Book Review: Comparative Politics: The Origins of Free Peoples
| Published date | 01 May 2013 |
| Date | 01 May 2013 |
| Author | Beniamino F. Cislaghi |
| DOI | 10.1111/1478-9302.12016_6 |
| Subject Matter | Book Review |
his main concern being to avoid the risk of ‘over-
inflating the concept of injustice, turning this concept
into something rhetorically powerful but analytically
blunt’ (p. 12).
In the opening chapter he therefore identifies three
dimensions, of which social injustice as mal-distribution
always has to be present,whether or not in conjunction
with social injustice as exclusion and/or social injustice as
disempowerment. As such, it should be clear that the
essence of social injustice is more than simply inequality.
At the same time Bufacchi makes a strong plea for a
bottom-up approach, which starts from empirical
research,instead of a theor y-drivenapproach which takes
theory as its starting point and applies it to various indi-
vidual, so-called supportive, cases.The main reason for
doing this is to answer Brian Barry’s call to make every
effort to avoid the discipline of political philosophy
becoming irrelevant outside university lecture theatres.
Above all,the growing gap between what professional
political philosophers write about and what Bufacchi,
following the lead of Barry, considers to be the ‘real’
issues in politics, should be stopped.The author himself
has obeyed the call by tackling a wide range of problem-
driven topics,such as exploitation, torture and terrorism,
contractualism, deliberative democracy in Guatemala,
voting and socialism. These are all interesting essays,
lucid, well written and often thought provoking.
However, one could raise doubts about the internal
coherence of the whole volume.Of course, the essays all
relate to the general theme of social injustice, but it
would be equally true to say that they are a tribute to
Bufacchi’s former PhD supervisor, the late political phi-
losopher Brian Barry. In doing so, we would not be
doing an injustice to the author’s intentions.
Erik De Bom
(Erasmus University, Rotterdam)
Understanding Public Policy: Theories and
Issues by Paul Cairney. Basingstoke: Palgrave Mac-
millan, 2012.327pp., £24.99,ISBN 978 0 230 22971 6
The book focuses on understanding public policy in
terms of theories and concepts and the issues surround-
ing them. The book introduces us to why we study
public policy, the reason being that we want to know
why particular decisions were made by the government,
and the book’s fundamental argument is to bring
together old and new theories surrounding the issue of
public policy. Under Paul Cairney’s approach each
chapter sets out a key theory or concern of public
policy, identifies its values and explores the questions
each theory seeks to answer, considering,where appro-
priate, how each theory or concept has been applied
empirically and how much it tells us about different
political systems, policy areas and time periods.
The author analyses comparative public policies in
much of Europe and America, touches on Japan and
looks at broad topics that relate to public policy, espe-
cially theories, concepts and issues such as power, new
institutionalism, rationality and incrementalism, rational
choice, multi-level government and punctuated equi-
librium, among other s.
The book is aimed at people interested in and/or
interacting with policy issues such as policy makers,
students of public policy and/or political science, inter-
est and pressure groups, researchers on public policy
and policy research institutes (PRIs) as well as public
administrators at all levels of policy.
Inasmuch as the author promises to help us under-
stand public policy, especially the theories and issues
surrounding it, he succeeds in his goals, in that he
explains every term he introduces to the readers.
Indeed, public policy being difficult to study, the book
is noteworthy because it lays bare all the theories,issues
and concepts in the field and explores their impor-
tance, implications and application.
The only gap or anomaly is in the book’s scope
because it does not highlight theories, issues and con-
cepts in much of the Third World,especially Africa, and
so deprives readers of vital information on public policy
emanating from these regions. There needs to be a
comparative study on public policy of the so-called First
and ThirdWorlds,or a highlighting of public policies in
the ThirdWorld. However, the author’s arguments are
plausible and grounded because they are based on expe-
riences, observations and research. Overall,the book is
well written and scholarly in its entire approach.
Moses Kibe Kihiko
(Independent Scholar)
The Origins of Free Peoples by Jason Caro.
London: Continuum, 2011. 176pp., £65.00, ISBN
9781441113047
Caro’s research reconstructs the origin of free peoples
from an innovative and interesting perspective. The
230 POLITICAL THEORY
© 2013 TheAuthors. Political Studies Review © 2013 Political Studies Association
Political Studies Review: 2013, 11(2)
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