Commissioned Book Review: Igor Kovač (ed.), At His Crossroad: Reflections on the Work of France Bučar
| DOI | 10.1177/1478929920908169 |
| Published date | 01 May 2021 |
| Date | 01 May 2021 |
| Author | Davide Fiammenghi |
| Subject Matter | Commissioned Book Reviews |
Political Studies Review
2021, Vol. 19(2) NP21 –NP22
journals.sagepub.com/home/psrev
Commissioned Book Review
908169PSW0010.1177/1478929920908169Political Studies ReviewCommissioned Book Review
book-review2020
Commissioned Book Review
At His Crossroad: Reflections on the Work
of France Bučar by Igor Kovač (ed.). Cham:
Springer, 2019. 170 pp., $131,81 (p/b), ISBN
9783319783307
There is a tendency in political science and
political theory alike to give a few classics dis-
proportionate scholarly attention, while other
works remain understudied, if not ignored alto-
gether. In the introduction to his edited book on
France Bučar, Igor Kovač rightly laments the
visible hiatus between Bučar’s intellectual stat-
ure and the dearth of either English translations
of his writings or critical works assessing his
thinking. Bučar was a concentration-camp sur-
vivor who fought against the Italian fascists and
the Nazis; a dissident during the Cold War, who
was expelled from the communist party in 1963
and ousted from academic positions in 1976; a
legal and public-administration scholar who co-
authored the Slovenian constitution; and, as a
politician, he was a prominent advocate of
Slovenian independence, but also a proponent
of European integration. At his Crossroad:
Reflections on the Work of France Bučar is to
date the first effort to introduce English readers
to Bučar’s ideas. The book brings novel insights
into fields as diverse as economics, legal theory,
European integration, and ethics. Moreover, it
calls on political scientists and political theo-
rists, which are often overly focused on Western
thinkers, to broaden their perspective to Eastern
Europe.
The book is divided into two parts. The first
gathers four essays on different aspects of
Bučar’s thinking. The second is the first
English translation of Bučar’s 2006 book, At a
New Crossroads. The first two essays read
Bučar’s work through the lenses of system
theory. As Mark Hamilton readily admits, this
has a rather weak textual basis in Bučar’s writings,
as he never specifically addressed system
dynamics (p. 15). In the same vein, Peter
Verovšek lays out what he dubs as Bučar’s
‘critical system theory’, but his essay seems to
me of value mostly because it is a mine of
insights into the intellectual and political cli-
mate in which Bučar’s ideas were formed,
including what he calls ‘the Ljubljana School
of Lacano-Marxism’ and the writings of prom-
inent Slovenian philosophers, such as Slavoj
Žižek. Urška Velikonja points out that deregu-
latory measures in the US can be implemented
by failing to enforce a piece of legislation,
which allows to by-pass judicial review and
avoid delays (p. 26). This she connects with
Bučar’s analysis of non-decisions, which he
conceived of as a dysfunction in need of cor-
rection (p. 31). Matej Drev discusses a topic
which is central to Bučar’s analysis: the rela-
tion between profit-seeking activities by the
private sector and the provision of public goods
by the government, and links it to recent
debates on artificial intelligence.
Bučar’s book deals with a gamut of topics
which are impossible to give full justice here. I
will briefly mention what I see as the most
interesting arguments. The fast economic pro-
gress in formerly underdeveloped countries,
such as Slovenia, has pitfalls, because higher
standards of living lead to an erosion of the
spiritual values which were associated with
traditional ways of life (p. 47; cf. pp. 66–67).
Intolerance and xenophobia may help to pre-
serve a country’s identity, but may also lead to
stagnation and to a country not being receptive
to new ideas (pp. 84–86). The process of
European integration may trigger xenophobic
reactions, as small nations are likely to worry
that the ensuing cultural amalgamation mostly
reflects the cultures of larger and more power-
ful nations (p. 85). When environmental condi-
tions pose severe constraints on a society, such
that the breaking of an ethical rule by a mem-
ber can have major negative repercussions on
the society as a whole, ethical rules are taken
very seriously. As the external environment
becomes less of a threat, ethics begins to dete-
riorate. Thus, by freeing people from the
threats of the natural environment, and making
them more secure, technological progress also
undermines ethics (p. 61; cf. p. 106). Market
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