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Jennifer L. HochschildEditorBook Reviews

Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, Vol. 20, No. 1, 173–190 (2001)© 2001 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and ManagementPublished by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Note to Book Publishers: Please send all books for review directly to the Book ReviewEditor, Jennifer L. Hochschild, Dept. of Government, Harvard University, Littauer,Rm M30, Cambridge, MA 02138.

Robert Hunt Sprinkle

Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies, by Jared Diamond. New York:W. W. Norton, 1997, 1999, 480 pp., $14.95 paper.

In bookstores round the world, thousands of policy scholars must have had a lookat Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies, written by Jared Diamondand honored with the Phi Beta Kappa Award in Science and a Pulitzer Prize. Intriguing,ambitious, brilliant, demanding, exotic, idiosyncratic, cranky, and irrelevant to policydebate—these must have been typical first impressions, all but the last one correct.

This book must be counted among the many works that to greater or lesser degreehave been written to counter, or—as one would guess here—altered to counter moreeffectively, The Bell Curve (Herrnstein and Murray, 1994), a putatively objectiveremaking of an old and still subjectively appealing argument that the fates of societiesare differentiated powerfully, perhaps chiefly, by the comparative distribution of theirmembers’ inborn intellectual abilities. Diamond mentions The Bell Curve by nameonly in an appendix, calling it “[t]he best-known or most notorious recent entrantinto the debate about group differences in intelligence” (p.431). But it and itspredecessors’ arguments were squarely in his mind’s eye when aiming his own bolts,as is made clear early and often. “An enormous effort by cognitive psychologists hasgone into the search for differences in IQ between peoples of different geographicorigins now living in the same country. In particular, numerous white Americanpsychologists have been trying for decades to demonstrate that black Americans ofAfrican origins are innately less intelligent than white Americans of European origins”(p.20). Note in passing the author’s awareness, which he hopes to impart to hisreadership, that “black” and “of African origins” are not interchangeable modifiers,and that neither are “white” and “of European origins.”

Inexplicably, Diamond’s opening attack takes shape as an assertion, drawn “from33 years of working with New Guineans in their own intact societies,” but supportedby no citation in what is disappointingly a footnote-free book: “[I]n mental abilityNew Guineans are probably genetically superior to Westerners” (pp.20–21). Is this alapse of authorial judgment and editorial responsibility, the reader might ask, or is itthe first of many problems? It turns out to be a lapse. The weaknesses of a genetically

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deterministic explanation for differences in the social and scholastic achievements ofvariously shaded human groups are widely known, if not uniformly acknowledged. Itwould have been preferable here simply to observe that most every currently “inferior”group has had its golden age, its era of high self-esteem and earned admiration, andthat each could have another, ceteris paribus.

However, cetera paria raro sunt, other things are rarely equal, and it is things andtheir inequality, their long, complex, changeable, and fatefully interactive inequality,that Guns, Germs, and Steel is about. Jared Diamond, a molecular physiologist,evolutionary biologist, ornithologist, anthropologist, polymath (obviously), andartesian spring of erudition, one of UCLA’s most fungible assets, is a materialist. He isa historical materialist, surely, and, denials aside, a historical determinist—even aprehistorical determinist—but one for whom human history is natural, morefundamentally than sociopolitical, and for whom historical determination can easilybe changed by material luck.

Diamond opens this “scientific history” with questions a black New Guinean nativeof long acquaintance posed to him. Why were some countries so rich and some othersso poor, asked his friend? Why did Europe subdue New Guinea, for instance, and notthe other way around? Why were some societies and some races so markedly lesssuccessful than some others?

Questions such as these Diamond asks both in bold generality and subtle specificity,bringing forward for analysis the most obvious and most troubling consistencies inthe human story; and the answers offered here are powerful ones. “Authors areregularly asked by journalists to summarize a long book in one sentence. For thisbook, here is such a sentence: ‘History followed different courses for different peoplesbecause of differences among peoples’ environments, not because of biologicaldifferences among peoples themselves’” (p.25).

Diamond starts by explaining that some human societies got a head start onindigenous development, and others a delayed start, simply as a function offoundational age. Europe was settled long before greater Australia, a now-dividedlandmass corresponding to modern New Guinea, Australia, and Tasmania. Chinawas settled long before Chile, and so forth. He next discusses, in more detail thanmany best-seller buyers could have foreseen, the peopling of Polynesia, a region hecame to know as a student of avian evolution. The Polynesian saga turns out rathernicely as a prototype for continental experiences, habitable islands in the ocean beinglike favored ecosystems on land. Most readers will appreciate a languid unplannedholiday from Eurocentrism, though they might feel uneasy being so fully in the handsof a guide they have just met.

