on Canada's ‘independent foundations’, which he explicitly states are not agencies, invites confusion. This is compounded by the failure to articulate precisely the relationship (if there is one) between agencification and (re-)regulation. Hence, one chapter focuses solely on regulatory reform, without explaining how this might relate to agencification (ch. 12). An additional, far less serious, problem is that on occasion, country-specific features are not sufficiently explained for an international audience (the posited ‘outputs/outcomes split’ in the chapters on New Zealand and Australia being a case in point).
Despite this, the authors have done an admirable job in offering a richly detailed analysis with a refreshingly wide scope. The Nordic cases will be particularly fascinating for those less well versed in the administrative reforms which have occurred there. For example, Christensen and Yesilkagit point out that autonomisation has been a feature of the Swedish state for centuries, being originally instituted to restrict the power of royalty. The fact that autonomisation was used then as a means of preventing ‘steering’, rather than facilitating it, emphasises the book's message about the ambiguous nature of reforms stimulated by NPM.
Anneliese Dodds
(King's College London)
This book is about the political attitudes and behaviours of citizens in advanced industrial societies, with a particular focus on the United States, Great Britain, Germany and France. Dalton's concern is to describe the changing nature of citizens’ political opinion and participation. He argues that a new style of citizen politics is developing as a result of the socio-economic transformation of Western societies over the past five decades. To describe this new pattern of political thought and action, the author draws on established studies and different public opinion surveys. Moreover, the book includes extensive references to interesting websites and suggested further reading. The manuscript's articulate language and coherent structure make it excellent for classroom use (which was also its original purpose). Yet the book is sufficiently comprehensive and thought provoking to be of interest also to active researchers in the field of citizen politics.
The book is divided into four parts, each focusing on one aspect of the new citizen politics. The first section (chs 2–4) tackles the issue of political participation. Dalton argues that the trends in political activity represent changes in the nature of participation, not just changes in the level of participation. He shows that old forms of political participation are in a downward spiral while participation in citizen-initiated and policy-oriented forms of political activity is gradually acquiring more importance. A second aspect of the new citizen politics regards the values and attitudes of the public (chs 5–6). Post-material values and libertarian attitudes are becoming more common and contemporary society is interested in a wider range of issues than just economic concerns. Another major area of change involves partisan politics (chs 7–11). Dalton underscores the increasing importance of the post-material cleavage, the decline of social group-based voting and the weakening of most social bonds. These patterns produce a de-alignment of contemporary party systems. In the concluding part (ch. 12), Dalton describes the development of a sceptical political public as a final feature of the new style of citizen politics. He draws a picture of citizens who are dissatisfied with political institutions but supportive of democratic principles.
According to Dalton, these different trends in citizen politics present a major challenge to democracy. He urges that new democratic choices be sought. In contrast to elitist theorists of democracy, Dalton believes that democratic governments need to expand and enrich citizen participation. This characterises the author's positive attitude regarding present-day citizens and the future of the democratic process: the new style of citizen politics is a sign of vitality and an opportunity to make further progress towards the democratic goals.
Hilde Coffé
(University of Utrecht)
In the foreword to the Gallagher and Mitchell collection, Arend Lijphart describes the book as ‘an outstanding contribution to the electoral systems literature’. It is difficult to disagree with this judgement. The core of the book is a series of chapters, all of which have the same focus and structure, on individual countries. Each begins with the political background, moves on to the origins of the electoral system and then looks at the political consequences of the electoral system – the consequences for the party system, the parties themselves, parliament and government formation. Finally, each chapter considers the politics of electoral reform in the country concerned. Each chapter is tightly written and packed with information and the countries covered go beyond the usual concentration on Western Europe and North America to include cases such as Russia, India, Israel and Japan.
