Review: Regional Studies: Pacific Cooperation
| Author | Laure Paquette |
| Date | 01 June 1996 |
| DOI | 10.1177/002070209605100226 |
| Published date | 01 June 1996 |
| Subject Matter | Review |
REVIEWS/REGIONAL
STUDIES
391
This collection
maintains the
high
standard
set
by
the
first.
The
writing
is
generally
clear
and
direct,
and
the
editing
is
firm,
with
only
a
few
minor
errors
to
be
found (one
author
confuses
the
over-optimis-
tic
Cecchini
report
with
the
white
paper on the
single
market).
The
endnotes
are rich
in
additional
references
while
the
index
has
been
compiled
with
commendable
attention
to
detail.
Charles
C.
Pentland/Queen's
University
PACIFIC
COOPERATION
Building
economic
and
security
regimes
in
the
Asia-Pacific
region
Edited
by
Andrew
Mack
and
John
Ravenhill
Boulder,
co:
Westview,
1995,
Xii,
289pp,
US$58.oo
Theorizing
about
Asia
and
the
Pacific
is
in
its
infancy.
Any
collection
which
attempts
to
fill
the
gap
is
certain
to
occupy
an
important
place
in
the
literature.
Mack
and
Ravenhill's
collection
is
an
examination
of
the
contribution
of
theories
of
international
co-operation
to
the
under-
standing
of
the
interstate
political
process
in
Asia
and the
Pacific.
The
editors
claim
to
be
exploring
only
regime
theory,
but
this
is
either
too
narrow
or
too
modest.
This
book's
principal
virtue
lies
in
the questions
it raises.
Its
principal
failing
is
that
in
a
number
of
cases
the
questions
are raised
more
convincingly
than
they
are
answered.
To
be
fair,
the
authors
begin
with
a
disclaimer
about
the
exploratory
nature
of
most
contributions.
It
is
also
true
that
the
collection
represents
bread-and-
butter
research
of
a
type
that
is
not
done
often
enough
in
international
studies:
publishing
results
of
enquiry
even
when the
authors
themselves
agree
that
the
enquiry
failed.
Surely
there
is
a
place
in
political
science
for
noble
experiments and
even
failures.
The
stated
objective
of
this
collection
is
to
make
a
systematic
attempt
to
determine
what lessons
might
be
learned
from
co-operation
in
the
security
realm
from
the
recent
successes
in
promoting
region-
wide
economic co-operation,
or
to
examine the
relevance for
the
Asia-Pacific
region
of
the
largely
Eurocentric literature
on
international
regimes. Certainly
the
various
pieces
in
the
book
ask
all
the
right
ques-
tions
about
the
definition
of
Asia-Pacific
as
a
region,
about
the
factors
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