Book Reviews

Alice H. Amsden, Escape from Empire: The Developing World’s Journeythrough Heaven and Hell. Cambridge, MA and London, UK: The MIT Press,2007. 224 pp. £16.95 hardback.

This book is an intellectual tour de force. It considers the contemporary Keynesianintellectual counter-revolution with regard to the political economy of underdevel-opment. The basic thesis of the work is that there were two economic epochs in thepost-war period. The first constituted the golden age of capitalism (1945–1973), toborrow a phrase coined by Cambridge (UK) Keynesians. The second period, post-1980, was not so benevolent an age. The global growth record of all countries andregions during the golden age was phenomenal — nobody disagrees. In the secondphase since 1980 there has been considerable divergence in global growth and income,mainly because of economic collapse in Africa and Latin America, making the last twodecades of the twentieth century lost decades for some. Again there is no disagreementwith that — the question is why.

Writers such as Amartya Sen talk about capabilities and rights without much refer-ence to the costs of their provision. Jeffrey Sachs speaks of the big-push fundamen-talism of increasing aid (mainly to Africa). Bill Easterly outlines the abject failureof development assistance. Dani Rodrik advocates a more eclectic and technocratic‘identify the constraints to growth’ approach. Paul Collier elucidates on the poverty-conflict traps of the bottom billion along with possible Iraq/Afghanistan-like protractedinterventions to prevent conflict re-igniting. In this book Amsden argues that the firstpost-war era succeeded because developing countries were left alone to pursue inde-pendent strategies of economic development that were also ‘demand’ driven, whileduring the second phase they were subjected to colonial style prescriptions dictated bythe structural adjustment syndrome; something that morphed into poverty reductionstrategy papers (PRSPs), which is really structural adjustment in drag.

Both periods, Amsden argues, were driven by American dominance of an empire,unprecedented in its sheer size and extent. The golden age has been described as theera of ‘Pax Americana’; the post-1980 globalization phase is likely to be rememberedas less benign. Throughout history empires last while they are seen to provide securityand prosperity in return for the tribute they exact. Underlying the thinking behind thesecond phase was the market fundamentalism of the ‘Washington Consensus’ quartet,something that has latterly changed its emphasis to institutional quality. The Wash-ington consensus ‘high priests’ are curiously unforthcoming in producing a popularversion of their own solutions to the world’s contemporary economic predicament.Could they be a tad embarrassed by their failure to deliver?

What is missing in Amsden’s analysis is the fact that the earlier American andWestern laissez faire (or in Richard’s Nixon’s words: ‘don’t give a damn’) attitudeto the home-grown development strategies of the third world was predicated on agenuine fear of countries adopting, in whole or in part, the alternative Soviet model.In fact, countries like India did rather well by playing off the two superpowers.

Development and Change 39(4): 697–718 (2008). C© Institute of Social Studies 2008. Publishedby Blackwell Publishing, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main St.,Malden, MA 02148, USA

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Not all of the development policies pursued were that enlightened. The golden agewas mainly characterized by strongmen in the developing world, who post-1990 havebeen replaced by elected ‘strong persons’. Many of these dictators pursued policies ofrepression and derived at least part of their legitimacy from American (or Western)support. Some of them managed to do some development as they went along; othersdid not and only lined their pockets, principally in Africa. Therein may have lain theseeds of Africa’s future collapse.

America never promoted true democracy in the Third World in either the benevo-lent or the more malevolent phase of its empire. Democracy means much more thanmulti-party electoral competition and is really about checks and balances on execu-tive power — something that America allowed, and continues to allow, Third Worldleaders to flout (such as with the issue of an independent judiciary in Pakistan), aslong as the chief executive serves America’s strategic vision. An important factor inLatin America’s problems, which Amsden does not mention, is not just its inequal-ity, but its lower savings rates, which makes it much more dependent on foreigncapital markets (Wall Street). Another factor she actually focuses on is globalizationand the winners and losers it produces — not because of free trade but due to a setof externally imposed hegemonic policies that cannot be tailored to small nations’economic interests. Furthermore, globalization in the first age of capitalism (as de-fined by Eric Hobsbawn) also had similar effects in the period between 1870 and1913.

Amsden’s analysis of colonialism is truly masterful and puts paid to some of itscontemporary apologists like Niall Ferguson. She points to colonialism’s historicalrole in fostering underdevelopment through over-taxation, as well as stifling growth,human capital accumulation and innovation. This is reminiscent of Dadabhai Naoroji’s(a founder of the Indian National Congress, guru to Jinnah father of Pakistan, BritishLiberal MP and member of the Socialist International) 1902 classic on Poverty andUn-British Rule in India. Amsden pens fascinating narratives about the formulationof American foreign (economic) policy, and economic strategies pursued in leadingdeveloping countries. She rightly points out that one reason why East Asia managedto engineer the reversal of fortune that turned it from the world’s poorest developingregion in the 1960s to currently its most affluent was its stolidly independent economicstrategy, recognizing inter-dependence without being entirely cowered by it. The ageof empire (with apologies to Hobsbawn) may be over, but is it a multi-polar world thatwe are inexorably moving towards?

This wonderful book is also very well written, not just because of its direct style,but also because of the marvellous metaphors employed — a must for all in thedevelopment business.

Reference

Dadabhai, N. (1988) Poverty and Un-British Rule in India. New Delhi: CommonwealthPublishers.

Syed Mansoob MurshedInstitute of Social Studies, PO Box 29776, 2502 LT, The Hague, The NetherlandsUniversity of Birmingham, Birmingham Business School, University House, Birm-ingham, B15 2TT.E-mail: murshed@iss.nl

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J. Timmons Roberts and A. Bellone Hite (eds), The Globalization and De-velopment Reader: Perspectives on Development and Global Change. Oxford:Blackwell Publishing, 2006. xiv + 450 pp. £19.99/$39.95 paperback.Anthony McGrew and Nana K. Poku (eds), Globalization, Development andHuman Security. Oxford: Polity, 2006. xii + 228 pp. £55.00 hardback, £16.99paperback.

The normative and repressive logic of security, threat and opportunism that hasemerged in this century to overwhelm international politics provides the backdropto the two texts reviewed here: The Globalization and Development Reader and Glob-alization, Development and Human Security. While ‘official’ state and developmentdiscourse has failed to focus usefully and, indeed, meaningfully on issues of globalinequality, deprivation, debt and human rights, academic scholarship has consistentlysought to challenge its readers to think at length on the polarization and securitizationof social practice, identity and everyday life. Where the poor Southern ‘other’ hascome to represent all that is threatening (the major ‘collateral’ risk of the late twentiethand early twenty-first centuries) to the wealthy but divided North, the two edited col-lections reviewed here present timely and welcome rejoinders to statist dogma; bothvolumes give the assurance that academic inquiry continues to perform a vital servicein challenging conventional logics of development, globalization and security.

In large part seeking to reconnect the study and practices of development with inter-national relations (IR), both volumes aim to advance our understanding of the myriadrelationship(s) between ‘development’ and ‘globalization’. With so little agreementon definition and process, globalization, of course, occupies a curiously fuzzy place inthe minds of many and is largely associated today with global flows of trade, capitaland technological interchange and free market rationality, governed by the (neo)liberaldictates of international organizations such as the World Trade Organization and theInternational Monetary Fund. A global regime of ‘free’ trade has its roots in ancientcivilizations, but it is the peculiarly twentieth century processes of interchange thatcapture the contemporary imagination, led in large part by Western popular culture ref-erences to technological wizardry and cyberculture. ‘Globalization’ has come largelyto signify a neoliberal thesis applicable to a cultural form of late capitalism advocat-ing the ‘opening up’ of national economies to increased monetary flows and globalactors. Although, as both volumes demonstrate, approached in various ways by thoseengaged in its study, within official discourse, particularly that of the policy-makingcommunity, globalization is often used in a rather loose and ideological sense as aprogressive and modernizing increase in patterns of global connectivity, reproducingthe intensification of worldwide connectivity. Herein, humanity is modernized, inte-grated and advanced through a ‘borderless world’, within which the world market isadvocated over structures of local production and emphasis placed on the prevalenceof Western-type consumerism. For its critics, on the other hand, globalization signifieshuman suffering, sacrifice, inequality and segregation, a real but rather vague andfigurative ‘force’ behind the liberal capitalist agenda and certain capitalist processes.In either case, whether the consequences of globalization are seen as catastrophic or asthe ultimate unification of the world, globalization remains an abstract liberal capitalistprojection superficially devoid of its political intent, and debate stagnates somewherein between the two (nominally ‘economic’) choices of development or devastation.

