Reigns of Terror, Patricia Marchak, Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2003, pp. xi, 306

In Reigns of Terror, Patricia Marchak investigates “the causes and conditions that underlie crimes against humanity conducted under the aegis of states” (x). According to Marchak, most works on genocide (attacks on citizens because of their ethnicity or religion) and politicide (the eradication of people for mainly political reasons) are far too simplistic. She maintains that factors such as racism, ethnic conflict, authoritarian regimes or ideologies of intolerance and hatred are usually important, but each is nonetheless insufficient in explaining situations in the twentieth century in which governments attacked their own citizens.

Representation and Democratic Theory, David Laycock, ed., Vancouver: UBC Press, 2004, pp. 224

Debates over minority rights and identity theory are irreducibly connected to issues of representation and citizenship. But while discussions in the past decade have focused on the philosophical justifications for a discrete set of rights for cultural minorities, there have been fewer efforts made to understand the impact of this demand upon conceptions of representation per se.

Political Philosophy and the God of Abraham, Thomas L. Pangle, Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003, pp. 263

In the beginning was Leo Strauss with his trailblazing Platonizing exegeses of Genesis, “On the Interpretation of Genesis” and “Jerusalem and Athens.” Strauss begat many strong and independent minds who commented on the text. Hillel Fradkin and Robert Sacks were two of the earliest, as was Leon Kass. Kass recently published a hefty commentary on the entirety of Genesis, The Beginning of Wisdom (New York: Free press, 2003).

The Network Society, Darin Barney, London: Polity, 2004, pp. 198

In The Network Society, Darin Barney investigates the claim that “the spirit of our age is the spirit of the network” (2). This claim, the so-called “network society thesis,” announces the birth of a new social order in which “identity, politics, and economy are structured, and operate, as networks” (2). The argument that networks form the organizational principle of social, political, and economic configurations is a direct consequence, we are told, of the communication and management technologies that mediate virtually all contemporary societal practices. This being said, Barney sets out to assess the status of the network society thesis as a truth claim: Does the thesis in fact describe the arrival of a new societal order or does it merely provide a script for its possible realization? Although he concludes the rhetoric of the network society serves both functions, Barney's ultimate concern is that its prescriptive capacity is sufficiently powerful that the political will to offset the further advance of the network society is fast disappearing.

Mondialisation, économie sociale, développement local et solidarité internationale., Louis Favreau et Lucie Fréchette., Sainte-Foy : Presses de l'Université du Québec, 2002, 251 p.

Sujet à la mode que celui de la mondialisation! Le voici abordé sous un angle un peu différent, qui allie les thèmes de l'économie sociale, du développement local et de la solidarité internationale. Ce dernier thème est plus souvent associé à la mondialisation, alors que les deux autres le sont moins.

America Alone: The Neo-Conservatives and the Global World Order, Stefan Halper and Jonathan Clarke, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004, pp. 339

George Will, the American Tory commentator, recently wrote in Newsweek that “neoconservatives alarm almost everyone who isn't one—and especially dismay real conservatives” (emphasis in original). America Alone is a forceful expression of that dismay by two authors with impeccable conservative credentials. Halper served in the Nixon, Ford, and Reagan administrations and is director of the Donner Atlantic Studies Programme at Cambridge University; Clarke, a former British foreign service officer, is a fellow at the Cato Institute in Washington. Their book is both a comprehensive, well documented, no-holds-barred attack on neo-conservative foreign policy—its advocacy of force as a first resort, its unilateralism, its exclusive focus on the Middle East, its total lack of realism—and a defence of what they consider the mainstream Republican foreign policy tradition, which promotes American values and interests using the whole palette of diplomatic, economic, and cultural instruments, as well as military force. The authors are appalled at how neo-conservative policy has squandered the world's post-9/11 sympathy and led to America's isolation from most of its traditional allies. As “limited government conservatives” they are alarmed at the effect of the neo-conservative siege mentality (“World War IV”) on domestic policy and politics, since a “state of constant warfare has the effect of transferring power to the center” (30). They deeply resent the neo-conservatives' claim to Reagan's legacy by creating “a false history” (chapter 5) and argue persuasively that Reagan's foreign policy was solidly in the Republican realist tradition.

Integrating Cognitive and Rational Theories of Foreign Policy Decision Making, Alex Mintz, ed., New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002, pp. 175

Heuristic method uses formal reasoning that is based on experience, often because there is no precise and/or relevant algorithm available. Heuristic reasoning is guided by trial and error. It is convincing without being rigorous. Heuristic method is basically a rule of thumb or other simplifications that allow drawing conclusions without being certain.

The Decline of Politics: Governance, Globalization and the Public Sphere, Peter Marden, Aldershot: Ashgate, 2003, pp. xvi, 286

Here is a book that takes readers above and beyond the usual one-dimensional approach to globalization, all too often couched in economics, with which we have become familiar of late. Marden's Decline of Politics will reward those readers who are looking for a multifaceted analysis of global trends, and will intrigue and challenge those who believe that they already understand them.

Private Power and Global Authority: Transnational Merchant Law in the Global Political Economy, A. Claire Cutler, Cambridge Studies in International Relations; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003, pp. xiv, 306

In Private Power and Global Authority, Claire Cutler presents a theoretically rich and historically detailed account of the interrelationship between transnational merchant law and broader patterns of restructuring in the global political economy. More specifically, she draws upon an historical materialist framework to demonstrate how “fundamental transformations in global power and authority are enhancing the significance of the private sphere in both the creation and enforcement of international commercial law” (1). In doing so, Cutler reveals the power relations and political implications inherent to this seemingly functional realm. At the same time, she looks through the other end of the telescope to show the broadly constitutive role that transnational merchant law has played in the transformation and legitimation of the emerging neoliberal order. In this sense, the changes that Cutler identifies in transnational merchant law both reflect, and help to constitute, broader changes in the global political economy.

Global Complexity, John Urry, London: Polity, 2003 pp. xi, 172

In Global Complexity, John Urry provides at once relatively familiar discussions of globalization and complexity theory and a series of new insights for how complexity theory can be deployed to understand globalization. In fact Urry's discussion blends the analysis of globalization and complexity theory so thoroughly that he makes a convincing case that globalization is inexplicable without complexity theory. The book is long on big (well-conceived) ideas, description and anecdotal evidence and a bit short on specific applications and direction for proceeding with a complexity research agenda. Taken as a whole, Urry provides a compelling case for complexity and Global Complexity should be considered an important entry in both the globalization and complexity theory literatures.