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Third World Quarterly

Review: [untitled]Author(s): Peter Van Den DungenSource: Third World Quarterly, Vol. 3, No. 3 (Jul., 1981), pp. 540-541Published by: Taylor & Francis, Ltd.Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3990525 .

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540 THIRD WORLD QUARTERLY

appliesto opponents as well as supportersof the statusquo. Few will findhis defence of this

positioninrelation to the problemsof southern Africaconvincing.The resortto violence byAfrican nationalists s not based on anything as shallow as a belief in the cleansing effect of

violence, as Dr Burton at one point suggests n relation to Zimbabwe (p 144). He claims that

his approach has relevance everywhere and at all levels of conflict,but the most convincing

examples of itsapplication hat he gives relate to the treatmentof minorproblemsof affluent

societies such as juvenile delinquency. Nonetheless, many will approve of Dr Burton's

search foralternatives o the explicit,oreven implicit,useof coercion indealingwithpolitical

problems.

ADRIAN GUELKE

Queen's Universityof Belfast

The PoliticalEconomyof War andPeace: the Sino-Soviet-Americanriangleandthe modern

securityproblematique

Richard K Ashley

London: Frances Pinter. 1980. 384 pp. ?15.00

This book is about the sources of conflict and violence among the world's three leading

powers. It isalsoa studyin internationalpoliticaleconomy andprovides anexampleof world

modellingresearch.Finally, andmost importantly, t also aspiresto make a major contribut-

ion to the theory of internationalrelations.

More concretely, it approaches its theme from the particularvantage point of peace

research,concernedas it is withthe causes of war, and the violence-pronenessandpervasive

insecurity of internationalrelations. The conceptual frameworkadopted is that developed

by Nazli Choucri and Robert C North in their Nations in Conflict:nationalgrowth and

internationalviolence (1975). The key concept in this framework, itself the synthesisof a

wide arrayof more traditionalapproachesto understandingnternationalrelations,is thatof

lateral pressure. In their innovative work Choucri and North constructed a causal model,

specifyinginterdependenciesamong domestic growthfactors,colonial expansion, military

expenditures,allianceformationandviolence behaviour.With the help of a largedata base,

referring o the attributesandbehaviour of six Europeanpowers in the period 1870-1914,

they were able to corroborateempirically he hypothesisedrelationships.Theirmost impor-

tant finding was that 'growthcan be a lethal process'.

Using a more refinedconcept, Ashley has now appliedthismethodology to an analysis of

the relations between powers in a different'theatre' and time period, vis-a-visSino-Soviet-

Americanrelations in the period 1950-72. He hassimilarlyassembled a largedata base to

represent the changing attributes of the three powers, their external activities and their

patterns of interaction. Applying econometric research techniques, a general model is

producedwhichspecifies interdependencies inkinggrowthfactors to internationalconflict

andviolence. Whereas Part I of the book presents the conceptualframework and describes

the overall researchmethodology, Part II contains the results of empiricalanalysis of the

dynamicsunderlyingvariation nthe model's six keyvariables.The authoris to be commen-

ded here for his attempt to avoid 'speaking another language', and to present findings,in

straightforward erbal terms (withtechnicalissueslargely referred to footnotes and appen-

dices), thus emphasisingsubstance above technique. It is a not insignificantproof of the

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BOOK REVIEWS 541

sincerityof hisbelief that hisapproachand those favouredby historiansandtraditionalistsn

the field are complementary.

Equally, the occasions where he speaks another 'verbal' language ('mutual environing

relations', 'mutually contextualising levels of analysis', 'recombinatorial possibilities',

'literatures', behaviours', logics') are less numerous than one might have feared, given the

ambitious nature of the enterprise. Still, as Ashley writes, his is not an easy book; it places

'harshdemands upon the reader. It quite literallyasks the readerto struggle.'However, even

for those who would succumb in this struggle the long opening chapter, expounding the

conceptual framework, offers rich rewardswith its philosophicalreflections on the nature of

the 'modem security problematique' and its criticism of the 'technical-rationalgrammar'

which has inspired most thought about internationalrelationsand which, it is argued, needs

to be abandoned if we are ever to frame choices able to produce peace.

PETER VAN DEN DUNGEN

Universityof Bradford

The Third World Reassessed

Elbaki Hermassi

London: University of CaliforniaPress. 1980. 223 pp. ?9.00

Contemporaryconceptualschemesand western expressioningeneralareprofoundlyrooted

in the historical encounter between European and non-European peoples. Distortions

in western historyof humanityand the postulatesand methodology of disciplinesranging

from orientalismto anthropologyhave been criticisedon grounds of their vitiating Euro-

centrism,a-historicity nd'objectification'.Acute polarisationnthe study of the ThirdWorld

with established western social scientists opposing Third World and younger western

scholarsnow beginswiththe very premisesof theirresearch,for while ThirdWorld scholars

startwith practical ssuesof nationalsurvival, he startingpoint formost westernscholars s a

theoreticalmodel. The problemis to balanceconcernsforrigour andvalidity withrelevancy

and sensitivityto urgentdevelopmental problems. The dilemma concernsthe applicationof

the social sciences to societies for which they were not originallyconceived, social science

deparochialisationand how to informthem with Third World experience. To resolve this,Hermassi favoursa continuous interplayof general concepts and concrete situations and

inductivethinkingwhichpromisesto tell us much aboutThirdWorldsocieties. He examines

changing patterns in research, the comparative study of revolutions, Algeria, political

traditionsof the Maghrib,some writingsby Achebe and Naipaulon the assertionof identity,

and Third World options and internationalpolitics.

Hermassi identifiesthree types of development studiesconcerning'traditional'societies,

economic dependency and political organisations.But he refines the conventional radical/

liberaldichotomyto arguethe existenceof four approachesto the studyof development: the

liberal,historicist,managerialand neo-Marxist.He does not however alwaysenlightenus as

to areas of overlap as, for example, with the 'liberal model' and the managerialapproach.But he rightly points to a conservative bias compelling exponents of the managerial

approach o rationalisethe viewpointof those in power and devise strategieswhicharemore

regime-perpetuatingthan nation-building.

The core-peripherymodel is inadequate. Not all developing countries are equally vul-