Suggesting in the preface to their collection that their aim is to ‘demystify thesocial impact of large-scale global economic change’ (p. ix), Timmons Roberts and

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Hite present their antidote to such unimaginative accounts of globalization. Theirselected essays range from the established development modernization/dependency‘orthodoxy’ of Rostow, Frank and Wallerstein to the more recent critical offer-ings of Stiglitz, Sachs, Duffield and Desai. The focus on globalization, the editorsclaim, reflects the ‘explosion’ of work on the subject that has characterized devel-opment studies in the past decade or so. As such, this volume certainly reflects aneclecticism of approach, subject matter and discussion that makes for provocativereading.

Although the editors, in their preface, attempt to answer the question of ‘whywe need another book about globalization’, to describe this as a volume specificallyabout globalization is somewhat misleading. Globalization only truly appears fromChapter 9 (in Moghadam’s rather brief discussion of ‘Gender and the Global Econ-omy’), with Parts I, II and most of III an overview of twentieth century approaches tothe global economy too early to fall under a general rubric of ‘globalization studies’.The only glue to really bind these essays, then, is that they each discuss, in some form,the subject of economic development. So different in content, approach and aim, how-ever, are they, that readers may be left confused, with some essays largely introductory(for example, Sklair), some quite complex (Weber, Wallerstein), while other essaystend towards the polemic (Norberg) or journalistic exhibitionism (Friedman, Stiglitz).Duffield’s excellent book on development, security and ‘new wars’, extracted here,stands out for its focus on the securitization of development, such that it makes nosense to separate ‘development’ concerns from those of world politics and securitystudies more generally.

Given that the intended audience is described as non-specialist, this collection rep-resents an ambitious effort with most, if not all, the essays requiring at least a basicknowledge of development’s key terms, concepts and considerations. Organizationallyit is not always terribly clear in which direction the editors intended the contributions toproceed and it is only in Part III, ‘What is Globalization?’, that the ‘question’ of glob-alization is really taken to task. Interestingly, however, the volume’s essay on ‘Genderand the Global Economy’ appears not in the parts of the collection that seek to prob-lematize globalization (Part III, IV and V) but at the end of Part II (‘Dependency andBeyond’), despite Dependency Theory’s comprehensive silence on gender considera-tions. This gender chapter is in many ways one of the collection’s most disappointing:less a wide-ranging account of the gendering of the global economy in a variety offorms than a rather simplistic reformulation of women-in-development/women-and-development (WID/WAD).

A useful contribution to and resource for development studies, international politicaleconomy and international relations, the essays in The Globalization and DevelopmentReader are, on the whole, wide-ranging and critically informative and drawn from apleasingly broad (if not always ‘path-breaking’) selection of development scholarship.The volume comprises nothing necessarily new to those already familiar with studyingand practising development, which more advanced readers may find disappointing. Asa collection of voices the text struggles to form a coherent whole: this is in part dueto the inherent character of any edited volume, which necessarily foregoes any singleauthorial voice for the sake of diversity. Without the editors wanting to impose any veryclear logic to the selection of sources, the volume reads a little like the social turmoilit sets out to document: a superior resource for teaching and student consultation forsure, but one that stretches itself a little too far to embody a clear and coherent politicalvision.

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Globalization, Development and Human Security, on the other hand, manages toachieve the sense of unity and purpose that eludes The Globalization and Develop-ment Reader. This is perhaps less surprising, not least given that each chapter herehas been written specifically to meet editors’ guidelines. As a whole, but also in termsof its individual chapter contributions, this collection very much succeeds in tellingits readership something important and unforgettable about the changing processesof international relations. The book proves particularly strong on the impossibility ofdisconnecting development concerns with wider patterns of economic restructuringand securitization. A clever introduction sets the scene for key perspectives on andconsiderations for analysing globalization (is it economic, development, imperialism,actor or system-defined?) and the text is quick to point out the links between our con-temporary understandings of globalization and the post-Cold War (and, in particular,post-9/11) re-securitization of the South as a vassal of (North-threatening) depriva-tion, poverty and political turmoil. Perhaps the book’s strongest half is, however, itssecond, which deftly integrates ‘human security’ perspectives (that is, security frompeople’s perspectives, not necessarily the security interests dictated by states) into keyglobal (social) issues, such as human rights, gender and governance and the spreadand (uneven) impact of HIV/AIDS.

In terms of use, Globalization, Development and Human Security constitutes a po-tentially effective and informative teaching aid, written to engage students at mostlevels (undergraduate and postgraduate) in development, IR and globalization studies.It is also perhaps an easier (shorter and more specific) collection to use than The Glob-alization and Development Reader, not least for the much more clearly defined criticalagenda that the book seeks to follow. Both texts, however, are valuable resources.

Penny GriffinSchool of Social Sciences and International Studies, University of New South Wales,Sydney, NSW 2052, Australia.E-mail: Penny.Griffin@humn.mq.edu.au

A. Haroon Akram-Lodhi, Saturnino M. Borras Jr and Cristobal Kay (eds),Land, Poverty and Livelihoods in an Era of Globalization: Perspectives fromDeveloping and Transition Countries. London and New York: RoutledgeCur-zon Taylor&Francis Group, 2007. xxi + 414 pp. £85.00 hardback.Peter Rosset, Raj Patel and Michael Courville (eds), Promised Land: Compet-ing Visions of Agrarian Reform. Oakland, CA: Food First Books/Routledge,2007. xv + 380 pp. $21.95 paperback.Sam Moyo and Paris Yeros (eds), Reclaiming the Land: The Resurgence of Ru-ral Movements in Africa, Asia and Latin America. London: Zed Books, 2005.426 pp. £19.99 paperback.

These three books differ in style and substance but one thing is clear: agrarian reformis back on the political (and academic) agenda in countries across the Global South.As someone who was told in the mid-1990s not to undertake graduate studies in landdistribution because the issue ‘was dead’, I find this development both professionallyand politically exciting. I only wish that I had had these three books ten years ago!

In dealing with the complicated and varied histories (past and present) of agrarianreform, the three books bear some similarities — they are all edited volumes with

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impressive regional reach across the Global South; they all treat national agrarianreforms within their broader social, political and economic context; they are all editedand contributed to by people who have long and distinguished histories working onagrarian reform and peasant mobilization; and they are all well written, compellingand informative.

They do, however, take different approaches: Land, Poverty and Livelihoods isfocused on land reform itself, while Reclaiming the Land takes the social movementsorganizing around land reform as its central study. Land, Poverty and Livelihoods is— for lack of a better word — more academic, while Promised Land is more activist(I recognize that academics and activists are often one and the same; I am referringmore to the style and substance of the writing than the purpose or provenance). Assuch, the three books may reach different audiences.

Land, Poverty and Livelihoods is very well-cited and grounded in concrete figures(the perfect source for a graduate student reading list). The introduction is incrediblythorough and didactic, carefully reviewing land reform in theory and practice aroundthe world and over time. And the concluding chapter is an excellent analysis of theimplications that the case studies presented in the book have for policy. All of thechapters, though particularly Kay and Urioste’s piece on Bolivia, and Deere andMedeiros’s on Brazil in Land, Poverty and Livelihoods, are detailed and informative.Akram-Lodhi’s chapter on Vietnam is refreshing as the one apparent success storyfor contemporary agrarian reforms. Altogether, this book is an important source forthe contemporary debate over whether and how agrarian reform might work to reducerural poverty and inequality.

