Frank Cass Research Articles

Book Reviews

GovernanceVolume 18, Issue 1 p. 135-146 Book Reviews First published: 08 December 2004 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-0491.2004.00269.xAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditWechat Abstract Books reviewed: The Capacity to Govern: A Report to the Club of Rome. Yehzkel Dror. London: Frank Cass Publishers, 2001. 264 pp. $67.00 (hardback). Government's Greatest Achievements: From Civil Rights to Homeland Security. Paul C. Light. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2002. 200 pp. $19.95 (hardcover). The Transformation of Governance: Public Administration for Twenty-First Century America. Donald F. Kettl. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002. 240 pp. $17.95 (paperback). Reviewed by MARK CARL ROM, Georgetown University Politics and the Russian Army: Civil–Military Relations, 1689–2000. Brian D. Taylor. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003. 355 pp. $25.00 (paperback), $75.00 (hardback). Reviewed by DONALD ABENHEIM, Naval Postgraduate School Defending Europe: The EU, NATO and the Quest for European Autonomy. Jolyon Howorth and John T. S. Keeler, eds. New York: Palgrave, 2003. 247 pp. $55.00 (hardcover). Reviewed by MICHAEL BAUN, Valdosta State University Migration and the Externalities of European Integration. Sandra Lavenex and Emek M. Uçarer. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2003. 240 pp. $24.95 (paperback), $75.00 (hardback). Reviewed by SEBASTIEN GAGNON-MESSIER, University of Maryland Government: A Public Administration Perspective. Jos C. N. Raadschelders. Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 2003. 464 pp. $39.95 (paperback), $ 79.95 (hardcover). Reviewed by MARGARET F. REID, University of Arkansas Pursuing Truth, Exercising Power: Social Science and Public Policy in the 21st Century. Lisa Anderson. New York: Columbia University Press, 2003. 158 pp. $27.50 (cloth). Reviewed by ROBERT W. RYCROFT, George Washington University Volume18, Issue1January 2005Pages 135-146 RelatedInformation

Worth an Agora? 2003 E-lection Party Sites and Public Discourse

Democracy started over 2,500 years ago in Athens. As the form of government was largely one of direct democracy, the focus of deliberation was the ‘agora’ – a forum in which Athens’ citizenry debated and decided on public policy and law. Modern democracy, on the other hand, is representative, so that policymaking and legislation by definition occurs within the parliament and executive branch. Nevertheless, the shift from public agora to governmental parliament need not in principle remove the populace from the deliberative process – certainly not when it is called upon tomake the only formal decision within the system: election of the representatives. The fact that this generally does not occur in the modern age is less a function of political philosophy than of logistics – how do millions find each other, not to mention carry on some sort of rational discourse? They normally cannot. As a result, election campaigns have also been removed from the purview of the citizenry and given over to the candidates and especially to the mass media. Consequently, almost all political communications researchers have focused on top-to-bottom election discourse: candidates (and parties)-topublic, as well as media-to-public. This traditional situation is now undergoing change for the first time in modern democratic history with the advent of a ‘mass’ medium – the internet – that renders bottom-to-bottom (‘peer-to-peer’) and bottom-totop (citizen-to-party) communication as effortless as its more traditional counterpart: ‘the media is [sic ] still monologic and one-way – the great and the good speak and everyone else listens or turns off. There is a way out of that tradition: a “civic commons” in cyberspace . . . intelligent spaces for public deliberation about policy issues online’. Of course, the internet not only empowers the citizenry, it can also be fruitfully exploited by the parties and the candidates for their own purposes – through top-to-bottom communication. However, as opposed to the public that has not had much opportunity to express itself during

The Media Campaign in the 2003 Israeli Elections

The main characteristics of the media campaign in the 2003 Israeli elections include the coverage and implications of political scandals and a limited retreat from postmodern campaign communication...

