The Logic of Political Survival, Bruce Bueno de Mesquita, Alastair Smith, Randolph Siverson, and James Morrow, Cambridge, MA and London: The MIT Press, 2003, pp. xiii, 536

The Logic of Political Survival is much more than its title suggests. Its main focus is certainly on the survival of political leaders, but its embrace extends to economic development, nation-building, democratization, war and peace, protest, civil war, and revolution. All of these topics are subsumed under a single theory that is elaborated formally and validated through a truly gargantuan exercise in data analysis. It is, without doubt, an extraordinary attempt to answer some very big questions.

Brève histoire philosophique de l'Union soviétique, Fabrice Bouthillon, Paris : Plon/Commentaire, 2003, 195 p.

Ce petit ouvrage au titre intrigant est iconoclaste sous plus d'un rapport. L'auteur l'a élaboré “ en dépit de toutes les règles du bon sens universitaire ” (15): ne sachant pas un mot de russe, il en a forgé les idées dans un cours de premier cycle (plutôt que dans des séminaires d'études supérieures ou dans des colloques spécialisés) et l'a écrit à Brest (plutôt qu'à Paris, seule ville de France où l'on pense sérieusement, comme chacun sait). Défenseur, comme l'indique le titre de l'ouvrage, d'une “ histoire philosophique ” , c'est-à-dire d'une histoire qui cherche à conceptualiser l'événement à mesure qu'en est exposée la trame, l'auteur n'hésite pas, en outre, à puiser dans l'héritage plus que suspect de la tradition contre-révolutionnaire (Burke, Bonald, Maistre), laquelle insiste sur l'antériorité et la pesanteur des structures dans lesquelles sont enracinés les individus (histoire ou langue). Il en résulte un ouvrage éblouissant d'intelligence et d'une ironie mordante—chose rare dans une université où, comme le relève l'auteur, règne souvent un “ ennui lourd, massif, profond ” (11).

Regionalism in a Global Society: Persistence and Change in Atlantic Canada and New England, Stephen G. Tomblin and Charles S. Colgan, eds., Peterborough: Broadview Press, 2004, pp. 333

Perceived economic globalization and Europe's progressive supranationalism have inspired a regional politics growth industry, centred on Europe, which addresses how regions increasingly form and operate trans-border institutions. Defining regionalism as the creation of new partnerships or regions across jurisdictions, Memorial University's Stephen Tomblin describes this book's thirteen essays, divided almost evenly between Canadian and American scholars, as an effort to overcome the lack of substantial research on North America's cross-border regions (8). The book will satisfy most readers seeking an update on the slowly growing regional initiatives inside the Atlantic region (only sometimes including Newfoundland) and the states of New England. But as the book's contributors make clear, for all the ever-increasing trans-border truck crossings and energy sales, most recently for Sable Island gas, institutional cooperation between these provinces and states remains limited.

Social-démocratie et mouvements ouvriers : la fin de l'histoire?, Serge Denis, Montréal : Les éditions Boréal, 2003, 226p.

Peu importe le pays, la relation entre le mouvement ouvrier et les partis sociaux-démocrates est en crise. Ces derniers ont cessé de promouvoir les revendications du mouvement ouvrier et ont coupé les ponts avec leur base. Ce constat est au cœur de ce livre qui débute avec le fameux “ winter of discontent ” britannique de 1978–79. Les récentes décisions de certains partis sociaux-démocrates confirment que la tendance se maintient. Serge Denis, auteur de plusieurs ouvrages sur le syndicalisme, analyse la métamorphose des partis sociaux-démocrates telle qu'elle est vécue par les mouvements ouvriers.

L'atelier de l'organisation. Un observatoire sur les changements dans les entreprises, Bruno Maggi (sous la direction, 2001), Paris : L'Harmattan. 284 pages.