In addition, in the highly interesting foreword, Lijphart, the modern doyen of electoral systems research, reveals what he regards as the ‘best’ electoral system – it is the one used in Denmark. In fact, deciding what system is ‘best’, as Michael Gallagher makes clear in his masterly concluding chapter, depends on value judgements about what one wants an electoral system to achieve – the accountability of governments versus the proportionality of outcomes being perhaps the most obvious case. Matthew Shugart contributes a very impressive essay reviewing electoral systems research from Hare and J. S. Mill onwards. He argues that in less than twenty years the subject has developed into ‘a mature field of inquiry’ (p. 52). Oddly, although the review is as comprehensive as any that I have seen, there is no mention at all of D. W. Rae's The Political Consequences of Electoral Laws – a book which Lijphart in his own work acknowledges as a classic study. There must be a story behind that omission.
Gallagher and Mitchell themselves provide an excellent, self-deprecatory introductory chapter in which they try to persuade us that electoral systems are important (easy) and not just a subject for anoraks (more difficult). In fact, there is plenty for anoraks in the book (especially in the appendices) but anyone wanting a readable account of the electoral system in (say) Chile, Hungary or Finland or a detailed account of the state of electoral systems research would do well to start here. If there is one criticism that can be made of the book it is that some of the data are getting rather out of date. The British general election of 2005 merits only an ‘epilogue’ in the UK chapter, for example. It is to be hoped that a new edition is in preparation.
One of the new areas of research identified by Shugart is the impact of electoral systems on relationships between those elected and their constituents. This is the subject of the book by Lundberg. After the feast provided by Gallagher and Mitchell this is more like bread and water – wholesome and necessary but not exactly appetising. The basic question addressed by Lundberg is: under the electoral system used for the Scottish Parliament and Welsh Assembly what are list-elected representatives for? They are widely regarded as having less legitimacy than those elected in constituency contests, but Lundberg argues, on the basis of surveys of elected members and of comparative material mainly from Germany, that we have to accept the consequences of the broadening of democracy implied by the adoption of the new electoral systems and that the constituency role of list members should be allowed to evolve. All of this is very competently done even if such a narrow topic eventually leads to repetition and perhaps over-detailed reporting of the survey results. The book is based on solid research of the sort that will eventually feed into the broader work typified by the Gallagher and Mitchell volume.
One lesson to be taken from both books is that we should stop referring to the Scottish and Welsh systems as an Additional Member System and describing those elected from party lists as ‘additional’ or ‘top-up’ members. The favoured description, apparently, is Mixed Member Proportional system (MMP).
David Denver
(University of Lancaster)
This is a stimulating collection of essays about the relationship between law and politics, which aims partly to explore that relationship and particularly the role of courts as institutional political actors, and partly to ‘honour’ Martin Shapiro, the eminent American scholar of public law and politics. Substantively its main concerns are with the United States (and its Supreme Court) and the EU (and the European Court of Justice); intellectually, it explores the complicated relationship between these two sub-fields and disciplines, and suggests new ways of approaching the study of that relationship. In intellectual style, it is far more political science than law, and the better for it. It will particularly interest those working on federal systems and the developing role of courts in adjudicating federalism issues.
Inevitably, the chapters vary in approach and interest, although they are generally of a high standard. This reader particularly enjoyed both contributions by Shep Melnick (one giving a general overview of Shapiro's work, the other examining the nature of judicial conservatism and its relation to political conservatism on the Rehnquist court), as well as those by Javier Couso (finding the underpinnings of judicial independence in Chile in broader political developments) and Bronwen Morgan (on the ‘non-judicial legalisation’ of competition policy in Australia, and potentially further afield). Of the chapters dealing with EU issues, the most interesting is probably Carol Harlow's on various forms of ‘governance’, while Howard Gillman's discussion of the centralising jurisprudence of the US federal courts in the aftermath of Reconstruction and its links to the Republican party's dominance is also stimulating.
Shapiro's work has been characterised by a willingness to examine the political role of courts in the context of their legal as well as their political functions, and to give due (but not excessive) weight to the autonomous character of law as an activity. He has also sought to tease out the politics of other areas of law than the usual one of constitutional law, and to look at the political role of legal institutions other than supreme courts. He more than merits a Festschrift, but this is both more stimulating and more coherent than many such books. Shapiro's own closing chapter relates the rest of the book to these concerns, and suggests – probably rightly – that his lead is being followed by a significant number of other scholars. That is all to the good, and bodes well for the health of such interdisciplinary studies.
