Power, Politics, and Higher Education in Southern Africa: International Regimes, Local Governments, and Educational Autonomy by Jose Cossa. Amherst, NY: Cambria Press, 2008. 226 pp. ISBN 9781604975154. Politics, Power, and Higher Education in Southern Africa (Cossa) is a well- written, thought-provoking, and timely contribution to international higher education studies. i Author Jose Cossa explores “how Global International Regimes (GIRs) and Regional International Regimes (RIRs) perceive power dynamics during international negotiations that influence the autonomy of local governments to regulate higher education in Southern Africa” (p. 153). Along with deconstructing these power dynamics with a useful blend of conceptual models and articulating some regional and sub-regional implications, including effects on national autonomy, Cossa provides a cogent analysis of a particular nexus of politics and education playing out in an age of globalization. ii Cossa sheds light on the multiple implications and dynamics of “power exchanges,” including notions of government autonomy vis-a-vis negotiations, and the tendency for regional and sub-regional surrogates to follow policy prescriptions. In terms of policy formulation and implementation, the implication is that education policy and practice directives result from complex and often contested regime interactions, mitigated by the concordant display, interchange, and modulations of power. In broad terms, specific types of development result from the power that parties do or do not possess. Cossa’s work offers a fresh blend and exposition of theory and method. It employs a “qualified” theoretical framework using system transfer and international regime theories that analyze aggregations and flows of power, along with a mixed- method approach that includes both quantitative and qualitative dimensions. iii His framework is explicitly critical: “While I preach that teaching critical thinking is controversial practice because one who is taught how to critically think ceases to think critically, I would argue that this stage is critical in a project because it provides a framework through which to look at the concepts at hand, thus avoiding obvious conceptual issues that would emerge otherwise” (p. 16). Cossa’s theoretical conception of power adheres largely to that of Foucault, in that it acknowledges power’s multiple, often contested links, and thus its multivalent influence on knowledge and discourse, theory and practice. This poststructural configuration positions power relative to the one subjected to power. In his study of Mozambique, he unpacks and analyzes, through a temporal continuum of power dynamics, the power relationships that historically buffeted a specific African rendition of colonizer and colonized. As presently played out vis-a-vis negotiations between GIRs and RIRs, system transfer theory articulates “how power dynamics between regimes manifest within and at perhaps the core of such transfer” (p. 23), leading to Cossa’s argument that previous forms of rule and being tend to linger across time amid evolving (or static) power dynamics. So, in terms of the monopolistic and reproductive nature of colonial systems of mass education, which embody the philosophy and theory of the colonizer, “the inherent perceptions of the relationship between education and development within a given transferred system continue to exert influence in the country even after the administration that introduced it had ceased to rule” (p. 36). The case of Mozambique highlights the temporal synergy and system transfer of colonial forms; for Cossa, Mozambique is a