Revisiting the Myths: New Approaches to the Great War

Stéphane Audoin-Rouzeau and Annette Becker, 14–18: Understanding the Great War (New York: Hill & Wang), 280 pp., $24.00, ISBN 0-8090-4643-1.Jeremy Black, ed., War in the Modern World since 1815 (London: Routledge, 2003), 268 pp., £18.99, ISBN 0-415-25140-0.Gail Braybon, ed., Evidence, History, and the Great War: Historians and the Impact of 1914–18 (Oxford: Berghahn, 2003), 304 pp., £50.00, ISBN 1-57181-726-7.Roger Chickering and Stig Förster, eds., The Shadows of Total War: Europe, East Asia, and the United States, 1919–1939 (Washington, DC, and Cambridge: German Historical Institute and Cambridge University Press, 2003), 364 pp., $60.00, ISBN 0-521-81236-4.Andrew Green, Writing the Great War: Sir James Edmonds and the Official Histories, 1915–48 (London: Frank Cass, 2003), 200 pp., £19.99, ISBN 0-7146-8430-9.John H. Morrow Jr, The Great War: An Imperial History (New York: Routledge, 2003), 352 pp., $27.50, ISBN 0-415-20439-9.Mario Morselli, Caporetto, 1917: Victory or Defeat? (London: Frank Cass, 2000), 176 pp., £65.00 (hb), ISBN 0-714-65073-0.Gary Sheffield, Forgotten Victory: The First World War, Myths and Realities (London: Headline, 2001), 318 pp., £7.99, ISBN 0-747-27157-7.The powers of Europe fought the Great War for more than four years, but it took France fifteen years to write its official history, Germany nineteen years, and the United Kingdom an astonishing twenty-six years. These works, moreover, encompass only land operations and fill twenty-three extraordinarily detailed volumes for France, an equal number for Great Britain, and fourteen volumes for Germany. The time and energy needed to compile the thousands of necessary documents, organise that data, and construct the interpretations reflect both the enormity of the war itself and the difficulty of finding meaning in an event that so deeply shook the continent.

The Balkans: Identities, Wars, Memories

Neven Andjelić, Bosnia-Herzegovina. The End of a Tragedy (London: Frank Cass, 2003), 228 pp., $34.95 (pb), ISBN 0-7146-8431-7.Tom Gallagher, The Balkans after the Cold War. From Tyranny to Tragedy (London and New York: Routledge, 2003), 256 pp., $114.95 (hb), ISBN 0-415-27763-9.John Lampe and Mark Mazower, eds., Ideologies and National Identities. The Case of Twentieth-Century Southeastern Europe (Budapest and New York: Central European University Press, 2004), 309 pp., $23.95 (pb), ISBN 9639241822.James Pettifer, ed., The New Macedonian Question (Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave and St. Martin's Press, 1999), 311 pp., $24.95 (pb), ISBN 0-333-92066-X.Michael Parenti, To Kill a Nation. The Attack on Yugoslavia (London and New York: Verso, 2000), 246 pp., $10.00 (pb), ISBN 1-85984-366-2.Maria Todorova, ed., Balkan Identities: Nation and Memory (London: Hurst & Co., 2004), 374 pp., £17.50 (pb), ISBN 1-850-65715-7.Emerging from the obscurity of old-fashioned, specialised ‘area studies’, since 1989 the Balkans have attracted much attention from historians. The primary reason for that has been, tragically, the war in Yugoslavia and the emergence of a postwar order. Even the post-communist transitions (in Romania, Bulgaria and Albania) attracted less attention. Nevertheless, the field benefited substantially from the increased interest in the area, and lively debates took place on contested issues, sparked not least by hasty initial schemata (and stigmata) used by outside observers, such as ‘ancient hatreds’ and the like. Parallel to the attention paid to what was going on in Yugoslavia, and perhaps more productively in the long run, was the postmodern, postcolonial approach to Balkan history, inspired by Maria Todorova's Imagining the Balkans, which followed Edward Said's monumental Orientalism and appeared parallel to Larry Wolff's Inventing Eastern Europe. Such refreshing studies of Western representations of the region were later complemented by the internal perspective of how such representations were received, and coped with, in the region. A profusion of ‘cultural studies’ in the broadest sense followed, reflecting both the ongoing reshaping of Balkan identities and outside demand for such studies.