Major themes first come together in an introduction to intersocietal “collisions”through chance, trade, and conquest. The nearly magical ease with which a fewrepresentatives of culturally, tactically, technologically, and immunologically primedEuropean societies conquered large and confident but much younger Amerindiansocieties leads to engagingly insightful presentations of the true masterforces of humanhistory: refinements in hunting and gathering; advances in settled food production,including the domestication of plants and animals; transformative epidemiologicalconsequences—measles, tuberculosis, smallpox, influenza, and so on—of animaldomestication, which was almost wholly a Eurasian phenomenon; geographicalfactors in the spread of foods and ideas; inducements and impediments to the inventionand perfection of writing and other technologies. All these forces are explained aseffectors of social and organizational change—far more than as the product of suchchange—and as determinants of historical patterns on regional, continental, andtranscontinental scales.

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There is so much to learn in these pages, so much to admire in the stories themselvesand in the scholarship, skill, and bearing of the scientist-historian telling them thatthe doubting reader is compelled to concede point after point. Diamond makes somany of his cases so convincingly that complaints fade into quibbles.

Consider the globe. The notion that Eurasia’s east–west axis facilitated travel andthe dissemination of seeds and technologies initially seems a stretch, straining theauthor’s general claim about the significance of continental-axis orientation—east–west versus north–south (pp.176–191). But then the reader is led to consider thecontinental-axis problem that worked against those Eurasians who becameAmerindians. Though it might at first seem to have been comparatively mild, theNew World’s continental-axis problem was far worse. Countless bands of huntersslowly wandered south from the Arctic to the equator, always adapting to new daylengths, new temperature ranges, new flora and fauna. Descendents of these firstNew Worlders, each in their turn, then had to adapt in reverse sequence if they climbedthe Andes and drifted ever farther south toward Tierra del Fuego. Thousands of years’worth of cold-weather wisdom had to be replaced with newly won warm-weatherwisdom, only to be learned again from scratch, latitude line by latitude line, isobarby isobar, ecosystem by ecosystem—a terrible developmental handicap.

In a grandly synthesizing work as far-reaching as this one, some sites of interpretivehastiness are to be expected. One such comes in a chapter on the origins of socialorganization, class distinction, and political institutions. Here, Diamond describes aprocess leading from band to tribe to chiefdom to state, the last two being “ranked”societies about which the key question is this: “[W]hy do the commoners tolerate thetransfer of the fruits of their hard labor to kleptocrats?” Diamond answers that theydo so because “[k]leptocrats throughout the ages have resorted to a mixture of foursolutions,” these being the disarming of the populace and the arming of an elite; thepopulist redistribution of tribute; the promotion of happiness through the maintenanceof public order; and the imposition of a justifying ideology or religion (pp.265–278).He then elaborates the implications of these patterns (pp.278–292). Diamond’s thesisalternates between being helpfully incisive and simplistically hard-edged, evenadamantly blunt.

Another example comes in Diamond’s discussion of China’s audacious butmotivationally complex maritime initiative of the early fifteenth century. Seven Ming“treasure fleets” put to sea “consisting of hundreds of ships up to 400 feet long andwith total crews of up to 28,000.” They sailed port-to-port in East Asia and aroundthe Indian Ocean rim as far west as East Africa, “decades before Columbus’s threepuny ships crossed the narrow Atlantic Ocean to the Americas’ east coast. Why didn’tChinese ships proceed around Africa’s southern cape westward and colonize Europe,before Vasco da Gama’s own three puny ships rounded the Cape of Good Hopeeastward and launched Europe’s colonization of East Asia? Why didn’t Chinese shipscross the Pacific to colonize the Americas’ west coast? Why, in brief, did China loseits technological lead to the formerly so backward”—yet by then spectacularly fan-vaulted and navigationally far more skilful—“Europe?” Diamond’s answers are paired:rivalry at court between eunuchs and anti-eunuchs, and the perverse effect of politicalunity. When the emperor was swayed by the anti-eunuchs to set his face againstmaritime activism, then China as a whole stayed obediently ashore (pp.411–413).

Yes, eunuchs had earned the trust of the new emperor on his path to power andwere assigned leading roles in the navy, and Confucians, who tended to favoragriculturalism over adventurism, competed with eunuchs for influence at court.But less Byzantine explanations are available. Each expedition seems to have beencommissioned for its own rather sensible set of reasons, which never included

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exploration or colonization. Grandiosity—the most elaborate ships were twice as longas China-trade clippers would be in the 19th century—was surely, then as now, anasset in “gunboat” diplomacy, but grandiosity in this case led to imprudentlyburdensome taxation. Taken together, economic strain, completion of Grand Canalrenovations, which greatly decreased dependence on easily pirated coastal shipping,and accomplishment of the diplomatic and tributary missions assigned to expeditionsone through seven may well enough explain why there was no expedition eight(Bosworth, 1999). Whether the treasure ships themselves could routinely have venturedfar abroad as safely and profitably as “punier” ships like da Gama’s tough little lateen-rigged carracks cannot be known.

