Terrorism and Counterterrorism in Canada by Jez Littlewood, Lorne L. Dawson, and Sara K. Thompson, eds.
| Published date | 01 September 2020 |
| Date | 01 September 2020 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/0020702020954182 |
| Subject Matter | Book Reviews |
transition to post-apartheid South Africa and successful peacemaking efforts to
end civil and/or regional strife in Mozambique, Cambodia, Angola-Namibia, El
Salvador, and Timor-Leste, to name a few.) There is also an extensive, empirical
scholarly literature which delves deeply into the conditions for success and failure
in different aspects of peacemaking that Spears does not cite or discuss. Second,
Spears offers neither a proper definition nor a taxonomy to explain what he means
by the term “conflict resolution.” The concept covers a potentially wide range of
externally driven interventions including, for example, formal versus informal
mediation, track-one and track-two diplomacy, different kinds of peacekeeping,
peacebuilding, and/or forms of “governance” assistance (support for elections, the
formation of political parties, support for strengthening civil society and human
rights organizations, and support for strengthening legal systems, judicial reforms,
etc.). A more discriminating approach to his subject would reveal patterns of
success and failure in these different kinds of interventions, as a wealth of schol-
arship over the past three decades reveals. Third, Spears does not discuss the causal
mechanisms or processes that may have changed the trajectory of a conflict and
political outcomes, which again have been the subject of extensive scholarly
research.
The problem with Spears’s synoptic approach to his subject is that it leaves no
room for what Paul Stern and Daniel Druckman in their major study International
Conflict Resolution After the Cold War for the US National Research Council refer
to as “contingent generalizations”—i.e., “propositions or hypotheses that link the
outcomes of a particular type of intervention to the characteristics of the interven-
tion and the external contingencies that shapes these outcomes” (77). As the dis-
tinguished Stanford University political scientist, the late Alexander George,
argued, political scientists are generally in the business of developing middle-
range theories and contingent generalizations, rather than sweeping ones, about
historical patterns and outcomes. If Spears finds fault with the extensive, extant
conflict resolution literature, which has developed a wealth of research and insights
into the reasons why some interventions fail while others succeed (if only partially),
he should be at greater pains to explain why he believes this literature to be defi-
cient or lacking. To divide the world of conflict resolution into simplistic categories
of “believers” and “critics” does little justice to the study and practice of conflict
resolution or a world that is far more complex than Spears appears prepared
to admit.
Jez Littlewood, Lorne L. Dawson, and Sara K. Thompson, eds.
Terrorism and Counterterrorism in Canada
Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2020. 352pp. $90.00 (cloth).
ISBN: 9781487501860
Reviewed by: Aisha Ahmad (aisha.ahmad@utoronto.ca), University of Toronto
Over the past two decades, an extraordinary amount of research has been pro-
duced on terrorism, and its implications for global security. Adding to this ongoing
450 International Journal 75(3)
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