Soviet Operational and Tactical Combat in Manchuria, 1945 'August Storm', and: The Soviet Strategic Offensive in Manchuria, 1945 (review)

Reviewed by: Soviet Operational and Tactical Combat in Manchuria, 1945 ‘August Storm’, and: The Soviet Strategic Offensive in Manchuria, 1945 Curtis S. King Soviet Operational and Tactical Combat in Manchuria, 1945 ‘August Storm’. By David M. Glantz. Portland, Oreg.: Frank Cass, 2003. ISBN 0-7146-5300-4. Maps. Photographs. Tables. Figures. Appendixes. Notes. Bibliography. Index. Pp. xvi, 368. $59.50. The Soviet Strategic Offensive in Manchuria, 1945. By David M. Glantz. Portland, Oreg.: Frank Cass, 2003. ISBN 0-7146-5279-2. Maps. Photographs. Illustrations. Tables. Appendixes. Bibliography. Index. Pp. xxviii, 451. $59.50. This reviewer has had the pleasure of reading many of David Glantz's works on the Eastern Front in World War Two and the privilege of reviewing several of those efforts. In so doing, I had noticed a pattern: Glantz's research and grasp of detail has always been extensive, but his writing in earlier works was often dry. In later works, Glantz has shown a more deft writing touch, particularly in books such as Zhukov's Greatest Defeat, Stumbling Colossus, and When Titans Clash (co-authored by Jonathan House). Unfortunately, Glantz's two volume history of the Soviet offensive in Manchuria, while maintaining a high standard of research and detail, is so mechanistically written as to be useful mostly as a source book, not as a readable narrative of the campaign. Glantz's theme in both volumes is straightforward, to show that the Soviets executed their offensive in Manchuria with tremendous skill. The first, Strategic, book states that the "Manchurian campaign represented and still represents the highest stage of military art the Red Army reached during its operations during the Second World War" (p. xxvi). Similarly, the Operational and Tactical volume posits that "the massive scale of the Soviet [End Page 1299] attack was matched by the audaciousness, skill, and relentlessness with which it was conducted" (p. xvii). This reviewer is sympathetic to efforts that dispel the myth that Soviet victories depended solely on a massive advantage in numbers, and Glantz makes a good general case for the skill of Soviet commanders and the efficacy of their doctrine. However, Glantz occasionally seems to overstate his case. Both volumes are replete with descriptions of Soviet advances against negligible opposition, Japanese disarray and lack of resources, and spectacular offensives after the dropping of the American atomic bomb and the initiation of surrender discussions between Soviet and Japanese officials. In short, the overall shortage of Japanese troops and equipment, as well as the hopelessness of their situation—despite the Japanese soldiers' fighting prowess—make it hard to measure Soviet skill on the battlefield. Given this caveat, Glantz has a strong case for Soviet skill at achieving surprise and overcoming difficult terrain, but a less firm claim concerning the Red Army's skill with echelons, maneuver, and formations. The structure of the two volumes follows an interesting approach that has much merit. The Strategic book gives an overview of the campaign and sets the "big picture" for the reader. The Operational and Tactical volume contains a selection of case studies, which provide greater detail on the operations of the Soviet forces. The two part structure allows the author to make his overall case before looking at specific operational and tactical fights. While this method could lead to a selective use of case studies, Glantz has chosen his samples well. There are examples of major mechanized offensives, advances over tremendously difficult terrain, battles for fortified regions, amphibious operations, and many other varieties of tactical combat. A more traditional, strictly chronological, approach would not have allowed for the detail found in the individual case studies, and Glantz should be applauded for this fresh approach. Unfortunately, the strengths of Glantz's work are marred by a writing style that makes both volumes a difficult read. These writing weaknesses are revealed early in the first, Strategic, volume. Of 346 pages of 'text' (more on Glantz's text below) in this volume, 181 pages are devoted to planning for the offensive. More than half of the book discusses preparations, unit structures, terrain, the whole accompanied by overwhelming statistical data. Often tables of statistical information are repeated in the narrative and the reader is left in...

