Book Review: Andrew Small, The China-Pakistan Axis: Asia’s New Geopolitics
| DOI | 10.1177/1478929916644548 |
| Date | 01 August 2016 |
| Published date | 01 August 2016 |
| Author | Priyanka Singh |
| Subject Matter | Book ReviewsAsia and the Pacific |
488 Political Studies Review 14 (3)
The essence of this moral formulation is the idea
that in South Asia differences of rank do not
prevent relations, but promote intimacy between
parties in distinct and complementary roles. (pp.
29–30)
Broadly, the book provides an excellent com-
parative ethnographic account of patronage
politics in South Asia. The essays are empiri-
cally sound and theoretically sophisticated;
they are also written in a lucid and coherent
manner. Taken together, the essays will be
immensely useful to students and scholars of
anthropology, political science and South
Asian Studies.
Sarbeswar Sahoo
(Indian Institute of Technology Delhi)
The Author(s) 2016
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DOI: 10.1177/1478929916644546
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Contested Politics of Educational Reform
in India: Aligning Opportunities with
Interests by Manisha Priyam. Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2015. 307pp., £35.99 (h/b), ISBN
9780198098874
In her work, Manisha Priyam argues that the
relationship between politics and educational
reforms has not been on the list of priorities of
policymakers, implementers or analysts, even
though it is commonly understood that reforms
fail for political reasons. She adopts a formal
political economy approach that is a new term
in political literature, originally rooted in the
discipline of economics, and which encom-
passes the perspectives of public choice and
social theories and the principal-agent model
that can be adopted to address the relationship
between educational reforms and politics.
To study the federal framework and the
complexity in implementation of educational
reforms in India between 1994 and 2012,
Priyam selected the two Indian states of Andhra
Pradesh and Bihar, which are among the most
educationally backward states in the country.
Priyam highlights that during the 1980s and
1990s, there was a structural adjustment in the
form of economic reorganisation and restruc-
turing across developing countries in Latin
America and Africa, for example, and that
within a framework of structural adjustment,
educational reforms have been carried out in
these developing countries, including in India.
The work addresses two challenges in particu-
lar. First, a need to focus on the implementa-
tion process and not just on policy design and
outcomes, and second, an explicit focus on
what is happening at the local level.
This book is highly recommended for policy
makers, research agencies, academics and
researchers. The work is innovative and note-
worthy because it touches the often neglected
phenomenon of the relationship between politics
and educational reforms; this phenomenon is not
very deep-rooted in the political literature,
although it has been widely debated in the global
arena. However, the issue of leadership motiva-
tion is not fully explained and also Priyam’s
study is only focused on government schools;
the impact of low-cost private schools on educa-
tional development is missing. Quantitative tools
were adopted to collect the primary data and ana-
lytical tools such as averages and percentages
were used for data interpretation. Hence, the
analysis of the data is not very complicated and
can be easily understood by readers.
The author succeeds in justifying her initial
arguments regarding the role of politics in
implementating part of the educational reforms.
This research is definitely a valuable piece of
work in political literature, since it provides a
concrete base for studying the positive and neg-
ative effects of politics on the implementation
of educational reforms in developing countries
such as India. To conclude, from a theoretical
and empirical point of view, this book is well
written and supported by arguments based upon
political literature review.
Padmini Tomer
(S.B.S.B.M. University College)
The Author(s) 2016
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DOI: 10.1177/1478929916644547
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The China-Pakistan Axis: Asia’s New
Geopolitics by Andrew Small. London: C
Hurst & Co, 2015. 288 pp., £30.00 (h/b). ISBN
9781849043410
In the ongoing fast-paced geopolitical transfor-
mation witnessed inside Asia, with China
being cast as a future super power, the protrac-
tive bilateral relationship between China and
Pakistan is assuming unprecedented signifi-
cance. This is especially the case in the wake of
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