Alan Trench
(University College London)
The above titles are very self-explanatory. Both these works, in their own ways, examine the extreme right or radical right in Western Europe and why it has done so well or not so well over recent decades. In effect, both of them focus on the same phenomenon. But the fact that, deliberately, the authors use different words and concepts up front to categorise their subject matter is a reflection of the lively and ongoing debate about conceptualisation and terminology within the sub-discipline of what might be called (for convenience here) far right studies. Carter, in particular, makes an interesting and bold attempt to add to this debate by coming up with a new typology of extreme right parties (see below), based on painstaking country-by-country research and a critical review of the existing literature. Givens also, notably in chapter 2, offers useful and informed commentary on the discussion surrounding the definition of the radical right.
Following the introductory, scene-setting chapter, Givens’ initial chapters focus on the parties, the voters and the issues; and subsequent chapters concentrate largely upon coalitions and strategic voting. Givens contends that the book deals with broadly similar political systems, involving multi-party settings where coalitions form and where voters may vote strategically. Like Carter, to some extent, her focus is not primarily upon the socio-economic context of radical right parties’ success, but rather upon a systematic comparison of the institutional structures, especially electoral and party systems, in which these parties operate. With France, Austria, Germany and Denmark as the main countries of study, her central argument is that radical right parties face difficulties in winning votes and/or seats in electoral systems that encourage strategic (tactical) voting and/or coordination by mainstream parties. She highlights the situation in which radical right parties have similar levels of potential voters but varying degrees of electoral success. Thus, her analysis seeks to relate this reality to the electoral systems in force: ‘The role of electoral systems has generally been neglected in studies of the radical right’ (p. 88).
Givens concludes that different electoral rules produce different strategies and incentives for parties and voters. For instance, German voters are seen to be less likely to vote for the radical right because of strategic or tactical voting. They often vote for their second preferences in order to keep their least favoured parties out of office. In this context, the radical right gets squeezed out in a system that has also incorporated other electoral barriers (such as 5 per cent thresholds and constitutional monitoring and banning) to the success of parties of the radical right. In contrast, in Austria the existence of grand coalition governments and proportional representation has provided a context in which the radical right has prospered and strategic voting has not hurt the party of the radical right – the Austrian Freedom party (FPO) – so much. In Denmark too, proportional representation combined with the incidence of minority governments has served to militate against strategic voting against the radical right. In France, while the radical right has won significant numbers of votes, because of broad, mainstream, right-wing strategic coalition building prior to voting day, and the nature of the French two-ballot majority voting system, these votes have not been translated into seats.
Givens might have improved the finished product by providing a more extended discussion of the literature in the introduction and expanding the four-page sub-section on ‘Comparative Works on the Radical Right’. Again, in the specific chapter on Denmark, the reader receives contradictory messages in the comparison with the Austrian FPO. Thus, first we learn that the (minority-government-propping) Danish People's party (DPP) has not distanced itself from the party system in the same way as the radical right parties in France, Germany and Austria. Then, in the next breath, we are told that the DPP's willingness to consider working with the mainstream right is not unlike positions taken by the Freedom party in Austria. More generally, this author tends perhaps to make more of the differing radical right electoral scores – even calling this situation a ‘puzzle’ (p. 150) – than is merited. Is it really surprising that different parties in different countries, albeit from the same political family, perform differently? Nonetheless, these aspects do not seriously detract from the scholarly and well-researched quality of the book.
Givens’ conclusion calls for further research, notably on more countries and on aspects of party finance. This is where Carter comes in. Her analysis covers a broader geopolitical sweep, the great majority of right-wing extremist parties in Western Europe, and a useful part of the analysis also concentrates on their access to state subsidies. Despite the fuller range of parties covered, some readers might perhaps disagree with her pointed omission of certain candidates – notably the List Pim Fortuyn in the Netherlands and the Swiss People's party – from the list of parties under consideration.
