Book Notes
| Author | Kristian Skrede Gleditsch |
| Published date | 01 March 2006 |
| Date | 01 March 2006 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/002234330604300228 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
but also NGOs and stateless groups who provide
new challenges to negotiation theory. Stakes high-
light the myriad of issues under negotiation,
while moves points to the dynamics and processes
involved. The book is organized around this
framework, and each aspect is examined in a
separate chapter. A set of negotiations – includ-
ing those on climate change in Kyoto 1997 and
the nuclear crisis in North Korea in 2003 – are
thoroughly analysed. The targeted audience of
this book is students and policy analysts. Indeed,
it provides a broad overview of the field, without
losing its sensitivity to the problems and issues
facing different negotiation situations. The theor-
etical parts are nicely backed by empirical illus-
trations. For instance, the section on identity and
negotiation (pp. 76–82) provides illuminating
examples from the superpower rivalry between
the Soviet Union and the USA, and the
communal conflict in Northern Ireland. The
shortcomings of the book relate to its limited
length. Some areas are only briefly touched upon
and could have been examined more in depth.
Kristine Höglund
Tétreault, Mary Ann & Ronnie D. Lip-
schutz, 2005. Global Politics as if People Mattered.
New York: Rowman & Littlefield. 240 pp. ISBN
0742510905.
The aim of Tétreault & Lipschutz’s text is to
demonstrate that it is ‘the social individual who is
at the heart of global politics’ rather than states,
transnational corporations or international insti-
tutions. As such, the work consolidates important
critiques of traditional IR theories for absorption
by a beginner undergraduate audience (evidenced
by the writing style). This is an important task,
and the book covers an admirable amount of
literature. The authors’ use of many examples to
support their critiques is useful and fitting. Yet,
the sheer number of examples often results in
their truncated treatment, leaving the reader with
a rather simplistic or shallow view of the events
the authors draw upon. Moreover, where
examples are treated in greater detail, a Eurocen-
trism becomes apparent that is, in fact, one of the
book’s criticisms of IR. This is visible in the very
extensive treatment of World War II, compared
with the treatment of examples given from the
global South. In addition, sometimes distinctly
US views or issues are treated as universal (e.g.
discussions of religion). Finally, the language is, at
times, overly pedantic, to the point of diminish-
ing the importance of the message. Overall, the
book addresses important issues and an import-
ant audience. The problem is, perhaps, with
trying to do too much. A narrower swathe of
international issues with fewer but more balanced
and justly treated examples might have been more
useful. Several theoretical chapters, with a couple
of chapters of detailed case studies to bring their
points to life, might have been more profitable for
the reader and more fair to those that matter.
Kathryn Furlong
Vahabi, Mehrdad, 2004. The Political
Economy of Destructive Power. Cheltenham &
Northampton, MA: Edward Elgar. 280 pp. ISBN
1843768984.
Economists are criticized for portraying human
interaction in overly peaceful ways, focusing on
how actors may voluntarily enter into welfare-
enhancing contracts, and de-emphasizing the use
of coercion and theft to accumulate wealth.
Vahabi argues that the destructive power of man
is a neglected topic in economics, equally import-
ant to production, since there are fewer constrains
on destruction than production, and most can
destroy far greater values than they produce.
Vahabi’s concept of destructive power includes
the potential to engage in violent acts, such as
rebellion and crime, as well as nonviolent con-
straints on production, such as strikes or demon-
strations. Destructive power can be both
appropriative and rule-producing. For example,
Vahabi argues that the US attack on Iraq can be
seen both as an effort to appropriate oil (i.e. a
means to an end) and as an attempt to change the
rules of sovereignty in Iraq and the international
system (i.e. an end itself). Vahabi traces the
sources of destructive power to features such as
technology, legitimacy, and organization, explor-
ing the implications of destructive power for
classical economic theory. This is primarily a
book on the implications of violence for
economic theory, with an endorsement from this
year’s Nobel laureate, Schelling, attesting to its
interest to economists. Although Vahabi invokes
many quite interesting examples, these tend to be
more casual empiricism than systematic analysis,
and are sometimes based on assertions that many
readers may disagree with, such as the alleged
motives for the behavior of the USA against Iraq.
Furthermore, the book deals with economic
BOOK NOTES 237
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