Cet ouvrage fort original est issu d'un séminaire que Bruno Maggi, professeur de théorie de l'organisation à la Faculté d'économie de l'université de Bologne, a organisé pendant une douzaine d'années à l'université de Bologne. Ce séminaire réunissait des praticiens d'entreprise et des chercheurs universitaires et constitue un observatoire tout à fait privilégié des changements survenus dans les entreprises, dont plusieurs très grandes entreprises publiques et privées : Ciba, FIAT, Fininvest, Mediaset, Iveco, RAS, Rinascente, Télécom, Zurigo. Au total, 78 rencontres ont été organisées et elles ont donné lieu à l'analyse de 92 cas.

International Environmental Policy: Interests and the Failure of the Kyoto Process, Sonja Boehmer-Christiansen and Aynsley Kellow, Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 2002, pp. xi, 214

This valuable critique of climate change politics is written by two of its leading observers. The authors—who variously describe themselves as skeptical, dissident or agnostic about the scientific issues—acknowledge that their views on the process are controversial and unpopular. Why, they ask (1), was Kyoto so widely embraced? Unlike other complex international agreements, the Protocol has been iconized. To criticize it, they write, is to attack not only the “moral crusade” (104) of environmentalism but also the global development agenda (110). Behind the complaint is a well-crafted argument about the inadequacies of science as a guide to policy, and a detailed account of what they see as the politicization of climate science. The science, in sum, has been “inescapably tied up with the play of interests from the outset,” and “reflects, rather than simply drives, politics” (6–7).

La politique étrangère des États-Unis. Fondements, acteurs, formulation, Charles-Philippe David, Louis Balthazar et Justin Vaïsse, Paris : Presses de sciences po, 2003, 382 p.

Avec l'avènement de l'administration de George W. Bush et les suites des attentats de septembre 2001, l'étude de la politique étrangère des États-Unis, en langue française, connaît un dynamisme renouvelé. Plusieurs travaux récents, dont ceux de Jean-Yves Haine et de Sabine Lavorel respectivement sur la politique américaine face à l'Alliance atlantique et sur la formulation de la politique de sécurité nationale sous G.W. Bush, sont des exemples qui illustrent bien cette tendance.

L'administration publique. De L'École classique au nouveau management public, Jean Mercier, Québec, Les Presses de l'Université Laval, 2002, 518 p.

Le livre de Jean Mercier, destiné à un public d'étudiants, est un manuel d'introduction assez exhaustif qui permet de s'initier à l'administration publique et d'en apprendre les principaux processus, structures et théories. L'auteur situe son ouvrage dans une perspective temporelle et offre ainsi au lecteur un large éventail de thèmes, de tendances et de théories qui touchent l'administration publique. Ses exemples, souvent tirés du secteur de l'environnement, reflètent les expériences québécoise, canadienne et internationale.

Democracy, Human Rights, and Civil Society in South East Asia, Amitav Acharya, B.M. Frolic and Richard Stubbs, eds., Toronto: Joint Centre for Asia Pacific Studies, 2001, pp. 208

This is an important volume on the hotly debated topic of democracy, human rights and civil society in South East Asia, a region that has witnessed a confrontation between the old order of authoritarian regimes and strong states on one hand, and the new democratic forces embedded in an emerging civil society, on the other. The focus of the book is on the evolution of debates about democracy and human rights during the decade following the end of the Cold War in 1989 to the 1997–98 Asian economic crisis, with the latter being regarded as the watershed that unleashed the democratic forces. The book consists of nine chapters, plus an introduction and a conclusion, contributed by nine political scientists. Except for Johan Saravanamuttu, who is from the region under study, the other contributors are Southeast Asianists teaching at various universities in Canada, the United States, and Australia.

Critical Political Studies: Debates and Dialogues from the Left, Abigail B. Bakan and Eleanor MacDonald, eds., Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2002, pp. xiv, 432

For political observers, scholars, analysts and practitioners on the left the last two decades have been very difficult. With the rise of globalization, the decline of the Keynesian welfare state, the triumph of Thatcherism, Reaganism and Mulroneyism and the decade long dominance of neo-liberalism in Canada, a great deal of creative rethinking has become necessary—not only for the socialist left, but also for social democrats, left liberals and red tories.