One irony rates a last remark here. The navigational honor of reaching East Africafrom Ming China may seem to diminish somewhat on reading Diamond’s enthrallingallusion to the settlement of Madagascar not just by neighboring sub-Saharan Africansbut by Austronesians from, of all places, Borneo—some 4,000 sea miles away. “Thisstrikes me as the single most astonishing fact of human geography for the entireworld,” he says (p. 381). Arrival of the Austronesians, evidently as a large and well-prepared expedition, has now been dated to between AD 300 and 800, an age of activeseaborne regional trade, and the expedition was substantial enough to makeMadagascar’s modern language “basically Austronesian,” as well as to transform theagriculture of the African mainland (pp.392–393).

Other problems, if they are problems, swirl by throughout the book, aloft in a glitterof learning. Has the author presented a conclusion that leaders in relevant fieldsreached long ago, reached recently with wide agreement or with serious dissent, orwill reach when they read this book? Often hard to say. Diamond cites a number ofsources in his text, but, given the length and disciplinary scope of the book, the numberis rather small, especially since he sets out not to popularize a consensus but to presenta comprehensive theory when others before him have made only narrower claims.Parts of Diamond’s subject were treated distinctively by other scholars in widely readearlier works (McNeill, 1976); more might have been said about them. Doubtless, theauthor was trying to keep his work within the grasp of the conscientious generalreader—whence, presumably, the lack of appeal to molecular genetic evidence tosupplement linguistic and other evidence in the detailing of migratory patterns andthe prehistoric displacements of peoples. An annotated list of “further reading” doesnot quite make up for the reader’s inability to see where a fact or opinion originatedor where it now more fully resides. There is no sense of illegitimacy here, but theissue is real.

How well does Guns, Germs, and Steel explain major perennial global distinctionsin fortune or, less gently, in achievement? Both quite well and not at all.

The most compelling parts of the book treat the transition from unsettled to settledways (pp.104–113). Of all the factors discussed, the availability of plants suitable fordomestication seems to have been most impressively determinative (pp.131–156).Societies with many indigenous candidates found them—typically found them all, ascan be known with a surprising degree of confidence—and began bending theirgenomes to human needs and preferences, ever so deliberately (pp.114–130). Thesesocieties tended to prosper, eventually gaining illustrious cultural and intellectualreputations. Societies with few indigenous or borrowed plant-domesticationcandidates followed different developmental paths and tended to stay poor and bethought composed of people inherently less talented than the average.

Analogous to this pattern was the one for animal domestication, with enormousgains accruing to societies lucky enough to have access to pliable species with usefulqualities (pp.157–175). The great difference from the plant-domestication case was

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zoonotic: the introduction into humans of microorganisms hosted by animals,whether or not they were troublesome in those animals or as troublesome as theywere to be in human hosts (pp.195–214). Species-jumping events—acquisition ofthe human immunodeficiency virus from Old World monkeys is a reminder thatthe past can still be prologue—occasionally decimated human societies but alsonaturally selected genomes with a chance bit of protection built in. Since almost allthese animal domestications were Eurasian, (counting North Africa with Eurasiahere), and since the Eurasians who crossed to the New World did so long before themajor domestications occurred, the entire universe of Amerindians wasimmunologically naïve compared with the Europeans, who, with animal-acquiredpathogens settled in for the journey, came to save damned souls. The result, the so-called Columbian catastrophe, the greatest die-off in human history, sealed the fatesof more New World societies than will ever be counted, including those thatrebounded fully immunologically and demographically but much less so culturally,economically, and politically.

Diamond explains to a high rhetorical standard a great deal of the variance observedamong human societies. What he does not explain might be accepted as “an exercisefor the reader,” except that what he does not explain—the pertinacity of the variance—is just what the inherent-intellectual-difference theory claims to. Diamond might replythat this theory, as recently applied, cannot explain much at all, since its perspectiveis insufficiently historical and too selectively scientific. He would, in the now farbetter-informed opinion of this grateful and admiring reviewer, surely, on the whole,be right.

ROBERT HUNT SPRINKLE, a physician and policy scholar, is at the School of PublicAffairs, University of Maryland

REFERENCES

Bosworth, M.L. (1999). The rise and fall of 15th centurychinese seapower, http://www.cronab.demon.co.uk/china.htm.