Reclaiming the Land is perhaps the most exciting of the three, even though theintroduction is somewhat self-indulgent (with excessive space given for the authors tomake minor interventions into fairly obsolete academic debates). Of all the books oncontemporary social mobilization, this one avoids the common problem of samplingon the dependent variable: the editors and authors do not just examine successfulorganized rural movements, they also examine the often invisible everyday formsof peasant consciousness and resistance, and they speculate as to the difficulties oforganization in places — particularly Africa — where organized social movementshave been difficult to form and maintain. The articles in this collection are consistentlythoughtful and well written, and the regional overviews by Henry Bernstein (Africa),Filomeno V. Aguilar, Jr (Asia) and Henry Veltmeyer (Latin America) are excellent.They are informative and rewarding even for readers with long experience in particularcountries. I was occasionally disappointed that some of the chapters ended surprisinglyearly — for example, the piece on Brazil does not mention the current president (2003on) Luis Inacio Lula da Silva — and the chapter on Columbia makes the FARC-EP (theRevolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia–People’s Army) sound a little too fuzzyand warm. In all, however, this edited collection is outstanding.

Promised Land is more difficult to characterize. It is less coherent than the othertwo, bringing thematic articles together with regional ones and trying to present avariety of historical debates, critical perspectives and alternatives (these are the threesection headings for the book). The articles are inconsistent — there are some excellentones: Borras Jr’s chapter in Promised Land on market-led agrarian reforms is nicelyeven-handed and the piece on indigenous peoples and their relationship to agrarianreform by Rudolfo Stavenhagen is short but very well done. But there are also articlesthat have been published elsewhere and seem out of place, including the two Brazilpieces in the section on ‘alternatives’. Unfortunately, this important section — which

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the Land Research Action Network is well-placed to address given its progressiveand important work — does not raise any new ideas as to how to organize, produceor sustain peasant resistance and livelihoods. In addition, the introductory pieces arewell written but unnecessarily hyperbolic (the history is outrageous enough withoutembellishing).

Ultimately, if you read any one of these books individually, you will learn animmense amount and begin to understand some of the variety and complexity inland reform cases around the world. If you read all three of the books together (asI did), you will start to feel slightly frustrated. All three books are limited by theconstraints of edited volumes and the publishing industry’s drive to produce generaltextbook-type pieces: the protagonists of each chapter are invoked fairly broadly —there are ‘the state,’ ‘the landless,’ ‘financial capital,’ and ‘global agriculture’ — andthey are all bird’s-eye views that follow (or construct) fairly predictable and generalhistorical trajectories. Most of the chapters in each book (there are exceptions) prettymuch explain how colonization had a certain set of outcomes, followed by a jumpto post-war modernization theory, the green revolution, the debt crisis and then, thedouble-whammy — neo-liberalism. None of this is necessarily wrong, and the chaptersare usually interesting and informative, but they are also very tidy.

The casualties of this tendency towards tidiness and generality are process — theway in which things actually happen — and people. In all three books, the reader cansee the correlations between big political-economic structures and certain outcomesbut cannot actually understand the complicated, and often contradictory, relationshipsbetween people in particular places, which have led — in not always predictable andnever pre-determined ways — to those outcomes. After reading these three books, youare dying for a dose of critical ethnography, for some messiness, for a look inside thesebig categories of state, movements and capital. I know that all of the editors and mostof the contributors to these volumes are extremely familiar with what is happeningon the ground in the particular countries where they work, but many of the chapterscould have been written by someone who never left the comforts of the library. Whereare all of the interest groups within the state, or the unusually committed bureaucrats,or the factions of particular social movements, or the hapless families who decide tofight for land reform because they burst a tyre on their mini-van and can no longerdo informal bus rides in the urban slums, or the two or three national presidents whoare frustrated with the slow pace of reform but unable to compromise in other areasin order to expedite matters here? Where is the agency within the structure — or, inother words: who did what, why, when and with what effects? Land reform is violentand contested throughout the world not because the physical resource is scarce or hardto find, but because the land means different things to different people. It is territory,power, sovereignty, autonomy, culture, subsistence, national debt payments, identity,etc. and these meanings are actively constructed, defended and negotiated in ongoingpublic and private encounters (think endless meetings, offices and closed doors, frontporches, dusty roads, cyberspace, etc.).

The tendency to employ large general categories may be a function of more thanjust the demands of multi-authored edited volumes, it may also be a product of the wayin which these entities are represented on the ground. In my own work, I researchedagrarian reform in Brazil for many years before it occurred to me that I knew verylittle about how ‘the state’ actually worked. I had conducted ethnographies in varioussettlements affiliated with the Movement of Rural Landless Workers (MST) andrealized that ‘the movement’ as it was generally called was nowhere near as coherent,

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unified and certain as it was made out to be. I also realized that this actually mattered— the confusion, the silences, the undisciplined members had a significant impact onthe movement’s overall trajectory. But I had never extended the same sort of respectfulcritical analysis to the state. The state had always been invoked somewhat genericallyin my interactions with MST members and activists: the state was the enemy, and itsonly saving grace was that it was usually ineffectual.

In 2006, I began an institutional ethnography of the main Brazilian agency foragrarian reform (INCRA), the National Institute for Colonization and Agrarian Reform.It quickly became evident that not only did ‘the state’ consist of several differentgroups, cultures, personalities and individuals, but the way in which all of theseelements interacted at any given time and/or place was extremely important for the on-the-ground execution of agrarian reform. Ultimately, the trajectory of land distributionin any country is shaped by this sort of interplay between people. Political-economicstructures are important, but they are constantly negotiated — sometimes manipulated,sometimes not — on the ground.

In conclusion, these are three excellent books, and they would be productively readalongside longer monographs or critical ethnographies that cover some of the samecases presented.

Wendy WolfordUNC Chapel Hill, 100 Woods Walk Court, Carrboro, NC 27510, USA.E-mail: wwolford@email.unc.edu

Jose Antonio Ocampo and K.S. Jomo (eds), Towards Full and Decent Em-ployment. London and New York: Zed Books, 2008. 391 pp. £80.00/$144.00hardback, £17.99/$32.00 paperback.

Since the 1970s, there has been a movement toward unfettered (global) markets, led byincreasingly global capital and finance and guided by a coherent theory and ideology ofpolitical and economic liberalism (for example, the Washington Consensus). This firstmovement (in Polanyi’s words) generated enormous economic and social tensionsin terms of rising inequality, persistent poverty, growing insecurity and increasingunemployment. In response to these tensions, we are now witnessing the beginningsof a counter-movement, based on efforts by governments (mostly in Latin Americabut also in Asia) and other actors to impose rules on (global) market processes so as toreconcile economic and social forces. While there have been earlier double movements,our age is historically distinctive in offering no coherent alternative vision of howthe counter-movement is to resolve the conflict between (global) market and socialforces.

Ocampo and Jomo’s book is an attempt, and a successful one indeed, to begincreating the much needed alternative vision. Their book breaks new ground in seek-ing feasible alternative models of social and economic organization which locatepolicies of full and decent employment at the centre of broader macro developmentstrategies. It features sixteen spirited and well-written chapters, often by authors as-sociated with the ILO and based on abridged versions of more technical workingpapers published by the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs, which arethe background documents of the United Nations (2007) Report on the World SocialSituation.

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Some chapters address grand themes. For instance, in a short, thought-provoking,chapter on labour market flexibility, Rodgers provides an insightful historical overviewof labour market regulation to argue that such regulation, in the end, is about whatsociety one wants to create — in terms of growth, work and the quality of employmentrelationships. Boyer (on labour markets), Cichon, Hagemejer and Woodall (on socialspending) and Mkandawire (on social policy) argue that there is no ubiquitous trade-off between growth and equality: pro-worker labour market regulation, social securitysystems and social policy in general are not incompatible with growth, innovation andjob creation, but — depending upon complementary institutions and macro policies— will pay off in terms of growth, employment and limited poverty and inequality(see Storm and Naastepad, 2007 for a similar argument).