Real Libertarianism Assessed: Political Theory after Van Parijs, Andrew Reeve and Andrew Williams, eds., London: Palgrave, 2003, pp. x, 223

Philippe Van Parijs' Real Freedom for All (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995) is one of the most stimulating contributions to left-libertarianism published in the last decade. It is, therefore, not surprising that an edited volume that critically examines his ideas has now been published. The contributing authors (two of whom, Peter Vallentyne and Hillel Steiner, are other well known left-libertarians) raise interesting and often pointed questions, but they all have some good things to say about Van Parijs' original proposal.

Modern Social Imaginaries, Charles Taylor, Durham: Duke University Press, 2004, pp. 215

The originality of Charles Taylor's thought can be seen in the fact that it is not easy to “place” his work over the last fifteen years in the categories of standard academic disciplines. It is not really political philosophy. It is not really sociology (though it perhaps leans more towards sociology than towards political philosophy). It is something else. But what? Cultural history and the history of philosophy clearly provide the materials for Taylor's enterprise, but whatever it is, it aims for something intellectually more ambitious than mere intellectual or cultural history. The term “social imaginary” in fact captures quite well this “unplaceability” of his work between philosophy and sociology.

Toleration as Recognition, Anna Elisabetta Galeotti, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2002, pp. viii, 242

In Toleration as Recognition Anna Elisabetta Galeotti offers up a sympathetic critique of liberal toleration and suggests a modification to the theory that she believes necessary in order to bring cultural minorities into the public sphere as equal citizens. This carefully argued book marks a timely contribution to the debate over group rights and multiculturalism.

Rousseau as Author: Consecrating One's Life to the Truth, Christopher Kelly, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003, pp. 182

Christopher Kelly's latest book makes an important contribution to the study of Rousseau. Kelly investigates Rousseau's attitude towards authorship in the light of his motto, “consecrating one's life to the truth.” He maintains that for Rousseau this motto implies the need for two kinds of authorial responsibility: “it meant both publicly taking responsibility for what one publishes and only publishing those things that would be of public benefit” (1). Kelly then uses this two-pronged conception of responsible authorship to investigate Rousseau's understanding of the practices of citizenship and of philosophy.

Hegel on Ethics and Politics, Robert B. Pippin and Otfried Höffe, eds., translated by Nicholas Walker; The German Philosophical Tradition Series; Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004, pp. 358

In a better world, all books involving Kant or Hegel might come with a reverse price tag. Instead of making prospective readers pay for the privilege, they would encourage and reward the gruelling labour facing those who would brave the convoluted prose, the merciless grind of thousand-word paragraphs lecturing in German no matter the language in which they appear to be written. In our own world, of course, such learned works tend to be especially expensive, a whopping hundred dollars in this case.

Kant and Liberal Internationalism, Antonio Franceschet, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002, pp. 164

Few political notions are at once so normative and so equivocal as liberal internationalism. Today, the official discourse of the West resounds with appeals to a term that was long a trademark of the Left. Whatever sense is given it, the meaning of internationalism logically depends on some prior conception of nationalism, since it only has currency as a backward construction referring to its opposite. Yet while nationalism is of all modern political phenomena the most value-contested—judgements of its record standardly varying across a 180-degree span, from admiration to abhorrence—no such schizophrenia of connotation affects internationalism: its implication is virtually always positive. But the price of approval is indeterminacy. If no one doubts the fact of nationalism, but few agree as to its worth, at the entry to the millennium the status of internationalism would appear to be more or less the reverse. It is claimed on all sides as a value, but who can identify it without challenge in the form of force?

Du retour. Abécédaire biopolitique. Entretiens avec Anne Dufourmantelle, Antonio Negri, Paris : Calmann-Lévy, 2002, 243 pages

Du retour est un entretien avec Antonio Negri mené par la psychanalyste Anne Dufourmantelle. Negri est sorti des prisons italiennes en 2003, après avoir été accusé d'avoir participé, avec les Brigades rouges, à l'assassinat d'Aldo Moro. Il est l'auteur, avec le philosophe américain Michael Hardt, de Empire—un ouvrage dont il n'est pas exagéré de dire qu'il est désormais la référence théorique principale du mouvement altermondialiste. L'intellectuel et professeur italien, le “ mauvais maître ” , comme on l'a appelé, a livré cet entretien en 2002 alors qu'il était encore en semi-liberté.