Herrnstein, R. & Murray, C. (1994). The Bell Curve: Intelligence and class structure in Ameri-can life. New York: Free Press.

McNeill, W.H. (1976). Plagues and peoples. New York: Anchor Books.

Sandford Borins

Public Management Reform: A Comparative Analysis, by Christopher Pollitt and GeertBouckaert. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000, 314 pp., $74.00 cloth, $35.00 paper.

The Global Public Management Revolution: A Report on the Transformation ofGovernance, by Donald Kettl. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2000, 87pp., $14.95, paper.

Public management reform is now two decades old and has touched many countries.Scholars have begun to write books synthesizing or analyzing the movement. Thisreview reports on two recent attempts. Pollitt and Bouckaert begin by announcingthat theirs is an ambitious book as they review 20 years of reform in 10 Organizationfor Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries (Australia, Canada,Finland, France, Germany, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Sweden, the United

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Kingdom, and the United States). They define public management reform as“deliberate changes to the structure and processes of public sector organizations withthe objective of getting them (in some sense) to perform better” (p. 8) and describetheir stance toward reform as “skeptically open-minded” (p. 15). They proceed byoutlining the common factors leading all 10 countries to reform (chapter 2), butpointing out the differences in political and administrative systems that can lead todifferent outcomes (chapter 3). They describe the components of reform in eachcountry (chapter 4), summarize available data about the major results of reform(chapter 5), comment upon the role of politicians (chapter 6), and conclude byanalyzing a variety of trade-offs and paradoxes (chapters 7 and 8). The country filesthat constitute the 100-page appendix include an assessment of the factors leading toand components of reform for each country.

Readers will find this a useful source-book on public management reform, moreextensive than any currently available. (That said, those familiar with each countryshould evaluate the adequacy of its coverage; the U.S. file gave too much emphasis tothe Grace Commission and too little to the NPR, and missed procurement reform.)An important question to ask about so ambitious a work is what major topics has itomitted or covered inadequately. Unfortunately, there are a number of serious gaps.In describing the key players involved in reform, the only public servants the authorsinclude are those at the senior level (p. 19). This omission must have troubled theauthors because in the book’s final paragraph (p. 191) they admit to having said verylittle about the numerous public management micro-improvements often initiatedby middle managers and front-line workers (Borins, 1998). The book’s concludingsentence notes that successful reform initiatives should create conditions within whichsuch improvements can flourish, but nowhere do the authors discuss how to do this.The most notable initiative in this area is the NPR’s reinvention labs, which havebecome the subject of a burgeoning literature that the authors do not discuss. Amajor contribution here is Jones and Thompson’s (1999) analysis of the factors leadingto the success or failure of the reinvention labs in the Department of Defense (DoD).

Pollitt and Bouckaert’s description of the forces leading to change devotes only ahalf-sentence (p. 29) to information technology, and the authors have virtually nothingto say about its effect on service delivery or governance. Other authors attribute amuch larger role to information technology; for example Jones and Thompson (1999)see it as the major factor driving change in both public and private sector organizations,by breaking down economies of scale and expanding the domain of markets whilereducing that of hierarchies. The discussion of the elements of reform is posed interms of traditional structures and processes (finance, personnel, etc.) and, as aconsequence, customer service initiatives—which many consider a key componentof reform—are subsumed as a sub-category of Performance Measurement Systems.

While Pollitt and Bouckaert describe their stance as “skeptically open-minded,” Ifound it to be more skeptical than open. For example, they approvingly quote onearticle that critiques the entire literature on the impacts of contracting-out localgovernment services in the United States, without citing any references to thatliterature nor giving any reason why they believe the critique rather than the literatureitself (p. 110). Similarly, they cite one study that claims privatization has not led tolarge productivity gains, ignoring the rest of the literature on privatization and givingno reason for their judgment (p. 110). The chapter on results displays a similartendency. With data from 10 countries, grounds can always be found for skepticism.A further example: they cite a French public opinion survey that found little supportfor the notion that privatization might lead to improved organizational performance(p. 121), hardly a surprising result, given France’s strong statist culture.

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Pollitt and Bouckaert are cynical about politicians’ attitudes toward and stewardshipof reform. They are particularly critical of Bill Clinton and Al Gore for their use ofambitious rhetoric and dramatic gestures and are sure no one believes their claims(p. 189). While the authors devote a great deal of attention to results, they devotenone to the change process—the strategies, tactics, and arguments the advocates ofreform use. Perhaps the role of change agent requires a level of energy, commitment,and enthusiasm that makes skeptical professors uncomfortable.