Cichon et al., who treat ‘soft’ social expenditure as ‘hard’ investment in people(because it augments labour’s productivity), also debunk the claim that universalizedsocial security is not affordable for developing countries: ILO actuarial estimatesshow that the provision of basic social security (including basic education and healthcare and income transfers) to all the world’s poor will cost a mere 2 per cent ofglobal GDP. Focusing on late industrializing countries, Mkandawire introduces theterm ‘transformative social policy’ to highlight its instrumental role in mobilizinginvestment finance, building ‘social capital’ as well as human capital and generatingdemand.

Jomo’s interesting introductory essay addresses the balance between labour marketflexibility and social protection (and decent work), emphasizing the role to be playedby tripartite social dialogue in facilitating adaptation to technological change andglobal competition. Patnaik analyses employment growth in open underdevelopedeconomies, which in his view is dependent on world trade growth, on the one hand,and the rate of technological progress, on the other hand — both determined by theadvanced capitalist countries. Unemployment, underemployment, stagnant real wagesand poverty in developing countries are therefore an integral part of the capitalistinternational division of labour, out of which escape is possible only by (selective)de-linking, imposing controls over trade and capital flows.

These chapters are supplemented by careful evaluations of what has happened toemployment (and to workers) under the current unregulated global capitalist system.Van der Hoeven and Lubker show that labour has suffered disproportionately fromthe greater economic volatility and financial crises since the early 1990s, with labour’sshare in national income typically declining. Like Patnaik, they argue for some degreeof capital account control and for an international financial system that is more con-ducive to growth and employment. Elson observes that strict anti-inflation policies andovervalued exchange rates have not only adversely affected employment growth, buthave caused women’s employment to fall disproportionately. In addition to appropriatemacro policies, there is a need to promote gender equality in employment.

Epstein shows that central banks currently create obstacles to fuller and betteremployment with their strict anti-inflation policies. ‘Obsessed’ with keeping inflationlow, central banks overshoot and maintain excessively high real interest rates, whichare detrimental to growth and (global) employment. Epstein presents feasible monetarypolicy alternatives to inflation targeting that do contribute to employment generationand poverty reduction.

Chapters by Chen and Tokman look at growing informal sector employmentand casualization, due to globalization and weakening state capacities. They as-sess new approaches to achieve inclusion of informal workers in the formal sector,

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including introducing dual regimes and progressive compliance, encouraged by inspec-tions (instead of sanctions). Pages examines programmes to protect workers againstunemployment in developing countries. Kwon’s interesting analysis of East Asiashows that welfare states were reformed over time (becoming more inclusive and uni-versalizing access to social services) to enable a transition from extensive to intensivegrowth, based on technological progress and productivity advances. This suggests thatthere is no trade-off between growth and equity.

Finally, Piore and Schrank argue that any alternative to fill the intellectual vacuumthat currently exists, must begin small and ‘from the ground up’, and they proposeto give renewed and stronger attention to labour inspection to advance decent, moreproductive and higher quality work, under the aegis of the ILO.

The editors and authors successfully provide focus to the recent counter-movement:the promotion of full and decent employment. They make clear that there need not be atrade-off between growth and equality: labour market regulation does not automaticallyresult in unemployment; (universal) social protection is affordable and helps contain(uninsurable) market insecurity, making investments worthwhile; and social dialoguecan help in adapting to technological progress and global competition in equitable andproductive manners. Policy makers, researchers, students and all those interested ina more humane world will all benefit from reading this collection of essays, whichconstitutes a significant contribution to the world debate.

Reference

Storm, S. and C.W.M. Naastepad (2007) ‘Why Labour Market Regulation May Pay Off: WorkerMotivation, Co-ordination and Productivity Growth’. Economic and Labour Market AnalysisDiscussion Paper 2007/2. Geneva: ILO.

Servaas StormDepartment of Economics, Faculty TBM, Delft University of Technology, Jaffalaan5, 2628 BX Delft, The Netherlands.E-mail: s.storm@tbm.tudelft.nl

Maurizio Carbone, The European Union and International Development: ThePolitics of Foreign Aid. London and New York: Routledge, 2007. xvi+192pp. £65.00 hardback.

In The European Union and International Development, Maurizio Carbone analyses‘the [unexpected] radical transformation in EU development policy which occurredbetween 2002 and 2007’ (p. 121). In particular, the adoption of the European Consensuson Development in December 2005 and the Code of Conduct on Complementarity andDivision of Labour in May 2007, Carbone argues, have implied a drastic change in theapproach to development policy at the level of the EU.

Carbone’s objective in this book is to fill a gap in the understanding of and theorizingabout the role of the EU in international development. Despite the EU’s importance interms of financial aid flows to developing countries (both at the level of the memberstates and that of the European Commission), ‘[a]t the academic level, EU develop-ment policy has received scant attention’ (p. 1). Carbone’s focus is on the EuropeanCommission and, in particular, on ‘the conditions under which the European Commis-sion, by acting both “instrumentally” and “persuasively”, influences outcomes in theEU decision-making process’ (p. 2).

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After discussing his analytical framework and describing the ‘politics of foreignaid in the European Union’, Carbone analyses three cases in EU development policy:the decision to increase the volume of aid across EU member states, the discussionabout the financing of ‘global public goods’, and the move toward untying aid atthe European level. In all three case studies, Carbone’s focus is on the activitiesundertaken by European Commissioners and European civil servants, working in oneof the Directorates-General in Brussels, in relationship to the member states. The bookdiscusses the conditions under which the former actors prove to be (un)able to framenegotiations at the EU level and between member states.

Carbone aims to bridge two theoretical divides in EU studies: one between inter-governmental and supranational understandings of EU politics, and a second betweenrationalism and constructivism. He builds bridges by arguing that Commission lead-ership is contingent upon three conditions: (1) there must be a clear ‘institutionalentrepreneur’ within the Commission who places an issue on the agenda; (2) the Com-mission must act as a unitary actor in order to have an impact on decision making bythe European Council; and (3) the institutional entrepreneur must be able to overcomeresistance from within the Commission and from member states. In order to furthertheir aims, institutional entrepreneurs can apply certain tactics relating to the initiation,formulation or adoption of policies.

Carbone’s first case study, on the Council’s decision to set targets for increasingthe allocation of aid to developing countries, leads to the conclusion that the EuropeanCommission was able to adopt a leadership role because it operated as a unitary actor.DG (Discussion Group) Development appears to have played a crucial role in thisrespect. It used the momentum after the terrorist attacks on the US of 11 September2001, which led to broad support for the Financing for Development conference inMonterrey in March 2002.

The second case study, related to international initiatives (by UNDP, OECD andothers) to provide finance for ‘global public goods’, shows that the absence of unitywithin the Commission hampers its ability to play a leading role. In particular, thedifferences of opinion between two Directorates-General (Development and Economicand Financial Affairs) implied that the Commission was unable to come up with aproposal on global public goods that would convince member state representatives inthe European Council.

The third case study, dealing with decision making on the untying of EC develop-ment assistance, points again to the centrality of the Commission. As in the other twocases, the Commission’s ability to arrive at a common position proved to be a crucialfactor in the adoption of a Council regulation. In particular, the new Director-GeneralKoos Richelle within DG Development was able to defuse internal opposition againstthe proposal to untie EC aid, and ultimately enabled the European Commission totable a broadly acceptable proposal for decision making by the Council.