Cyber-Diplomacy: Managing Foreign Policy in the Twenty-First Century, Evan H. Potter, ed., Montreal & Kingston: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2002, xii, 208.

We are repeatedly told that we live in a revolutionary age, a time in which dramatic new developments in information and communication technologies (ICTs) will fundamentally transform the ways in which we live and work. Even the collapse of the dot.com bubble in 2000 has not much dampened the spirits of the techno-utopians. Given these often-exaggerated claims, I approached Cyber-Diplomacy with some trepidation, as the editor cites Marshall McLuhan's ‘global village’ in the first line of his introduction, and speaks of an information revolution in his second paragraph. However, as I pressed on in the text I was very pleasantly surprised to find that the editor and authors of this short volume are well aware of the dangers of overstatement in relation to ICTs, and work very hard throughout to avoid techno-utopianism. Instead, the authors attempt to take a fairly sober look at “how diplomacy is adapting to the new global information order” (7).

Globalization and Human Rights, Alison Brysk, sous la direction de, Berkeley : University of California Press, 2002, 311 p.

Quel est l'impact de la mondialisation sur les droits de l'Homme ? La mondialisation favorise-t-elle la défense des droits de l'Homme ou fournit-elle plutôt de nouveaux instruments, de nouvelles possibilités de violation des droits de l'Homme ? Qu'en est-il des avancées technologiques et des moyens de communication divers ? Selon la vision libérale, la mondialisation serait porteuse de développement, de démocratie, d'autonomisation et d'une meilleure gouvernance mondiale. Cela se vérifie-t-il dans la réalité ? Le but du collectif Globalization and Human Rights est d'apporter des éléments de réponse aux nombreuses questions que soulèvent les bouleversements de notre monde actuel. Les auteurs cherchent ainsi à dégager les grandes tendances de la mondialisation et l'impact qu'elles ont sur les droits de l'Homme. C'est ce qui explique la division du volume en quatre parties distinctes : la citoyenneté (citizenship), la marchandisation (commodification), la communication et, finalement, la coopération. C'est le deuxième chapitre du collectif qui sera traité ici, soit celui qui étudie la mondialisation des marchés. Les auteurs y examinent tour à tour l'impact politique de la mondialisation, les contradictions entre l'économie et le libéralisme politique en ce qui a trait aux droits sociaux, l'impact différencié de l'intégration structurelle sur différents types de droits et la mobilisation contre l'exploitation que pratiquent les firmes multinationales dans certains pays.

Governing Global Trade: International Institutions in Conflict and Convergence, Theodore H. Cohn, Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2002, pp. xi, 329.

At a time when all eyes are riveted on the World Trade Organization (WTO) and the ups and downs associated with its current round of negotiation initiated in Doha, Qatar, in November 2001, Theodore Cohn's latest publication provides a vivid reminder: The global trading regime is made up of much more than the WTO. The GATT/WTO is still pivotal in Cohn's diachronic overview of the evolution of the global trade regime since the creation of the General Agreement on Tariff and Trade (GATT) in 1947, but unlike several other studies on a similar topic, the author untangles the relationship between the GATT/WTO and other formal and informal international institutions, such as the G7/G8, the Quadrilateral Group (Quad), the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the G77, and the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD). Each institution, as well as the United States and the European Union, is given relatively equal coverage in this notable study. Yet, as an indication that the GATT/WTO is still primus inter pares, most chapters revolve around the major negotiation rounds of the international organization. Chapter 2 traces the origins and early period of the postwar trade regime (1947–1962). Chapters 3 and 4 concentrate on the Kennedy (1962–1972) and Tokyo (1973–1979) rounds of the GATT respectively. Chapter 5 details the uncertainty associated with the survival of the GATT (1980–1986). Chapters 6 and 7 focus on the momentous Uruguay Round of the GATT (1986–1994), and chapter 8 highlights the post-Uruguay Round period (1995–2001).