Book Review: Peter Baldwin, The Narcissism of Minor Differences: How America and Europe Are Alike (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009, 331 pp., £14.99 pbk)
| Author | Kelly Mckowen,Ulrich Krotz |
| DOI | 10.1177/0305829811412274 |
| Published date | 01 September 2011 |
| Date | 01 September 2011 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
MILLENNIU
M
Journal of International Studies
Millennium: Journal of
International Studies
40(1) 187–226
© The Author(s) 2011
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DOI: 10.1177/0305829811412274
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Book Reviews
Peter Baldwin, The Narcissism of Minor Differences: How America and Europe Are Alike (New York:
Oxford University Press, 2009, 331 pp., £14.99 pbk).
In The Narcissism of Minor Differences, Peter Baldwin sets himself the ambitious task of
elucidating the supposed divergence in measurable social and economic ‘outcomes’ (p.
222) between Europe and the United States (US). His findings, underpinned by a surfeit
of statistics and surveys, as well as the occasional anecdote, effectively dispel many of
the popular contemporary myths about significant political, economic and social differ-
ences given currency on both sides of the Atlantic. Allowing the numbers to speak for
themselves, Baldwin challenges notions of European success and American failure – as
envisioned by American liberals and European leftists – and perceptions of American
exceptionalism in the face of European decadence – as American right-wingers prefer to
believe. What emerges from this exercise in quantitative iconoclasm is an original and
stimulating vision of the transatlantic community, highlighting that ‘the similarities
across the North Atlantic are at least as salient as the divergences’ (p. 204).
Baldwin builds his case for this vision through careful, systematic analysis of a stag-
gering number of comparisons. The book’s 212 graphs measure the similarities and dif-
ferences between the European countries and the US in topics ranging from unemployment
and military spending to ‘Fish and Fishery Products Consumption’ (p. 50), ‘Belief in
Astrology’ (p. 183) and beyond. Of the book’s 17 chapters, the first 12 tackle these com-
parisons thematically in well-organised, self-sufficient sections with titles such as ‘The
Economy’, ‘Crime’ and ‘Nationalism’. These are followed by five chapters of extended
analysis and interpretation of the statistics for fields like international relations and
European identity formation.
Interestingly, it is perhaps in the less novel statistics that Baldwin’s message is most
convincing. Utilising rather standard measurements – union membership, unemploy-
ment, vacation time, wage levels, among others – he seeks to uncover the empirical
foundation for the popular notion which casts the American economic system as ‘preda-
tory’, emphasising ‘the market and the absence of state regulation’ (p. 15), and its
European counterpart as a scion of state intervention and rigid regulation. Strikingly, one
sees that the ‘exceptional’ US is in fact rarely the exception, routinely shying away from
the flanks occupied by the Scandinavian countries on one side and the Mediterranean
ones on the other.
Still, this pattern is not entirely consistent. Some of the statistics do in fact reveal
profound, incontestable divergences between Europe and the US. A lack of universal
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