With The European Union and International Development, Maurizio Carbone hasprovided a very interesting analysis of development assistance at the EU level. Thebook clearly fills a gap in the literature on international development. By focusing onthe role of the European Commission, and by formulating a set of conditions underwhich this central actor can provide leadership, Carbone has advanced theorizing onthe EU, as well as international organizations in general. Carbone’s study will proveto be of interest primarily to two audiences: those interested in decision making inthe EU, and those interested in the ‘politics of foreign aid’. By providing a set oftestable assumptions on leadership in a supranational political framework, the study

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is particularly useful to researchers who wish to understand the role of ‘politicalentrepreneurs’.

Wil HoutInstitute of Social Studies, PO Box 29776, 2502 LT The Hague, The Netherlands.E-mail: hout@iss.nl

A. Geske Dijkstra, The Impact of International Debt Relief . London and NewYork: Routledge Taylor & Francis, 2008. xx + 138 pp. £75.00 hardback.

‘Persistent involvement of the IFIs (International Financial Institutions) in the formof new loans and conditionality leads to a continuation of debt problems and to lessadequate policies’ (p. 122) concludes A. Geske Dijkstra in her short study of theimpact of debt relief. The problem, she argues, is one of ‘moral hazard’ — the IFIs arerepeatedly bailed out by bilateral donors and thus never have to face the consequencesof their own bad lending and misguided policies, so they continue to make the samemistakes.

Chapters 2 and 6 of the book give one of the best and clearest summaries of allthe different attempts over more than twenty years to resolve the debt problem ofpoor and middle income countries. Chapters 3–5 are her own study of the 1990s,when most debt relief took place, and show how little impact that debt relief had.Starting with the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) Initiative at the end ofthe 1990s some of the mistakes began to be corrected, and with the MultilateralDebt Relief Initiative (MDRI) of 2005 enough debt began to be cancelled to actuallybe useful for some countries — more than two decades after the problem was firstrecognized.

Dijkstra found the biggest problem of the 1990s was that simply too little debt waswritten off and this has been partly corrected by large cancellations in the past fiveyears. But she finds that all the other problems persist. Debt relief has been relativelyineffective she concludes — not because of the poor countries themselves, but becauseof the debt relief systems imposed by IFI and bilateral donors. Countries receivingdebt relief ‘enter a vicious circle with continuous new multilateral loans and continueddependence on the IFIs’ (p. 122).

Dijkstra asks why private creditors were relatively quick to cancel unpayable debtsin the late 1980s while official creditors were not. Her answer is that ‘commercial banksare subject to regulations that force them to revalue and (partially) to write off baddebts. Official creditors are not subject to this type of oversight’ (p. 17). Furthermore,private lenders need to look for more profitable loans, while official creditors do not.This leads to clear moral hazard. IFIs were never penalized for the bad lending andinstead were repeatedly bailed out by bilateral donors. Thus they could keep repeatingthe same mistakes, especially making loans they knew would never be repaid, andincreasing rather than decreasing the debt burden.

The issue of moral hazard is underlined by events that took place after the bookwas written. Dijkstra points out that bilateral donors in the 1980s bailed out the privatebanks rather than let them go bankrupt. Thus they did not carry the full cost of theirbad international lending of the 1970s. Since Dijkstra completed the book, we havediscovered that the private banks, knowing governments would step in to save themfrom themselves, lent recklessly on sub-prime mortgages since 2000, and — sureenough — they were again bailed out by governments.

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Dikstra’s research also points to misdirection of some aid funds, which for twodecades, rather than going to poor countries, have been repaying loans which shouldnever have been made in the first place.

Her main target is the IFIs, particularly the World Bank and IMF. ‘There have beentoo many new loans, especially from the IFIs’ (p. 96). She argues that ‘each new phasein the debt situation of poor countries seems to lead to more, not less, conditionalityby the IFIs’ (p. 122). Indeed, she sees increased conditionality as a way for theIFIs to ‘retain and even extend control’ (p. 120) over poor countries even after theyhave been granted debt cancellation. These conditions were not always beneficial andhave sometimes been harmful. She points out, for example, that financial sectors wereforced to liberalize prematurely and countries were forced to privatize banks beforeregulations were in place. The privatized banks then failed and had to be bailed outwith government money, usually in the form of bonds which increased governmentdebt. So IFI policy, as well as harming the economy, increased rather than reduceddebt.

These wrong conditions continue up to the present, Dijkstra warns — conditionswhich require high interest rates, prevent support for agriculture and demand thatmoney be spent on social sectors (to meet Millennium Development Goals) ratherthan on economic growth mean that countries are not growing fast enough to repay thenew debts they are taking on, leading to permanent aid dependence and unsustainabledebts.

It is a harsh judgement on the failure of debt relief but well backed up by herown research and citations of work of others. As long as the priority of the IFIs is tokeep lending and they suffer no consequences for their irresponsible lending, and aslong as they are supported by donors in imposing counter-productive conditions, theyexperience moral hazard. And the problem will continue.

United Nations agencies have proved to be the only (albeit small) counterweightto the IFIs. The UNDP International Poverty Centre and UNCTAD have increasinglyproposed alternatives to IFI neoliberal policies and UNCTAD over more than a decadehas been working on alternatives for debt relief. The Debt and Human Rights report(Ozden, 2007) is a good summary of the quite wide range of UN resolutions andstudies on debt and on structural adjustment.

Reference

Ozden, M. (2007) Debt and Human Rights. Geneva: Europe-Third World Centre CETIM.

Joseph HanlonSenior Lecturer in Development and Conflict Resolution, International DevelopmentCentre, The Open University, Milton Keynes MK7 6AA, UK.E-mail: j.hanlon@open.ac.uk

Francois Polet (ed.), The State of Resistance: Popular Struggles in the GlobalSouth. London and New York: Zed Books, 2007. xvi + 208 pp. £60.00/$79.95hardback, £16.99/$26.95 paperback.Francois Polet et al. (eds), Globalizing Resistance: The State of Struggle. Lon-don: Pluto Press, 2004. xi + 321 pp. £16.99 paperback.

Polet explicitly links the emergence of more active and demanding citizens’ move-ments globally to the crisis of the neoliberal order, itself the main force of globalization

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in its economic guise. These two books edited by Polet together form ‘a panoramaof the social movements that are fighting against social injustice and arbitrary pol-itics’ (2007, p. 1). Together the two volumes form a pretty good starting point foranyone wanting to comprehensively review the condition and progression of ‘citizenresistance’ in recent years.

The 2004 study is broader in conception but lacks a substantive introduction by theeditor, who does little more than ‘invite the reader to take a trip round the world tosample the resistance to the neoliberal model of globalization’ (2004, p. x). GlobalizingResistance has a very straightforward format, reviewing at least twenty-nine countriesin thirty-four chapters covering the main regions of Latin America, the Near East andMaghreb (seven chapters), Sub-Saharan Africa and Asia. There are useful synthesischapters for each continent, and all the largest developing countries are included:China, India, Brazil, Mexico, Indonesia, Egypt, Nigeria and the DRC.

More modestly the 2007 volume has twenty-three chapters and includes thematicsections on ‘strategic challenges’ across movements, as well as cases on the US andEurope. Most chapters in the 2007 volume are just a few pages long and barelyreferenced. Some, like the four-page chapter on China by Dai Jinhua, contain nosources. We are simply told that socialist ideas are being recovered by a new Chineseleft to construct alternatives to the sharp rural–urban, gender and class inequalitiesemerging in Chinese society. We need to look at the chapter by Lau Kin Chi inthe earlier volume, Globalizing Resistance, to find any further readings, and to learnwhat these struggles actually consist of and how religious ideas, farmers’ daily workpractices and gender concerns influence the politics of ‘underdogs’ in an increasinglyelite-driven Chinese social order.