Carter's focus is upon supply-side factors: the ideology and message, the internal organisation and leadership of extreme right parties. It is also upon context: party systems and institutional environments. Like Givens, she feels that too much attention has been placed on demand-side reasons for extreme right-wing electoral success and thus upon factors such as socio-economic change, immigration and disillusionment with mainstream parties. Moreover, criticising what she sees as the deficiencies of existing classifications, Carter comes up impressively and challengingly with her own five-category typology for extreme right parties: neo-Nazi; neo-fascist; authoritarian xenophobic; neoliberal xenophobic; and neoliberal populist. Her analysis concludes that extreme right parties do better at the ballot box when they moderate their discourse and especially when mainstream right-wing parties also moderate their discourse simultaneously (including ideological and practical convergence with the centre-left). In short, ideology matters and the most successful extreme right parties are those which reject naked racism for ‘culturism’ or ‘new racism’, grounded in cultural difference rather than biological assertions. Moreover, parties which stress reform of the (liberal) democratic system, rather than rejection of it, and which have effective internal organisation and leadership, are also found to be better placed to benefit from voters. But, unlike Givens, and on the basis of much research and careful analysis, Carter plays down the role of the electoral system as a significant variable in enhancing votes for the extreme right.
Both authors make a conscious effort not to lose the big picture behind variations in extreme/radical right success. They are concerned with approaches and dimensions of the topic that may not have received as much attention as they could have in the literature. Carter admits that ‘an analysis that considered socio-economic, cultural and historical factors in conjunction with the political explanations examined in [her] book would make for a truly comprehensive account of the uneven fortunes of the parties of the extreme right across Western Europe’ (p. 213). It follows then that the two books here need to be read alongside other types of contribution to the debate to appreciate their full significance. Together, these two volumes make a valuable contribution to the growing literature on the topic and deserve to be read.
Paul Hainsworth
(University of Ulster at Jordanstown)
This is a tremendously engaging book – one that will teach even veteran experts on migration a very great deal about the specifics of particular processes in particular locations in Asia, and will offer much of substance and interest to those newer to the subject area or without extensive knowledge of migration in this particular theatre. Without exception, the chapters offer thoughtful discussions that are rooted in meticulous research. Indeed, most of them are built around the authors’ primary work, often in the form of original survey data, with the aim of exploring the detail and ‘lived experiences’ of migrant workers in various regional settings. This is the great strength of the book – it offers a wealth of sociological insight into the experiences of migrant workers in defined contexts, tracing these experiences in particular sectors (for instance, Nepalese construction workers, Filipina nightclub hostesses and Filipina domestic workers in Hong Kong) and in broader territorial ‘paths’ of migration (Burma to Mae Sot in Thailand, Laos to Thailand, Indonesia to Taiwan, and so on). Many of the chapters – inevitably, given the overall profile of migration in Asia – focus on women migrant workers, lending the book the strong additional appeal of a serious contribution to the growing body of research on the ‘feminisation’ of migration in both historical and contemporary periods. In short, readers will find this book to be a treasure trove of insight and detail and will find each of the chapters well researched, stimulating and novel.
There is a sense in which the volume's great strength – providing a collection of original case studies – is also rather its weakness, inasmuch as I would have welcomed a few more ‘bigger picture’ chapters which sought to contextualise migration in Asia more forcefully in wider debates about migration in the global political economy. While one recognises that it was not the aim of the volume, a more robust and sustained theoretical/conceptual grounding of the major issues raised by the case studies, or their firmer rooting in more general debates, would have been of particular value. Some chapters did offer some of this sort of contextualisation, and Ken Young's chapter at the start of the volume also very effectively opened up and explored some major research questions about the relationship between globalisation and migration in the region. The introduction also set out a handful of core issues, particularly relating to the question of control of migration and migrant workers, which the majority (but not all) of the chapters spoke to reasonably directly. But one is conscious still that the volume lacked an element of theoretical or conceptual cohesion, and there is a sense in which the chapters could have been more clearly organised in a way that addressed a set of core questions that would have provided this degree of cohesion. That said, this volume provides a wealth of empirical detail on a particular region that is very valuable grist to wider debates about migration in the global political economy, and it will be widely welcomed for this contribution.