Aspects of Peacekeeping, Gordon, D.S. and Toase, F.H. London: Frank Cass (The Sandhurst Conference Series): 286pp

Aspects of Peacekeeping, Gordon, D.S. and Toase, F.H. London: Frank Cass (The Sandhurst Conference Series): 286pp

Kenneth Morgan, series ed. Robin Law, David Ryden, and John Oldfield, vol. eds. The British Transatlantic Slave Trade. 4 vols. London: Pickering & Chatto, 2003. 1632 pp. Endnotes. Index. 4 vols. £360/$540. Cloth.

Kenneth Morgan, series ed. Robin Law, David Ryden, and John Oldfield, vol. eds. The British Transatlantic Slave Trade. 4 vols. London: Pickering & Chatto, 2003. 1632 pp. Endnotes. Index. 4 vols. £360/$540. Cloth. For historians of Africa interested in the impact of the Atlantic slave trade there is already a considerable body of primary material available in most major libraries. Besides the many travelers' accounts republished by Frank Cass in the 1960s, we have the invaluable four-volume edition prepared by Elizabeth Donnan seventy years ago, which includes a large number of archival documents in addition to extracts from contemporary books. More recently, Robin Law has published the first two volumes of what eventually will become a four-volume edition of the local correspondence of the Royal African Company's agents on the coast of West Africa in the late seventeenth century. This new publication makes a welcome addition to the existing literature. The texts are on the whole well chosen and representative. Altogether the original texts-facsimiles of contemporary publications-cover about fourteen hundred pages. They are supplemented in each volume by a lengthy introduction and shorter subintroductions to the individual documents (150 pages), endnotes (80 pages) and a thirty-page index to the whole set. Appropriately, the series begins with Africa itself. Volume 1, focusing upon the operation of the slave trade in Africa, is edited by Robin Law, whose introduction gives us an excellent review of recent literature. Most historians of Africa working on this period will have come across the four texts selected here. John Hawkins constitutes an exceptional case both with regard to the early date (1569) and because he deals with the direct participation of Europeans in the enslaving process. John Matthews's Voyage to the River Sierra-Leone (1788) struck me as a surprising choice, given that this book, nearly two hundred pages long, was reprinted as recently as 1966, albeit without annotation. John Adams's Sketches (1821), based on voyages made between 1786 and 1800, covers most of the West African coast. Law's annotation is helpful here, as it is for the excerpt from Gomer Williams's account of the Liverpool slave trade (1897), comprising papers on Old Calabar in the years 1767 to 1783. The remaining three volumes are more concerned with debates conducted in Europe, but they too contain material that is of significance for African history. Volume 2, on the Royal African Company, edited by Kenneth Morgan, comprises six texts written during the period extending from 1680, when the company first felt obliged to defend its special position (emphasizing, among other things, the benefits of the slave trade to England), to 1746, by which time the company, although retaining its forts in West Africa, had long ceased to supply slaves to America on its own ships. …

Traffic in Women in War and Peace: Mapping Experiences in Southeast Europe

Since the 1980s, there has been a huge growth in the sex market, with increasing trafficking in women, especially from the ‘Third World’ and Eastern Europe. While the trade in human beings is illeg...

Constraints and Adjustments in Portugal's Policy toward Israel

Throughout most of its existence the State of Israel had only a handful of friends and allies. However, even during the era of pan-Arabism, when Arab nationalism held sway over the Middle East, eng...