There is little news of the protests, arrests and human rights abuses that havepolarized social activists and the Chinese state in recent years. Thien An Men is noteven mentioned. On the other hand, Indonesia and the Philippines are treated in achapter each in the 2007 volume, but allocated only one or two pages in the 2004study, in a more general chapter by Francis Loh on ‘NGOs and Social Movementsin Southeast Asia’. Generally, conflicts are more openly reported on in Indonesia, forexample, in relation to large dams — also a source of conflict in India and Thailand —than in China. Vinod Raina’s chapter on India in the 2007 volume tells some powerfulstories which update his chapter in the 2004 volume. The point is that if you intendto look at one of these volumes, then look at both, since they form part of a whole,whether for research or teaching.

The 2007 volume in many ways builds on the 2004 collection, complementing it.Without the earlier study, the later one actually makes relatively little sense exceptas an overview for almost complete beginners. A key advantage of the 2007 vol-ume is a fairly substantial introductory chapter by the editor. The 2004 collection hasthe added benefit of two substantial chapters by Boaventura de Sousa Santos andFrancine Mestrum on the World Social Forum, as well as a chapter by Samir Amin— ‘The New Agrarian Issue: Three Billion Peasants under Threat’. Also includedare reflections on the media by Victor Sampedro and on policing of protest by Do-natella della Porta and Herbert Reiter. Truly disastrous situations, however, do notmobilize the citizens. The case of DRC is tragically documented in the 2004 vol-ume by Francois L’Ecuyer and the 2007 study by Sylvestre Kambaza. Whilst thereis some difference of emphasis between the two chapters, both spell out that civilsociety actors cannot save society when there is war and the dismantling of virtuallyall economic and political structures apart from those involved in the war economy and

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militarization of all aspects of life. In a chapter in the same volume on social move-ments in East Africa, Opiya Makoude notes that resistance in the face of repressionmeans ‘ordinary events may be reconstructed, re-energized and imbued with new andpowerful symbolic meanings. Dense social networks can be built around the issuesand external actors’ support appropriated to expand the space for citizen engagement’(p. 101).

Whether or not this is wishful thinking, such is the underpinning and rationale ofboth these volumes, the sole purpose of which seems to be to show how important it isto use whatever room for manoeuvre is available. From the first to the second volume,however, what has disappeared are the globalized dimensions of such struggles. Intrying to gain wide geographic coverage in the 2007 study, the editor seems to havedecided to sacrifice the examination, in more depth, some years later, of interestingquestions of agrarian change, communications, strategies and security issues.

Global — and increasingly, globalized — realities of economic life and globalgovernance structures govern our lives. Deindustrialization too has globalized beyondEurope and now affects large parts of Latin America, Southern Africa and South Asia.Yet the global strategies and connections so vitally needed to confront these problemshave been somewhat obscured by the country-by-country focus of the second of thesevolumes, which falls into the trap of ‘handbookism’ — a survey of events ratherthan an approximation of an explanation of their common points and differences.The quest to respect the boundaries of regional and national geographical entities —states — is understandable. But comprehension of social movements and ‘resistance’today requires cutting across these boundaries just as much as it requires citizensto work within them. As Guillermo Almeyra says in his chapter on Mexico, ‘Mex-ico is becoming Latinamericanized’ — a rare exception to the nation-by-nation lensworn by most authors in the 2007 volume: ‘when someone says “Mexico exports. . .”,they mean that Nissan, Volkswagen, Ford and other such industries are exporting’(2007, p. 53). Struggles always have to be waged with this in mind, from workingto promote workers’ rights in the DRC and South African mining industries to op-posing huge dams in India, Indonesia or Thailand, and challenging dynastic rule inSaudi Arabia.

Helen HintjensInstitute of Social Studies, PO Box 29776, 2502 LT The Hague, The Netherlands.E-mail: hintjens@iss.nl

Johann Graf Lambsdorff, The Institutional Economics of Corruption and Re-form: Theory, Evidence and Policy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,2007. xiv + 286 pp. £45.00/$85.00 hardback.

Lambsdorff is one of the most well-known economists working on the problem ofcorruption. He is the author of a large number of articles on different aspects ofcorruption and also the creator of the Corruption Perception Index: the famous indexproduced by the international NGO Transparency International. In his new bookhe produces an updated summary of the literature on corruption and analyses it inthe framework of new institutional economics. In the new institutional approach heemphasizes the importance of transaction costs for corruption agreements and he buildson the deterrence effects of different scenarios to suggest anti-corruption strategies.

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The book is a good entry point in the issue of corruption: it contains an overview ofthe main findings of social science and at the same time it makes many points that gobeyond simplistic characterizations of corruption that are still popular in the literature.For example, the author points out that government intervention is a fact of life anda solution of corruption cannot simply be downsizing government activities. He alsopresents the extensive literature showing that — contrary to expectations — there ishardly any correlation between the size of the public sector and corruption.

The new institutional approach points at transaction costs of corrupt deals as thebasis of anti-corruption strategies. This focus is welcome since very few studies havescrutinized the peculiarities of the relationships that are needed to ‘trust’ corrupt dealsthat cannot be enforced by the legal system. Lambsdorff analyses ‘contracting underthe shadow of the law’ and the difficulties involved. He suggests that these difficultiescould be used for anti-corruption strategies. Many aspects of corrupt contracts areexplored, most importantly the role of commitment and trust to reduce transactioncosts and the use of reputed middlemen. Pre-existing and legitimate social relationscan be used as a base for corruption: it becomes part of larger deals that have alreadybuilt trust in the contracting parties.

On the negative side, the book makes brief mention of too many issues and inter-esting contributions: the novice reader — for whom such a wealth of different viewsmight be of interest — may find the information overwhelming; the expert readermight find this type of brief overview less interesting. More importantly, it is difficultto see how every chapter fits with the book’s purposes. An example of this is theappendix on the technical details of Transparency International’s Corruption Percep-tion Index. This information is interesting, but it does not quite fit in a book whosemain objective should be to provide a new institutional economics perspective oncorruption. Furthermore, the material is already available from a number of differentsources.

Another example is the critique of the rent-seeking perspective on corruption: thelink with the rest of the book is elusive and the concept of transaction costs is usedin quite different terms from elsewhere in the volume. Finally the anti-corruptionstrategies mentioned in the book seem quite far-fetched and of dubious application: itbasically prescribes asymmetric penalties to induce parties of corrupt deals to betrayeach other. Such proposals include the diminishing of penalties for bureaucrats caughtred-handed. This suggestion might be difficult to accept politically and can hardly bea central piece of an anti-corruption campaign.

Another approach, unexplored in the book, that might be more promising is to lookat successful cases of anti-corruption campaigns to see — through the new institutionaleconomics theory — which mechanisms made the campaign effective. These mecha-nisms could then be employed in similar efforts in other countries. Unfortunately, inthis study there is little attention to case studies and how they can help with insightson how to deal with corruption.

Overall Lambsdorff’s book is interesting and would appeal to a diverse audience.For those who are already familiar with social science approaches to corruption, themost inspiring and novel parts of the book are those where new institutional economicsis used as a framework for the study of corruption.

Lorenzo PellegriniInstitute of Social Studies, PO Box 29776, 2502 LT The Hague, The Netherlands.E-mail: Pellegrini@iss.nl

Development and Change 713

Beatrice Pouligny, Simon Chesterman and Albert Schnabel (eds), After MassCrime: Rebuilding States and Communities. Tokyo, Paris, New York: UnitedNations University Press, 2007. xvi + 314 pp. £22.99 paperback.

The idea of mass crime is as old as human history — particularly in connectionwith war — but a concerted effort to study it is relatively new. It has drawn globalattention during the twentieth century, especially the last decades. In the aftermathof the Second World War and up to the present day it remains a rather challengingarea, both politically and intellectually. This book offers much evidence of mass crimein our times. The case studies of Cambodia, Peru, Rwanda, Burundi, Bali, and theBalkans employ a multi-disciplinary approach that constitutes the main frameworkfor analysis. This list of cases does not exhaust the examples of recent mass crime.Obviously and unfortunately there are more examples. But the cases included heregive us a good snapshot of various dimensions of this phenomenon.