Nicola Phillips
(University of Manchester)
This book looks at affirmative action in seven countries (Australia, Canada, Britain, USA, India, Northern Ireland and South Africa), concentrating on the ethnic and racial aspects of policy. In the foreword, Albie Sachs describes the core feature of affirmative action as ‘involv[ing] focussed and deliberate governmental intervention that takes account of the reality of race to deal with and overcome the problems associated with race’ (p. x), a theme which runs through the different case studies.
Robinson's chapter on the USA is an interesting history of affirmative action policy from the 1860s to the present day, and the account of the influence and impact of different presidents is compelling. In her chapter on Canada, meanwhile, Sheppard points out how affirmative action policies are ‘removing the bias’ towards white men, rather than granting minority groups advantage, which is an interesting but very important distinction.
Affirmative action in Britain is covered in detail by Kennedy-Dubourdieu – including historical legislation, the problems surrounding the naming of ‘affirmative action’ and the difficulty in measuring how well legislation is implemented. Hinds and O'Kelly present the intriguing case study of Northern Ireland, showing how affirmative action with regard to religious groups has also paved the way for policies concerning ethnic minority groups. Australia, meanwhile, argues Piquet, has come a long way from a discriminatory past to a multicultural present, although affirmative action is not an isolated topic but closely related to the rural–urban divide, which threatens its productivity.
Thaver's chapter about South Africa is a useful comparison case study as its affirmation action policies are aimed towards the black majority, rather than a minority population, as in the other cases. Deshpande's chapter on India begins with a very readable section on the importance of the caste system in Indian political and social life and describes how Indian affirmative action policy is quota based.
The book reads well as a whole, with Deshpande's chapter being particularly well written. The conclusion does not really sum up the book, but instead mentions France as an antithesis of the other case studies, which could have been better placed as a reference point at the beginning of the book. However, the combination of the different cases makes this a useful book to anyone wanting to learn the history of affirmative action policies in a variety of countries, or to those interested in inequality and discrimination.
Amy Claridge
(University of Sheffield)
Where conflict and attempts to resolve it have been in existence, so too has the art of spoiling, although it is only in recent years that a theoretical framework has been developed to examine this. This book builds upon previous work by taking a broader perspective than most of the literature on the spoiling of peace processes through its adoption of a broad definition of spoiling behaviours as ‘the activities of any actors who are opposed to peaceful settlement for whatever reason, from within or (usually) outside the peace process, and who use violence or other means to disrupt the process in pursuit of their aims. Parties that join a peace process but then withdraw and obstruct, or threaten to obstruct, the process may also be termed spoilers’ (p. 4). The book examines the art of spoiling within the context of civil armed conflict, whereby a peace process has already begun and one of the conflict parties is participating in or committed to the peace process.
This examination is presented in two parts. Part I takes a thematic approach to examining the theoretical aspects of spoiling, covering negotiation theory, the violence of insiders, the link between devious objectives and spoiling behaviour, terrorism as a tactic, the role of diasporas and, finally, new wars. Part II practically illustrates this theory through eight case studies, those of Northern Ireland (accidental spoiling), the Basque conflict (a three-spoilers perspective), Bosnia and Herzegovina (war veterans’ associations), Colombia (actors and strategies), Israel–Palestine (deception), Cyprus, Abkhazia and South Ossetia (a nearly collapsed peace process) and Kashmir (devious objectives).
While the concept of spoiling proffers an impression of those for and against the resolution of conflict and indeed, the building of peace, the theory and practice presented by the contributors to this volume provides the evidence, if it were needed, that peace processes are not that simple. In considering why and how spoilers and spoiling behaviour emerge and how they can be addressed while also demonstrating that ill-conceived or imposed peace processes can themselves be the root of spoiling, the book clearly demonstrates the complexity of modern-day conflict management processes.
The book is very well written and presented; in taking a broader approach to spoiling it provides an excellent overview of the state of the art of this particular aspect of conflict management. In marrying the theoretical and the practical it gives those at both an advanced academic level and policy-making level a range of issues for serious consideration.