Donald Kettl’s The Global Public Management Revolution originated as a report onthe January 1999 Global Forum on Reinventing Government, enthusiastically chairedby Vice President Gore. The book is much shorter (87 pp.) than Pollitt and Bouckaert’sand is impressionistic, rather than exhaustive. Chapter 2 contrasts two models ofpublic management reform, the comprehensive theory-driven institutional reform ofNew Zealand and the American government’s more pragmatic NPR, with its emphasison service quality improvement, cost and staff reduction, procurement reform,application of information technology, and experimentation by career public servantsin reinvention labs. The discussion of NPR skillfully interweaves its political andbureaucratic aspects, and provides a fair-minded assessment. Chapter 3 provides adiscussion of the components of reform that, compared with Pollitt and Bouckaert,is more objective about contracting out and gives more attention to both customerservice initiatives and to the application of information technology. Chapter 4 looksat results in terms of a few key indicators—the size of government, the public sectorwage bill, and trust in government—and it also takes the discussion beyond the OECDcountries to discuss the necessary conditions for reform in developing countries.

Kettl considers whether reform initiatives in different countries are converging,and on balance the case for convergence appears stronger. The point of convergencewould appear to be a smaller and more strategic state, with more service deliveryhandled in partnerships, and with international sharing of ideas and techniques toachieve continuous improvement in service delivery. Kettl concludes by speculatingthat, in the future, national governments will invest more effort in three key areas:overseeing the transition to, and smooth functioning of, the information society;building bridges with civil society; and strategic planning for society.

One central point that Kettl repeatedly makes is that management reforms are asmuch about politics and governance as about management. In his view, elected officialspursue reform because they believe voters want lower taxes and more efficient services,and will reward them for delivering. He thus views champions of reform like Al Gorein a much more sympathetic light than Pollitt and Bouckaert.

To summarize: Many academics and some practitioners will read Pollitt andBouckaert, hoping it gives the definitive word on public management reform. In thisreviewer’s opinion, it does not. Kettl’s book will appeal to practitioners and thoughtfulcitizens looking for a clear and concise analysis of the movement. I would alsorecommend it to academics looking for a balanced assessment of achievements todate and thoughtful speculation about the future of reform.

SANDFORD BORINS is Professor of Public Management at the University of Toronto.

REFERENCES

Borins, S. (1998). Innovating with integrity: How local heroes are transforming American gov-ernment. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press.

Jones, L. & Thompson, F. (1999). Public management: Institutional renewal for the twenty-first century. Stamford, CT: JAI Press.

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Laura B. Roberts

Philanthropy and the Nonprofit Sector in a Changing America, edited by Charles T.Clotfelter and Thomas Ehrlich: Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999, 560pp., $35.00 cloth.

Private Funds, Public Purpose: Philanthropic Foundations in International Perspective,edited by Helmut K. Anheier and Stefan Toepler. New York: Kluwer Academic/PlenumPublishers, 1999, 264 pp., $85.00 cloth, $37.50 paper.

Two recent books of essays emanating from conferences on foundations andphilanthropy underscore the growing academic interest in this comparatively smallbut critical sector of the economy. The volumes are quite different, focusing in onecase on the international perspective and in the other on the ties between foundationsand the rest of the nonprofit sector. Taken together they answer many questions aboutphilanthropy and the independent sector, but regrettably still leave much out.

In their introduction to Philanthropy and the Nonprofit Sector in a Changing America,an outgrowth of the 1998 American Assembly on the topic, editors Charles T. Clotfelterand Thomas Ehrlich raise the right issues. The conference and book were to look at:the critical issues that will shape the activities of philanthropy and the nonprofitsector in the next decade; where philanthropy and nonprofits should concentratetheir attention in those 10 years; what management or public policy changes areneeded “to ensure accountability, efficiency and innovation” (p.xi); and the stepsrequired to enhance the effect of these organizations as they deal with serious domesticand global challenges. The editors return to these questions and provide sharp insightsinto possible answers in the concluding chapter, “The World We Must Build.”Unfortunately, the rest of the book does not deliver on this promise.

In that concluding essay, Clotfelter and Ehrlich examine, in turn, the four pillars ofthe “old covenant,” which established the tradition of trust Americans and publicpolicymakers vested in the nonprofit sector: the separation of the charitable from thecommercial, the avoidance of partisan politics, the encouragement of innovation andexperimentation even at the expense of comprehensiveness and coordination, andthe assignment of responsibility for social services to the public sector. Clearly, allfour are now under attack and, with the exception of embracing commercialism, theauthors call for a new covenant, appropriate to the times. They end where many ofthese essays begin, by calling upon American traditions of charity and voluntary actionto renew and sustain our democratic civil society.

