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The book proposes a number of sophisticated theoretical statements on the sources of the protraction or partial failure of Russia's transition so far. One of its basic claims is that Russia has entered the road of democratization without yet being a fully "modern" state. This implies that it does not yet have a rule of law, an effective civil society, and mechanisms to hold politicians accountable between elections and even through them. The positive effect of the introduction of electoral procedures - though being by themselves more or less meaningful - is thus diminished by the context in which the candidates and voters interact. That is what is meant by "Russia's challenge to Vladimir Putin." Such a proposition constitutes an adequate and lucid diagnosis though I doubt that the term "modern" is the most appropriate one to conceptualize the issue at hand here. ("Modernity" is, in general, such a diffuse concept that it might be better to avoid it in focused social analysis.) Still, the substance of Rose's and Munro's argument is certainly relevant. One would wish Putin, his assistants and Russian politicians in general would read the book because it so refreshingly clearly states what Russia's major problem today seems to be.
This is one of the general advantages of this text. The authors' opinions are stated explicitly, and their critique of Russian practices sometimes borders to what Russians might consider "politically incorrect." For instance, the authors affirmatively quote S.E. Finer who judged Ivan the Terrible's rule to have been "the most extreme example of arbitrary and capricious despotism to be found anywhere" (as quoted on p. 17). When Rose and Munro deal with the pathologies of the post-Soviet Russian political structure by way of not lamenting the absence of a real party system, as is often done, but introducing the idea that there are four party systems producing "a system of floating parties" they can be envied for finding original ways to decipher one of the major paradoxes of post-Soviet Russian politics.
I found reading Rose's and Munro's thus to be fun and a challenge at the same time. We learn a lot about Russia. The opinions of the authors on many issues in her politics and society are well-informed. But the range of issues dealt with is too broad, and the amount of numbers and percentages sometimes overwhelming (at least, for those among us not trained in memorizing and computing large amounts of numerical data). A narrower focus of the study, presentation of less survey results, and use of more qualitative data might have made the argument clearer.

The End of The West is a collection of rich and informative essays written by experts from various disciplines like Political science, history, law, economics, sociology etc. It is indeed a very pertinent book in keeping with time.

Indeed the edifice of the modern international order led by the United States under the garb of Western civilization rests very much on the duration of the transatlantic alliance. It was a historical and strategic inevitability that the Atlantic alliance developed a deep hole once the very purpose for which such an international architecture was created vamoosed into the blue.

The various essays in the book seeks to look at the problem in various ways, especially in the backdrop of the differences over Afghan and Iraqi war and also over N-Korea and Iran nuclear stand off. It is true that there has been growing divergence in interests among the transatlantic partners.

Since it is Europe whose geographical and political landscape had undergone sea change in the wake of the end of the cold war and since the United States had always been a remote player, it is no wonder that Europe might again consider itself as the centerpiece of international politics.

The crisis in the West portends bad for both Europe and the United States and for a stable international political order. But can it be said that the end of the West would be the end of history since modern civilzation had started some five years ago at the behest of the European great powers.

Gautam Maitra
Author of 'Tracing the Eagle's Orbit: Illuminating Insights into Major US Foreign Policies Since Independence.'

i only read a few chapters of this book, those which were assigned by prof. markovits, but it was an excelent look at the new german left. he is an excelent historian, author, and teacher! i'm buying this book for a leftie friend so he can see the origins of the green movement.

Unravels the root causes of poverty, terrorism and war. A must read for all those who want to understand the world and how the Western elite have manipulated the world economy and geography to create pseudo-slavery under the guise of "freedom". A must read for all those who love true freedom and human dignity.

This book is fabulous for all political researchers as it gives the whole timeline of how we got to the present day in our world political movements.

I had been hoping for a timeline of the Middle East and America's involvement in it.

This is my second Pender book and it won't be my last.

From The Daily Telegraph London January 01, 2005
Why we need empires
Andrew Roberts

Deepak Lal is the nephew of a former mayor of Delhi and Nehru cabinet minister who was imprisoned by the British. Lal is himself a former Indian foreign-service diplomat, Oxford economics don, research administrator for the World Bank, the author of 19 books, and professor of international development at UCLA. He began life believing in the socialist and nationalist ideologies of post-independence India, and so is the ideal person to write a book with the title In Praise of Empires.

"It is evidence and experience," Lal says, "especially in working and travelling in most parts of the Third World during my professional career, which have led me to change my earlier views." In only 216 pages of tautly written, sharply worded and frankly exhilarating text, Lal sets out the case for imperialism in the modern world, and why the United States could bring untold benefits to the planet if only it could shrug off the notion, held ever since the Revolutionary War-era, that empires are bad things per se.

"The order provided by empires," Lal argues, "has been essential for the working of the benign processes of globalisation, which promote prosperity." This splendidly revisionist statement is supported by a wealth of evidence and acutely chosen statistical tables, backed up by an impressive range of sources from fellow intellectuals. Drawing on the ideas of Raymond Aron, Hedley Bull, Niall Ferguson, Michael Oakeshott and many others, Lal none the less constructs his own analysis of where the English-speaking peoples have been, where we're headed and what might happen if we choose not to go there.