The major lesson for understanding mass crime is to learn why people use lethalviolence in the first place. The origins of violence need to be discovered and re-imagined for each particular situation. It is futile to hold on to a universal model. Itis vital to understand local forms of violence and culture, the logic of local socialties and their transformations and how local actors perceive these forms of violenceand try to overcome them. More specifically, the initial premise, which the bookexpands upon, is how our understanding of individuals and communities is key tothe understanding of violence that takes various forms and is at times reproduced inendemic fashion. In addition, there are methodological lessons, such as the emphasis onethnographic research at the micro level, that can be immensely helpful for deepeningour understanding.

The volume is organized in four parts. The first part examines ethical and method-ological issues that researchers and practitioners face while dealing with mass crimeand post-mass crime situations. The first chapter, written by the editors, reflects theirthree different disciplines (political science, law and conflict management) and ex-plores the limits of their disciplines in explaining the puzzle of mass crime. Thesecond chapter by Robert Beneduce is particularly enlightening. Coming from a dualbackground of psychiatry and anthropology, he outlines challenges faced in the post-mass crime situation and suggests why local forms of violence and their reproductiondeserve to be critically explained in each case. These two chapters lay out some — butdo not limit themselves to — conceptual tools on which the research of subsequentchapters proceeds.

The second part of the book distils the findings of case studies from the Balkans,Peru, Cambodia and Rwanda. Each of these chapters traces the factors that contributeto violence, how they are seen by individuals and communities and how the interactionof the two determines the peace trajectory in particular cases. The major argumentadvanced is that the perceptions of individuals and communities matter and social andpolitical analysis needs to be combined with the genesis and reproduction of violencefor a deeper understanding. Using the clinical ethnography method, the author ofthe chapter on Cambodia examines the impact of mass crime on social, culturaland spiritual connectedness in post-conflict Cambodia, and suggests some culturallysensitive ways to assist peace building.

The author of the chapter on Peru argues that it is vital to understand pre-existingreconciliatory practices to predict what post-war reconciliatory measures might be.

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He draws a distinction between horizontal and vertical reconciliation. In the Rwandancase, the author argues that the genocidal dynamic was more a result of a wartimepower struggle than ethnic hatred between Hutus and Tutsis. In the Balkan case, it isvital to understand the re-socialization process of former combatants.

Part three of this volume deals with the issue of the history and politics of recon-ciliation centring on the use and abuse of memories of mass violence. This analysisfocuses on various forms of authorized public narratives, non-narratives, and impos-sible and confiscated narratives. Each contributor has sought to show connection anddisconnection with local history and all these forms of narratives.

The final part of the book deals with the role of the international actors and elaborateson the challenges that these actors encounter. Louis Freiberg, author of this chaptercontends that the possibility of building peace depends on the role of social andpolitical life in a given society, and how disparate actors may be encouraged toparticipate without recourse to violent confrontation.

All in all, this book represents an innovative branch of research in the understandingof mass crime, state building and community revival, which helps advance the cause ofinter-disciplinary research, without which comprehensive understanding of politicalsociety is entirely impossible.

Mujibur RehmanJamia Millia University, New Delhi. Residential address: W-32, Greater Kailash, Partone, New Delhi-48, India.E-mail: smujib2000@yahoo.com

Grazia Borrini-Feyerabend, M. Pimbert, M. Taghi Farvar, A. Kothari andY. Renard, Sharing Power: A Global Guide to Collaborative Management ofNatural Resources. London: Earthscan, 2007. xxxvii + 473 pp. £49.95/$97.50paperback.

Although this book is not an academic publication per se it deserves to be noticed. It isan ambitious collaborative work which is the result of many years of practical, advisoryand active research experience in collaborative natural resource management (CNRM).The authors set out to do just what they claim in the title, which is to offer a global guideto CNRM. So the book does not really break new ground or offer new research findings,but it does offer comprehensive ‘how to do CNRM’ insights based on many examplesfrom around the world (North and South). It addresses CNRM issues in quite variedcultural, social and ecological contexts. Different models of CNRM are presented fordifferent resources (fisheries, forests, water) and for different management objectives(biodiversity conservation, rural development, sustainable use).

The book is divided into four parts. Part 1 presents a contextual framework whichhelps to define the contours of the concept of CNRM but lacks some theoreticalunderpinnings: a book on sharing power cannot avoid a serious discussion on power.Parts 2 and 3 take the reader through the practical side of CNRM, laying down thestep by step process, highlighting pitfalls, offering a range of tools and approaches andpresenting many fascinating case study appetizers.

Part 4 looks at the more problematic aspect of ‘enabling the social context’, whichof course — with legal frameworks and policies — is one of the keys to successfulCNMRs. I guess the book addresses different audiences, which is ambitious and willalways leave some readers not completely satisfied.

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As a practitioner I find the book useful, as it does indeed cover CNRM issues ina comprehensive way. I can see how it will be useful as a resource. Its geographicalcoverage with the inclusion of less common South-based cases and many relevantNorth-based ones makes it a rich compilation useful for training, reflecting and plan-ning. As an academic I find that the authors’ decision stated in the first footnote onpage 4, ‘not to express judgement on the relative merits of one or the other type ofinteraction’, limits the scope for a critical reflective process. Whilst respecting thevalue of local reality and perception goes in hand with CBNRM, not taking a clearideological or theoretical stand at the onset leads to shortcomings. Although the au-thors are by no means naive about the difficulties of the real world, they have chosento focus on the positive examples and the successful ways of doing things, almost as ifthe broader economic and globalized context did not matter. There are many exampleswhich show that enabling policies — though a necessary condition — are by no meansa sufficient condition to foster social and political change.

The sceptical reader will ask how many failed examples there are for each successfulstory presented in the book. And how replicable or representative are examples of wellfunded and INGO supported projects in the real world of poverty? By focusing onthe technical side, CNRM has been depoliticized — which I am sure is not what theauthors intended — but in my view it is one of the outcomes. Failing to take a standon power and power relations can lead to the distorted image that all is well at thecommunity level if things are just left alone. But indeed, what about the market forces,the rising price of crops due to increasing numbers of consumers in the South or theincreased use of bio fuels? It is true that in such a venture things will be left out and notall expectations can ever be met, but what a pity that the gender discussion has been(yet again!) avoided — it is alluded to four times and given some practical attentiononly in two pages (pp. 419–20). Sustainable management — collaborative or not —is first and foremost a social issue rather than a technical one. Yet I still think thatacademics could benefit from reading about the nuts and bolts of CBNRM and perhapstake some clues for new research directions, especially in the area of social learning.As for policy makers, who could no doubt learn a lot, I doubt that they will even lookat the book: they will be frightened by its 472 pages.

Marlene BuchyMoorfield House, The Hill, TA10 9PU, Langport, UK.E-mail: buchy@iss.nl

Geoff Tansey and Tasmin Rajotte (eds), The Future Control of Food: A Guideto International Negotiations and Rules on Intellectual Property, Biodiversityand Food Security. London and Sterling, VA: Earthscan, 2008. xii + 266pp. £70.00 hardback, £19.99 paperback.

As promised in the preface to The Future Control of Food, Tansey and Rajotte haveprovided an excellent guide to the workings of international agreements concerningintellectual property and food politics. While recent years have seen a boom in lit-erature dealing with food security and biodiversity on the one hand and intellectualproperty rights (especially regarding access to new medicines) on the other hand,few have sought to bring the two together with a central focus on global food pro-duction and consumption. It is this gap in the literature that the editors seek to fill

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through a compilation of detailed articles on international rules and negotiations writ-ten by contributors with backgrounds in law, environmental studies and public policy,and with extensive experience as consultants and employees for a variety of interna-tional organizations. The aim is to provide an accessible guide to extremely complexagreements for use by negotiators as well as a broader audience in civil society andgovernment. The outcome is not only an effective and concise guide, but an alarmingtale for anyone concerned about the future of food and, by natural extension, all ofhumanity.