Problematics of Military Power: Government, Discipline and the Subject of Violence. By Michael S. Drake (Portland, Oreg., Frank Cass, 2001) 355 pp. $54.50

Problematics of Military Power: Government, Discipline and the Subject of Violence. By Michael S. Drake (Portland, Oreg., Frank Cass, 2001) 355 pp. $54.50

Tom Brass (ed.), Latin American Peasants (London and Portland, OR: Frank Cass Publishers, 2003), pp. 421, £45.00, £18.50 pb.

Tom Brass (ed.), <i>Latin American Peasants</i> (London and Portland, OR: Frank Cass Publishers, 2003), pp. 421, £45.00, £18.50 pb.

The 1912–13 Balkan Wars and the Siege of Edirne

Depending on the angle of view, the first and second Balkan1 wars of 1912–13 have been considered either as the culmination of a freedom struggle2 for the Christian nations of south-eastern Europe ...

Balancing Acts: The Gulf States and Israel

The national interests of weak states are subject both to external pressures, applied by strong states, and internal pressures. It is assumed that due to their weakness, external demands have a gre...

Technology and Naval Combat in the Twentieth Century and Beyond (review)

Reviewed by: Technology and Naval Combat in the Twentieth Century and Beyond Michael H. Coles Technology and Naval Combat in the Twentieth Century and Beyond. Edited by Phillips Payson O’Brien. Portland, Oreg.: Frank Cass, 2001. ISBN 0-7146-5125-7. Figures. Tables. Notes. Index. Pp. xiii, 272. $54.50. This is a stimulating collection of essays by some of today's leading naval historians, divided into four sections: preparations for World War I, rearming prior to World War II, the Cold War, and preparing for the next war. Although the scholarship is of high standard throughout, the book is organized chronologically and by nationality rather than by technologies, and thus to some extent fails to deliver the promise of its title. Nevertheless, the diligent reader will find a number of technology-related themes appearing throughout the work, demonstrating how much commonality there is across time periods and nations in the key material factors that determine success or failure in naval warfare. Navies are extraordinarily expensive, and several chapters demonstrate that a nation's capability with respect to naval technology is largely a function of its economic strength. A vivid example of the naval/economic power relationship is Japan: the late David C. Evans shows how accelerated economic development prior to World War I enabled its navy to grow from insignificance to the world's third largest. Mark Peattie then describes how the same nation lacked the economic and technical strength to survive an extended war with the United States. Domestic politics also influence spending levels and thus adoption of new technologies: Paul Halpern describes how the Jeune École of the 1880s politicized French naval procurement. Arguably no navy has attained material superiority without first producing a politically powerful naval strategist. The book's success stories include Japan's Yamamoto Gombei and Togo, architects of the victory over Russia in 1905; America's Mahan; and Britain's "Jackie" Fisher, the latter's reputation being given a refreshing new look in a chapter by Nicholas Lambert that builds on earlier revisionist work by John Sumida. Others, such as Germany's Tirpitz and Raeder, were less successful; more recently, as Evan Mawdsley recounts, Soviet Admiral Gorshkov attempted the impossible when setting out to build a world-class blue water fleet on a third class economic base. Concluding chapters contemplate the future, including the continuing role of navies as important tools of diplomacy, although cost considerations [End Page 1026] will dictate fewer platforms and increasing use of design and manufacturing technology adapted from commercial production. Norman Friedman points out how new technology may dramatically change platform missions, as was the case with the Tomahawk's revitalization of the United States surface fleet. Books assembled from papers delivered at a conference often prove frustrating reading, and apparently this volume was the product of such a process, though this reviewer could find no reference in the text to a related academic gathering. Anyone with an interest in naval history will benefit from reading this book. However, its value would have been greatly increased had the editor done more to connect the accounts of developing technologies presently scattered throughout these excellent chapters, and provided the reader with an index that included some of the vital technical developments of the period, such as aircraft, turbines, radio and radar. It was also distressing to find him using more than once in a scholarly naval work the phrase "knots per hour." Michael H. Coles Shelter Island, New York Copyright © 2004 Society for Military History

