Crime, War, and Global Trafficking: Designing International Cooperation
| Author | Jillian Lewis |
| Date | 01 May 2011 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1758-5899.2011.00084_5.x |
| Published date | 01 May 2011 |
security is much more loosely woven through the chap-
ters, reflecting its contested nature in global politics.
Robert Kissack
Dr Robert Kissack is Junior Professor at the Institut Barce-
lona d’Estudis Internacionals (IBEI).
Global Energy Governance: The New Rules of the
Game by Andreas Goldthau (author, ed.) and Jan Mitte
Wan (ed). Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press,
2009. 377 pp., £28.99 paperback, 9780815703433
Debates about energy policy are dominated by a focus
on security and resource nationalism. This book offers a
welcome departure from that approach, providing a
fresh range of voices centered on energy markets and
their associated institutions. In 16 essays, the writers in
Global Energy Governance mix detailed explanations of
today’s field of energy governance with forward-looking
elements that highlight coming changes. This combina-
tion makes the book an excellent reference for those
who are just learning about the subject, as well as an
informative read for experts.
The volume is the culmination of the Global Public Policy
Institute’s two-year project aimed at broadening the energy
dialogue by including a discussion of the interplay of new
markets and emerging institutions along with the well-stud-
ied issue of energy security. Each contributor is an expert in
the field, and the book brings in commentators representing
industry, government and civil society. This helps the book
staygrounded in public policy while also providing a broader
picture than a study focused on a single region, energy
source or political angle. Individual articles are strong
enough to stand alone if the reader is more interested in a
specificresearch area.
Editors Andreas Goldthau and Jan Martin Witte reveal
how energy politics are not zero-sum. Countries may
win or lose, but that is not inherent. The subtitle, ‘The
New Rules of the Game’, provides a basis for analysis.
The traditional high-producing and consuming nations
are still dominant players in the game. But emerging
markets – notably India and China – play an ever-
increasing role, changing the balance of power. These
actors are concerned with not only the availability and
transportation of traditional fuels such as gas and petro-
leum but also the growth and promotion of alternative
fuels, including biogas.
Scholars have traditionally approached global energy
markets by considering how the interactions between
states help them achieve their energy needs. Here, how-
ever, the contributors show how institutional rules tie
these different actors together. The writers are predomi-
nately concerned with how this system is changing, who
is responsible and how the system can be improved. Old
systems, like bilateral agreements for oil, have given way
to fluid global markets for petroleum products. These
markets do not operate entirely laissez-faire, and interna-
tional instruments such as the Energy Charter Treaty are
beginning to exert influence on actors, markets and the
study of energy governance.
Doom and gloom are common in the energy field. Cli-
mate change, cartels, rising prices and depleted stocks
make newspaper headlines. This book is more optimistic
in its outlook. However, its focus on competitive markets
operating for the theoretical benefit of all parties at
times overshadows valid national energy security con-
cerns. Regardless, it is always welcome to add a collec-
tion of smart and insightful perspectives to the
increasingly important field of energy governance.
Scott McKenzie
Scott McKenzie is a J.D. candidate at the University of
Iowa College of Law and is specializing in international
environmental law.
Crime, War, and Global Trafficking: Designing Interna-
tional Cooperation by Christine Jojarth. New York: Cam-
bridge University Press, 2009. 325 pp., £20.99 paperback,
9780521713764
Mounting concerns related to transnational security and
criminality have resulted in the creation of numerous
international counter-initiatives in recent decades. The
cross-border movement of illicit goods constitutes a
significant policy problem at the juncture between
crime and war, which such counter-initiatives have
sought to address through the establishment of global
institutions, each characterized by their own unique
design features. In this book, Christine Jojarth, a Social
Science Research Associate at the Center on Democ-
racy, Development and the Rule of Law at Stanford
University, seeks to explain key variations in these insti-
tutions, shedding light on the reasons why govern-
ments choose to design those dealing with similar
policy problems so differently.
Using Abbot et al.’s legalization typology to capture
critical differences in institutional design, Jojarth situates
the institutions she considers along a soft–hard law con-
tinuum. The transaction cost economics, problem-based
model developed and tested in the book posits that
‘harder’ (high levels of legalization) governance struc-
tures present an optimal institutional design when asset
specificity and behavioural uncertainty are high, while
‘softer’ (low levels of legalization) institutions are ideal
for addressing policy problems characterized by high
levels of environmental uncertainty.
Reviews 239
Global Policy (2011) 2:2 ª2011 London School of Economics and Political Science and John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
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