Sandra Buchanan
(University of Ulster)
Runaway State-Building offers a comparative analysis of democratic performance in three newly democratised countries of Eastern Europe – Poland, Slovakia and the Czech Republic. Employing both quantitative and qualitative analysis and drawing upon the literature on party politics and theories of organisation, especially of Weberian bureaucracy, O'Dwyer introduces the idea of ‘runaway state building’, which refers to ‘rapid expansion in the size of the state administration without a commensurate increase in its professionalism and effectiveness’ (p. 28). What causes runaway state building? And why have certain states performed better in comparison to others although democratic transition occurred during the same time? The answer, according to the author, lies in the intertwining of party building and state building where patronage politics plays a significant role.
O'Dwyer partly disagrees with Martin Shefter that democratic transition into unconsolidated state bureaucracies results in rampant patronage politics. According to the former, ‘State administrations in new democracies may be predisposed to patronage politics, but they are not predestined to it’ (p. 19). He identifies three basic factors affecting the state-building process – ‘demobilized societies, delegitimized states and varying logics of party competition’; his emphasis, however, lies on ‘the quality of party competition’ (p. 170).
In demobilised societies elections provide an opportunity for the citizens to punish the non-performing governing parties. In a robust party competition system, the ‘fear of losing’ power is high, which ultimately constrains patronage politics and holds parties accountable. Runaway state building occurs when the opposition parties fail to constrain the government. Due to the lack of any credible challenge, the fragmented parties and ‘weak governance system’ in Poland and the ‘dominant party system’ in Slovakia are heavily involved in patrimonialism to legitimise their authority, and are more prone to ‘fictitious universalism’–‘preserving nominally free benefits for which under-the-table payments are necessary’ (p. 143). However, the presence of robust competition, a credible opposition and a ‘responsible party system’ has shielded Czech politics from runaway state building. Extending the argument to other new democracies in Eastern Europe, Latin America, Africa and Asia, he makes a ‘huge comparison’ (p. 171) which conforms and also concludes that ‘patronage-driven expansion’ not only weakens state effectiveness but also undermines ‘the legitimacy of the new democratic order itself’ (p. 192).
Two shortcomings of this book are the author's failure to recognise the role of civil society, which was active during the transition, and his overemphasis of the role of political parties, which suffer from a centralisation of authority and lack of a grass-roots social base. Despite this, the uniqueness of the book lies in its theoretical sophistication substantiated by numerous empirical comparisons across the globe, which makes it a valuable contribution to the literature on comparative politics and political sociology.
Sarbeswar Sahoo
(National University of Singapore)
Institutional analysis as one of the classical perspectives in political science has made a comeback in a number of neo-institutional approaches which all share an understanding of institutions beyond formal-legal arrangements. They stress the actual functioning and informal working of institutions within a societal setting by paying attention to the way institutions are interpreted. Institutions are commonly associated with durability but a central concern is to understand how they evolve and change, contingently or intentionally, as well as how they shape behaviour. The Oxford Handbook of Political Institutions is part of a large, ten-volume series on political science. After an introduction by March and Olsen, who triggered the new reasoning on institutionalism, four central perspectives are presented in Part II: these are the rational choice, historical, sociological/constructivist and network approaches. This part is completed by a reflection on old institutionalism. Part III covers 28 domains ranging from the state, civil society and the market through executives, bureaucracies and political parties to electoral systems and NGOs. Part IV concludes the volume with four reflections by distinguished scholars on the role of institutional analysis in political science. Here, Klaus von Beyme notes that the institutional approach actually ‘belongs to the methods of political science’ (p. 746).
The articles vary in structure and quality. Often, they sum up past research by introducing central studies and then present current challenges. In some contributions the reader would have liked to learn more about developments outside the Anglo-American setting, for example in the context of international NGOs and civil society, but generally the articles cover central research issues across regions. A fine example for combining theoretical and applied issues is the discussion of parliamentary representation in Iraq and Afghanistan. Due to the variety of approaches this handbook refrains from offering an encompassing definition of the concept of political institutions and, naturally, there is no unified argument in the book. Rather it forecasts that research on political institutions is with us to stay, since the discipline is far from a complete understanding of institutions. We need to understand cases first, and there is still a long way to go for adequate comparative research. Students are advised to consult this volume, which will be essential for libraries with a social science focus. It does not, however, substitute for an introduction into the field.
Peter Hilger
(University of Helsinki)
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