Book Review: Helmut K Anheier (ed.), Governance Challenges and Innovations: Financial and Fiscal Governance, David Chandler, Resilience: The Governance of Complexity
| Author | Paul Gunn |
| DOI | 10.1177/1478929916676947 |
| Published date | 01 February 2017 |
| Date | 01 February 2017 |
| Subject Matter | Book ReviewsGeneral Politics |
119
people and showed him instead to be a man
sums up the position of this section nicely: ‘it
with reason to justify his beliefs ‘through the
is not that we don’t know “what” needs to be
virtue of his own moderate qualities’(p. 114).
done, from a purely economic or technical
standpoint, to restore and maintain global
Kamini Sharma
financial stability … Instead, the problem [is
(Jawaharlal Nehru University)
the] political obstacles [to reform]’ (p. 32).
The difficulty identified by Copelovitch
© The Author(s) 2016
Reprints and permissions: sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav
and his co-authors is that the logics of econom-
DOI: 10.1177/1478929916673761
ics and politics are impossible to disentangle;
journals.sagepub.com/home/psrev
economic policies and reforms are not chosen
by economics professors, but rather by elector-
Governance Challenges and Innovations:
ally and sometimes self-interested politicians.
Financial and Fiscal Governance by
Thus, governments tend to ignore moral haz-
Helmut K Anheier (ed.). Oxford: Oxford
ards, focus on the appearance of legitimacy
University Press, 2013. 295pp., £55.00 (h/b), ISBN
rather than effective policy and fail to commit
9780199674930
to rational international commitments or poli-
cies. Consequently, if (or indeed when) there is
Resilience: The Governance of Complexity
another crisis, it is highly likely that the regula-
by David Chandler. Abingdon: Routledge, 2014.
tions and policy structures put in place after the
258pp., £24.99 (p/b), ISBN 9780415741408
2007 crash – which were shaped by domestic
political pressures rather than calculations of
Although the complexity of social and eco-
risk – will fail to respond effectively to, or may
nomic structures was widely recognised by
even exacerbate, the unfolding economic
classical political economists, the analytical
problems.
content of the term ‘complexity’ was largely
The upshot of these analyses (explored to
(though...
To continue reading
Request your trial