The central focus of the book is the emergence — and rapid development since the1990s — of new international frameworks for Intellectual Property (IP) rights and theirimpact on a flawed food system which, states Tansey, ‘globally leaves more than 850million people undernourished and over 1 billion overweight’ (p. 3). While defendersof strong IP rules argue that they are required to provide incentives for innovation, theauthors of this book generally concur that IP is a ‘legal fiction’ that gives monopolyprivileges to powerful private holders, often to the detriment of broader public foodneeds. Rather than facilitating the transfer of technology from rich to poor countries, IPrules tend to ensure the national advantages of powerful states. Rather than encouragingknowledge sharing and the protection of biodiversity, IP rules threaten to restrict andprivatize knowledge and promote the narrowing of seed and genetic diversity down tothose resources that have been patented and distributed by giant transnational firms.Of greatest concern for hundreds of millions of small agricultural producers is thepotential hazard posed by IP rules to farmers’ rights to replant, save and share seeds,which have been central to the preservation of biodiversity and food security forthousands of years.

These premises are thoroughly described and analysed throughout the book, thecore of which is devoted to articles that provide detailed assessments of negotiationssurrounding major international agreements: UPOV, TRIPS, WIPO, CBD, and ITP-GRFA. While perhaps a bit daunting for the non-specialist, it is difficult to imaginemore informative and clearly written accounts of such extremely complex agreementswithout running the risk of oversimplification. These chapters are followed by morethematic articles which analyse how international rules are made, and in particular howthese rules are developed through processes that are unfair and unbalanced in favourof rich nations and powerful private actors. The authors propose possible ways forSouthern negotiators to try to address these imbalances, such as favouring multilateralover unilateral negotiations, or through tireless networking and coalition building.They also point to an overall ‘democratic deficit’ among global institutions, whichneglect not only the needs and demands of weaker states but also of civil society actorswithin states.

The book provides a great deal of insight into the nature of international negotiations.It could perhaps have benefited from a more thorough investigation of how powerworks through international agreements — not just with dominant actors distortingnegotiations but with hegemonic states and corporations setting the ‘parameters inwhich we speak’ from the very beginning (Goldman, 2005: xviii). This issue is brieflyintroduced by Chris May (p. 80). This leaves open questions about the extent to whichit is even possible to democratize existing global agreements without first addressingthe democratic deficits within the very states and corporations that have crafted them inthe first place. These questions are not systematically dealt with in the book, althoughmany of the authors readily acknowledge how agreements have been ‘foisted onthe world by big business and powerful governments’ (p. 164). They express great

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uncertainty about the extent to which such agreements can realistically be alteredthrough negotiations dominated by these states and corporations.

The central point of the book, however — and its great strength — is to provide acareful background of the key elements of the international agreements that are shapingthe future of our food system to serve as a tool for a more informed discussion, debateand challenge of their existing parameters. It offers an excellent guide, one that isurgently needed, and should be near at hand for anyone concerned about the future offood or global governance more generally.

Reference

Goldman, M. (2005) Imperial Nature: The World Bank and Struggles for Social Justice in theAge of Globalization. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.

Gavin FridellAssistant Professor, Department of Politics, Trent University, 1600 West Bank Drive,Peterborough, ON, Canada K9J 7B8.E-mail: gavinfridell@trentu.ca

Jorg Gertel and Ingo Breuer (eds), Pastoral Morocco: Globalizing Scapes ofMobility and Insecurity. Wiesbaden: Dr Ludwig Reichert Verlag, 2007. 268pp. €54.00/ $81.00 hardback.

Although pastoralism has historically played a central role in Morocco’s rural econ-omy, there is relatively little scholarship that incorporates the latest thinking on range-land management and the political economy of pastoral development. Pastoral Mo-rocco offers an important corrective to this with an edited collection that spans thegeographic and economic diversity of livestock production in Morocco. Based on theproceedings of a conference in Morocco in 2005, the volume will hopefully integrateMoroccan pastoralism more actively into debates about the future of herding in aridand semi-arid zones more generally. Contributors are particularly interested in the‘exposure of pastoral livelihoods to neo-liberal policies of economic restructuring,changing property rights and newly evolving global marketing chains that generateglobalizing scapes of mobility and insecurity’ (p. 3). The diverse methods and theo-retical frameworks offer a sharply critical perspective on how globalization articulateswith local systems of hierarchy to shape the direction of change in Moroccan pastoral-ism. Dominant themes emphasize the changing meanings of mobility, how livelihooddiversification impacts pastoralism, and the relationship between market integrationand widening social differentiation in the pastoral sector. These themes relate trans-formations in Morocco to broader questions of livelihood diversification and securityat the centre of current debates in rural development.

Introductory chapters lay out a theoretical framework for tracing the effects ofglobalization in local contexts. Gertel theorizes the social and spatial dimensions ofmobility using notions of vulnerability from the sustainable livelihoods literature, whileDiana Davis shows how a political ecology approach can elucidate the links betweenglobal neoliberalism and state policies that increasingly constrain livelihood options forboth herders and subsistence farmers. Organizing the volume according to ‘RegionalGeographies of Pastoral Morocco’ with empirical research from around the country,

718 Book Reviews

offers rich insights about the diverse impacts that market integration and changingpractices of mobility have had on local political economies. The striking diversityin land use and livestock production systems that Chiche describes underscores howdifficult it is to generalize about globalization as a homogenous process with uniformeffects.

Subsequent contributors explore the spatial differentiation and uneven impact ofchanges in the pastoral sector, but there are important commonalities that emerge fromthe case studies. While Chiche describes a steady decline in Moroccan pastoralismover the twentieth century, the increased demand for meat in urban centres and themonetization of livestock markets that Khalil and Breuer describe implicitly raisethe question of whether transformations in the pastoral sector represent a decline somuch as a reconfiguration along capitalist lines. Mahdi, Rashik and Djoudi et al.examine how the practice of mobility itself has been transformed through varioussocial, economic, and spatial processes. Breuer traces how new forms of mobility— such as labour migration — have been crucial modes of diversifying livelihoods,enabling households to weather market vagaries and retain an interest in livestockproduction. New forms of mobility have emerged as older forms such as transhumanceand nomadic pastoralism have contracted under the pressure of changing land tenurearrangements and the increased capital requirements for maintaining herds. As in otherparts of Africa, sedentarization is not so much a signal of the demise of pastoralism asa transformation in the way mobility factors into herd management techniques. Tagexplores how the monetization of livestock production and privatization of land tenuremeans only a privileged few can maintain herds while partially sedentarizing theirhouseholds.

The widening economic and social disparities visible in the pastoral sector of theEastern Steppe are a common theme throughout the book. While most contribu-tors take livestock production and marketing systems as the starting points for theiranalyses, one of the volume’s key strengths is the way contributors link these sys-tems to profound social changes. In all cases, market integration has exacerbatedwhat Mohamed Aderghal terms the ‘ruptures and destabilizations’ inherent in live-stock production, with increased economic and social differentiation separating outthose who can take advantage of new market opportunities from those increasinglymarginalized from the national economy (p. 149). This disturbing development iscreating new forms of vulnerability in rural Morocco. It is a reminder of the impor-tance of a critical perspective on how integration into global markets can not onlymarginalize the pastoral sector — a process noted throughout Africa — but also fosterrising inequalities within the pastoral sector itself. While Davis, Tag and Mahdi arethe only contributors to directly address pastoral development projects in Morocco,the volume as a whole offers important practical insights for policy makers and projectmanagers on the uneven impact of market integration. Pastoral Morocco both shinesa light on Moroccan scholarship — publishing Moroccan researchers who might nototherwise reach such a broad academic audience — and highlights the relevanceof these case studies to students of pastoralism in arid and semi-arid zones moregenerally.

Karen RignallUniversity of Kentucky, 506 Arcadia Park, Lexington, KY 40503, USA.E-mail: krignall@hotmail.com