Comparative Politics
| Published date | 01 September 2010 |
| Date | 01 September 2010 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1478-9302.2010.00217_3.x |
| Subject Matter | Book Review |
growth. Overall, this part of the volume highlights that
there has been a general increase in military expen-
diture, arms production and international arms trans-
fers. Concerning the latter, the link between small
arms transfers and the civil war in Sri Lanka is also
demonstrated.
The final part deals with nuclear, chemical and bio-
logical, and conventional arms control as well as the
expansion of rules on international arms transfers.
Overall, the SIPRI Yearbook 2009 is highly recom-
mended to readers who wish to acquire basic know-
ledge and quantitative data on recent developments,
including international crises and peace agreements;
they will find here a useful survey which does not only
focus upon state actors but also assesses critically the
role of non-state actors in the international arena.
Didem Buhari-Gulmez
(Royal Holloway University of London)
International Relations Scholarship around the
World by Arlene B. Tickner and Ole Wæver
(eds). Abingdon: Routledge, 2009. 351pp., £22.99,
ISBN 978 0 415 77236 5
This is a collection of essays aiming to provide a
detailed description of the social production of inter-
national studies around the world. More specifically,
the volume dedicates full chapters to the way world
politics is researched and taught in Latin America,
South Africa, Africa, Japan, Korea and Taiwan, China,
Southeast Asia, South Asia, Iran, the ‘Arab World’,
Israel, Turkey, Russia, Central and Eastern Europe,
Western Europe and the English-speaking world. The
book is introduced as the first volume of the ‘World-
ing beyond the West’ series and this is the reason why
such emphasis on different academic communities in
the discipline of international relations comes as no
surprise.
The key argument is that although IR is still heavily
based on theories and debates that are mainly devel-
oped within American universities, there is also an
increasing awareness that there is much more to the
discipline. The editors quickly review the status of
meta-scientific studies about the field and suggest a few
concepts and frameworks which are only optionally
employed by the remaining contributors. Maybe the
lack of uniformity in the level of attention that is
directed towards certain variables throughout the book
can be traced to these flexible directives,but perhaps it
is just such a diversity of approaches that adds to the
critical content presented in the volume.
One of the key conclusions of the book is that there
is much need for emphasis on alternative theoretical
sources, especially when theories produced in the US
fail to address or even raise issues that are particular to
other parts of the world. In its diversity of case studies,
this collection is of interest for all those who are uneasy
about the well-known portrayal of IR as an American
social science.
As a positive highlight, the collection ends with a
well-argued comparative study of IR in several distinct
English-speaking academic communities, as well as a
detailed concluding section.On the negative side, clarity
in writing may not be at its best here, and most of the
various approaches adopted in the selection of indicators
and interpretation of evidence follow the lead of already
existing meta-scientific analyses of IR. However,schol-
arship about scholarship is still a recent trend in the
discipline and an alternative focus is expected for the
next volume of the series.This book must certainly be
welcomed as a much-needed initial step towardsa better
understanding of the discipline of IR.
Lucas G. Freire
(University of Exeter)
We welcome short reviews of books in all areas of
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Comparative Politics
Ethnicity and Electoral Politics by Jóhanna
Kristín Birnir. Cambridge: Cambr idge University
Press, 2009. 279pp, £15.99, ISBN 978 0 521 74365 5
This original and insightful book examines the impact
of ethnic political parties in new democracies. Birnir
joins studies by authors such as Chandra and Posner
in challenging the widely held assumption that ethnic
politics is generally, and perhaps inevitably, character-
ised by intransigence and conflict. While ethnic
attachments are deep-rooted and difficult to change,
BOOK REVIEWS 399
© 2010 TheAuthors. Journal compilation © 2010 Political Studies Association
Political Studies Review: 2010, 8(3)
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