As one would expect from such a distinguished scholar, Lal defines his terms carefully, thus: "Globalization is the process of creating a common economic space which leads to a growing integration of the world economy through increasingly free movement of goods, capital and labour," something that he believes is almost always "a positive sum game". Modern America can choose to go down the route of free trade and laissez-faire, thereby enriching the world as well as itself, or it can stick with the New Deal-era populist anti-trust legislation and trade-reciprocity that Lal believes impoverishes both the world and the United States itself.

"Not since the fall of the Roman Empire has there been a potential imperial power like the US today," Lal states, and the role that has been thrust upon her by History, one that she must not now shirk, is to create what he calls a "LIEO", a Liberal International Economic Order. The main attributes of the LIEO imposed by the British in the 19th century were free trade, free mobility of capital, sound money due to the gold standard, property rights guaranteed by law, piracy-free transportation thanks to the Royal Navy, political stability, low domestic taxation and spending, and "gentlemanly" capitalism run from the City of London. "Despite Marxist and nationalist cant," Lal writes, the British empire delivered astonishing growth rates, at least in those places fortunate enough to be coloured pink on the globe.

The great villain of this book is President Woodrow Wilson, whose "utopian world view was a strange mixture of classical liberalism, Burkean conservatism, Presbyterianism, and socialism". It was a combination that propelled Wilson towards giving self-determination to ethnic groupings that had not enjoyed it for centuries, with ultimately disastrous results. Lal also blames Wilson's vandalism of the Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman empires in 1919 for creating the circumstances that allowed the rise of Hitler.

To invert Dean Acheson's famous quip about post-Suez Britain, America has found an empire but has yet to find a role. Republicans and Democrats both shun the term "empire" as profoundly un-American, despite the fact that it represents a potentially far higher historic calling than the merely nation-based ideals of 1776. Lal rejects the neo-conservative project of extending democracy throughout the globe, arguing that experience shows that in places like Iran and Algeria it will be used to promote Islamic nihilism and obscurantism. For him modernity - by which he means economic globalisation and enforced order - is the touchstone, and the perfect way for America both to defeat al-Qaeda and to earn the enduring salute of History. Imperialism is an idea whose time has come again.

Compiled and edited by Lance Banning (Professor of History, University of Kentucky), Liberty And Order: The First American Party Struggle presents representatives of the Federalist and Anti-Federalist factions expounding in their own words their divergent philosophies, visions, and concerns -- differences that would give birth to a system of American political parties which was originally unexpected and unforeseen by the Founding Fathers and the United States Constitution. Liberty And Order provides significant insights and backgrounding into such historical issues as the development of the Bill of Rights; the impact of the French Revolution and the War of 1812 upon American civil liberties and foreign policy; and the primal foundations of what we recognize today as the American political economy. Liberty And Order is a seminal contribution to school and community library American Political History collections.

A great introduction to the origins of the state, by two very smart professors at the good ol State University at Oswego, great job guys

Prof. Holsti's book is a must for students of conflict studies. The very thorough and well organized review of sources of conflict is broken into logical groupings of history. The study's end at the end of the Cold War makes it an excellent, self contained reference for understanding principle sources of conflict during the predominately statist view of the world from Westphalia to the demise of the Soviet Union. Though one may debate about the direction of the world today, Holsti's study is still relevant, as states won't disappear overnight, and will likely remain players for our lifetimes. And likely remain disposed to conflict during that time, too.

Not a bed-time story book, but certainly a must for serious students of war and peace.

This book has basically to do with answering two critical questions."Can the impending transition to multipolarity be managed peacefully?" If yes, "under what conditions and through what causal mechanisms can power transitions occur peacefully?" (P.2) The book offers three factors that make peaceful power transition possible. First, benignity or benign images that current hegemon and rising power have vis-à-vis each other. Second, order that these powers negotiate about power transition. Third, legitimacy that rising power will have over upcoming order in the eyes of current hegemon and other world powers. While strategic restraint and mutual accommodation lead to emergence of benign images, similar or shared identities, cultures also result in benignity. Hierarchy of prestige, rules about trade and about use of force, procedures for managing territorial change, and mutual recognition of spheres of influence are basic elements of order that should be negotiated between current hegemon and challenging power. Legitimacy as leading element for socialized instability in international system is mostly dealt with multilateral framework, in which hegemonic power has to do with other states and/or actors in world politics. On the basis of these three fundamental concepts, Power in Transition tests and illustrates its theoretical arguments with three historical cases; rapprochement between the United States and Great Britain in the late 19th century, the Concert of Europe (1815-1848), and ASEAN. In all these historical illustrations benignity, order and legitimacy play significant role though not equally. This work also has a fundamental assumption that power, institutions, identities and ideas altogether significantly matter in peaceful transition of international order. Although the authors have argued that this book is not a definitive study rather it is just brainstorming about peaceful systemic change it is well beyond this modest standing. It deserves close attention by all students of systemic change and international relations.