The historical and analytical essays in the first section of Philanthropy and theNonprofit Sector trace the history of the sector and attempt to describe its size andthe economic forces that affect it. The available data frustrate the authors and thereforethe readers. Several authors emphasize that the Internal Revenue Service does notrecord religious congregations (estimated at 341,000) or very small (annual revenuesof less than $5,000) nonprofits and only collects data (from the Form 990) from asmall fraction of the 641,000 organizations registered under section 501(c)(3) of thetax code. Rather than attempt to either remedy this omission or gauge the significanceof the missing data, the authors simply bemoan it. Do the lacunae diminish theiranalysis or are they inconsequential? We don’t really know. At the other end of thescale, most acknowledge that the largest nonprofits (generally universities andhospitals) are virtually a sector unto themselves, with the top 4 percent of thosereporting to the IRS controlling two thirds of the sector’s expenditures. However few

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factored that into their analysis and continued to consider the sector in aggregate, asif the challenges of Harvard University and the Cambridge Historical Society arecomparable. For these reasons and others, this format does not really lend itself tocomprehensive historical, statistical, and economic analysis; the contributions arerepetitive yet incomplete and, at times, contradictory. A single chapter summarizingthe history and addressing the most relevant and problematic analytical questions(such as “How elastic is charitable giving?”) would be more satisfying and useful.

Two papers in Philanthropy and the Nonprofit Sector are particularly thought-provoking and readable. Kirsten A. Grønbjerg and Steven Rathgeb Smith’s essay,“Nonprofit Organizations and Public Policies in the Delivery of Human Services,” isjust the sort of analysis the introduction promises. The authors’ observations areapplicable well beyond the human services sector, covering emerging trends and small,community-based organizations. The other sectoral case studies (environment, culture,education) are far less satisfying. Julian Wolpert’s essay, “Communities, Networks,and the Future of Philanthropy,” looks at where foundation funds actually go, andfundamental public policy issues. Acknowledging that “philanthropy and voluntarism[are] a very leaky redistribution mechanism,” (p.239) Wolpert questions our nation’sincreasing reliance on private generosity. His contribution underscores how criticalpublic policy considerations should be to this inquiry and makes the reader miss thatpoint of view in other papers.

Grounding this study in history runs the risk of skewing the analysis toward NewYork and its foundations, which have long dominated this sector. However, two casestudies (on Minnesota by Jon Pratt and Kansas City by David O. Renz) remind readersthat new models of civic leadership are being created elsewhere. The case studies areinstructive and timely, looking at corporate leadership on the one hand, and the placeof intersectoral collaboration on the other. Similarly, Emmett D. Carson’s essay, “TheRoles of Indigenous and Institutional Philanthropy in Advancing Society Justice,”documents that, for many parts of society, the most critical and controversial issuesare best handled close to home, by culturally-specific foundations and organizationswhich are closer to the problems and the constituents, and less fearful of controversyand government scrutiny.

Two essays look at regulation and accountability, and once again the format isfrustrating. Joel Fleishman (“Public Trust in Not-for-Profit Organizations and theNeed for Regulatory Reform”) looks at recent history. His litany of abuses, from Jimand Tammy Faye Bakker to Adelphia University, is convincing evidence of “a betrayalof public trust” (p.177) that the sector cannot ignore. He suggests three possibleexternal solutions—a voluntary, quasi-public, or public watchdog agency. Warren F.Hehman and Dwight F. Burlingame (“Accountability in a Changing PhilanthropicEnvironment”) look at similar data and call for stronger governing boards. But it’sdifficult for readers to compare the policy assumptions and implications of the twoanalyses and understand why their recommendations are so divergent. Gary Walkerand Jean Grossman take up a related but editorially disconnected theme later in thebook, looking at the current emphasis on measurable or demonstrable outcomes.

Helmut K. Anheier and Stefan Toepler, editors of Private Funds, Public Purpose:Philanthropic Foundations in International Perspective, papers from a 1993 Parisconference, “Foundations: An International Research Symposium,” do a lesssatisfactory job of framing the relevant issues, and the papers are by and large moredescriptive and less analytical. In their concluding chapter, “Why Study Foundations?,”they argue weakly (p.256) that “the behavior of foundations may be ‘seismographic’of these important and often indiscernible features of modern society” because of theeconomic, social, and political tensions inherent in their design and place in society.

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The argument is unconvincing. How can a small, isolated, and, by all accounts, stillrarified segment of the economy be a bellwether?