The British Political Elite and the Soviet Union, 1937-1939 (review)

Reviewed by: The British Political Elite and the Soviet Union, 1937–1939 Mary Glantz The British Political Elite and the Soviet Union, 1937–1939. By Louise Grace Shaw. Portland, Oreg.: Frank Cass, 2003. ISBN 0-7146-8333-7. Notes. Bibliography. Index. Pp. xiv, 210. $26.50. The period 1937-39 was a crucible for European diplomacy. As Germany's expansionist desires became increasingly difficult to misconstrue, other European governments, especially the British, French, and Soviets, struggled to formulate an appropriate response. The ideal response—the one that eventually emerged from the exigencies of war—would have been an Anglo-French-Soviet alliance to contain and deter Germany. But in the pivotal prewar period, efforts to create that alliance repeatedly failed, resulting in the devastating German-Soviet Pact of August 1939. This process is the subject of Louise Grace Shaw's The British Political Elite and the Soviet Union, 1937-1939. Combing through archives and personal papers, Shaw attempts to reconstruct the thoughts and motivations of key British foreign policy actors and to tie those thoughts to their actions in the diplomatic arena. As a result, Shaw concludes that responsibility for the failure to create an Anglo-French-Soviet alliance rested primarily with British cabinet members, in particular the Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain. Shaw's analysis lies squarely within the counter-revisionist school of thought on this period. She repeatedly and powerfully challenges the revisionist contention that policy-makers labored under structural constraints that inhibited their ability to formulate an alliance with the Soviet Union. In her history, British policymakers are much more personally culpable for the failure to create a system that might have stopped Hitler. According to Shaw, certain cabinet members willfully refused to put aside their ideological distrust of the Soviet Union in order to forge an alliance against a far greater threat to Europe, namely Germany. Shaw heaps particular scorn upon Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, who, unlike the other cabinet members who were willing to reach an agreement with the Soviets by summer 1939, "consistently refused to suppress his own intense ideological suspicion and resentment" (p. 190). Shaw's account is convincing. It is well written and thoroughly researched, based upon extensive investigation of both official documents and private correspondence. Shaw also avoids judging British actors in a historical vacuum. She consistently grounds her assessments in both an analysis of the information available to the actors at the time, and in an examination of French and Soviet actions and policies. Thus her critique of the British cabinet, particularly Chamberlain, is that much more damning. Shaw occasionally overreaches in her conclusions. She argues, for example, that Chamberlain should have accepted Soviet expansionism into Eastern Europe in 1939 as a small price to pay in comparison to the devastation of World War II. However, this conclusion uses a bit of historical hindsight unavailable to diplomats of 1939. How were they really to choose between German and Soviet expansionism into Eastern Europe, especially before they knew about the cost of the war and the eventual Soviet expansion into that region anyway? [End Page 987] Such overreaching is the exception rather than the rule, however. Shaw's book is an outstanding contribution to the field. All who are interested in the history of World War II would enjoy reading it; specialists in the period will find it a necessity to read. Mary Glantz Dulles, Virginia Copyright © 2004 Society for Military History

Rethinking the Middle East Efraim Karsh. London: Frank Cass, 2003. 208pp. £17.50.

Rethinking the Middle East Efraim Karsh. London: Frank Cass, 2003. 208pp. £17.50.

Understanding the War in Kosovo, Florian Bieber and Zidas Daskalovski, eds, (London: Frank Cass, 2003), 350 pp.

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The Poles in Britain 1940–2000: From Betrayal to Assimilation, Peter D. Stachura, ed., (London: Frank Cass, 2004), 113 pp. + plates

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Mass Conservatism: The Conservatives and the Public since the 1880s

1University of Durham Mass Conservatism: The Conservatives and the Public since the 1880s Stuart Ball Ian Holliday London Frank Cass 2002 xvi + 248 Hardback£45 Paperback£17.50