However, in taking an international perspective, Private Funds, Public Purpose raisesa number of challenging public policy questions. For example, we are so accustomedto the independent, endowed, grant-giving foundation—which accounts for 89 percentof American foundations—that we often fail to recognize the wider range ofinstruments used in other countries. The American definition of “operatingfoundation,” for example, is quite narrow in comparison with those used elsewhere;by their definitions, our wealthiest private universities might better be termedoperating foundations. How would that alter their behavior, accountability, and civicrole? Unfortunately, Stefan Toepler’s essay on operating foundations (an under-studiedtopic) gives little guidance, once more concentrating on describing the form ratherthan assessing it.

Similarly, authors point to countries such as Germany which make far moreextensive use of government-sponsored foundations, uncommon in the United States(the National Science Foundation and Smithsonian Institution are the obviousexamples), and foundations created when government enterprises were privatized(e.g. the Volkswagen Foundation). As we search for new ways to maintain and furtherthe public good, such as in the disposition of the assets of nonprofit hospitals whenthey are acquired by for-profit firms, appropriate models might well be found in theexperience of other countries. Unfortunately, the country-by-country case studies aregood reference material but rather dry reading, with the exception of Kevin F. F.Quigley and Nancy E. Popson’s study of the role played by foundations in creatingnon-governmental agencies, “Rebuilding Civil Society in Eastern and Central Europe:The Role Played by Foundations.”

Martin Bulmer’s essay, “The History of Foundations in the United Kingdom andthe United States,” is also satisfying. Unlike many contributors to both volumes, hedoes not assume the worthiness of these enterprises and deals evenhandedly withtheir critics.

Both books start with the observation that foundations have been created in thepast as innovative incubators, where new, scientific approaches to social problemscould be developed and tested before being turned over to the government for moregeneral application, what Martin Bulmer terms “knowledge-based social engineering.”Several essays cite important chapters in this history, including the place of the greatfoundations of the Progressive Era. However he and the other authors in these volumesfail to bring the story up to the present. Notable by omission is thoughtful treatmentof the flurry of new philanthropic endeavors in America that are searching forinnovation grounded not in science but in enterprise. Several papers refer in passingto the Harvard Business Review article that introduced “venture philanthropy” to ourvocabulary (Letts et al., 1997), but none really come to terms with the ways America’snewest philanthropists have changed giving and nonprofit management. “ReinventingPhilanthropy” in Philanthropy and the Nonprofit Sector is really about localizing givingand social action. “Toward an Entrepreneurial Approach to Foundation Management”in Private Funds, Public Purpose is just about strategic, active giving.

These volumes take many points of view and introduce some welcome categoriesof analysis, particularly culturally diverse and global perspectives, to a field that hasbeen dominated by older, large American foundations. Missing, however, are someperspectives, such as the role of women, the place of advocacy and special-interestpolitics, and the impact of new demographic and geographic patterns of wealth.Chapters on corporate giving and intersectoral collaboration are weak. Moreover, forstudents of public policy, an emphasis on the impact of the devolution of services,

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programs, and funds from the federal to the state and local level in Philanthropy andthe Nonprofit Sector crowds out other public policy questions. Ultimately, neithervolume really gives the reader a clear sense of the complex and evolving issues facingthe independent sector, particularly as it meets the public and commercial world.

LAURA B. ROBERTS, Adjunct Assistant Professor, Public and Nonprofit Management,Boston University.

REFERENCE

Letts, C.W., Ryan, W., & Grossman, A. (1997). Virtuous capital: What foundations can learnfrom venture capitalists. Harvard Business Review, March-April.

Michael N. Danielson

Crossing the Class and Color Lines: From Public Housing to White Suburbia, by LeonardS. Rubinowitz and James E. Rosenbaum. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000,240 pp., $25.00 cloth.

Failure is the appropriate verdict in most assessments of public efforts to redressracial discrimination in housing in the United States. Fair housing laws have hadlimited effect on pervasive bias in real estate, lending, and other private housingtransactions. Public housing has reinforced the concentration of low-income AfricanAmericans in inner-city neighborhoods. Most black recipients of housing voucherscontinue to live in minority areas.

An exception to this dismal tale is the Gautreaux Assisted Housing Program inChicago. Part of the settlement of a class action suit against the Chicago HousingAuthority and the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), Gautreauxmoved more than 7,000 African-American households out of the black ghetto between1976 and 1998. A substantial majority of these families, almost all of which werefemale-headed and welfare recipients, were relocated to predominantly white suburbs.For a sizable proportion of these families, Gautreaux was a successful move toopportunity—participants who moved to the suburbs secured better housing in asafer environment, their children were more successful in school, and both parentsand children improved their employment prospects. In short, Gautreaux dramaticallyimproved the life chances of thousands of poor black women and their children byfinding openings in suburbia’s white wall.

Gautreaux’s origins, development, implementation, and impact are examined indetail by Leonard S. Rubinowitz, a legal scholar, and James E. Rosenbaum, asociologist, both on the faculty of Northwestern University. Rubinowitz andRosenbaum have followed Gautreaux closely from its inception, and this studyincorporates material from their previous work, especially Rosenbaum’s detailedsurveys of participants in the program. What this volume does is bring together themany threads of Gautreaux, places them in the broader context of public housing inChicago, and draws lessons for the future of efforts to broaden housing opportunitiesfor minorities and the poor. The result is a superb study, knowledgeable andinformative, strongly supportive of the endeavor but balanced in its assessment ofGautreaux’s strengthens, weaknesses, and portability.

Rubinowitz and Rosenbaum contrast Gautreaux with the failure of the ChicagoHousing Authority (CHA) to implement the scattered-site housing ordered by the

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federal court (scattered-site housing was the remedy in the CHA portion of the lawsuit,while the Gautreaux program emerged from the settlement with HUD). Theyappreciate the advantages of demand-based, rather than supply-based, assistedhousing programs; reliance on existing private housing was critical to the dispersalof Gautreaux participants over a wide swath of the suburban political landscape,most into communities that were adamantly opposed to public housing projects.

Crossing the Class and Color Line, however, provides little cheer for those who blithelyassume that market solutions obviate the need for outside involvement beyond issuinghousing vouchers to qualified recipients. Market solutions, they emphasize, only workwhen an adequate supply of private housing exists at prices that voucher recipientscan afford. Such housing was available in the Chicago suburbs, at least for the smallnumber of families—fewer than 400 a year—that Gautreaux moved outward.Moreover, Gautreaux’s successful use of private housing resulted from aggressiveintervention by the agency that administered the program. The Leadership Councilfor Metropolitan Open Communities screened and selected the tenants, negotiatedwith landlords, counseled the out-movers, and provided other assistance to whatRubinowitz and Rosenbaum term these “strangers in a strange land.” Agency was acritical variable: The Leadership Council was a committed, capable, and experiencedfair housing agency that both built a functioning bridge between out-movers andprivate housing, and maintained a low profile that minimized adverse political reactionin the receiving suburban jurisdictions.

Rubinowitz and Rosenbaum carefully delimit the lessons of Gautreaux. Successresulted from the combination of creative program development, a slack housingmarket, an effective agency, and the modest size of the endeavor. The 7,000-odd familiesthat participated were a drop in the bucket in the nation’s third largest housing market;and spreading these households over a large number of communities greatly enhancedthe political feasibility of the program. Replicating these conditions is not easy; witnessthe difficulties encountered by HUD’s Moving to Opportunity program and court-ordered dispersal efforts in other metropolitan areas. Nonetheless Gautreaux providesthe best blueprint for moving the inner-city poor—black, Latino, Asian, NativeAmerican, and white—to better housing and life chances in the suburbs. AndRubinowitz and Rosenbaum have written the essential guide to understanding thissuccessful experiment in social engineering.

MICHAEL N. DANIELSON is Professor of Politics and Public Affairs, PrincetonUniversity.

Vernon M. Briggs Jr.

A Stream of Windows: Unsettling Reflections on Trade, Immigration, and Democracy,by Jagdish Bhagwadi. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1998, 531 pp., $32.50 cloth,$18.95 paper.

Jagdish Bhagwadi is renowned for his work on international trade theory and hisoutspoken advocacy of free trade as a means of providing sustained economic growthfor the world. The present volume consists of a self-selection of 56 of his essays, op-ed pieces, reviews, and letters to newspaper editors that were published between1982 and 1997. The preponderance of the writings pertain to his strong suit: the issueof free trade. A lesser number address the subject of immigration, while the remainderembrace a potpourri of subjects.

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The collection is preceded by a lengthy introduction in which he discusses hisbackground and how he has sought to combine his academic career with opportunitiesto enter the public policy arena by also undertaking “active advocacy” about issues ofwhich he feels strongly. The autobiographical introduction is of consequence becauseit explains the tone of many of the writings. He informs the reader that he was a“bright” student; he benefited from having “bright” teachers; he has been associatedwith “bright” academic colleagues; and be has produced “bright” pupils. He seeshimself as being a member of the small cadre of super-economists who dominateboth the faculties of the nation’s elite universities and the prestigious editorial boardsof the major professional journals. He acknowledges that the tenor of the introductionmay lead to a charge of “self-indulgence” (p. xvii), but he feels it is necessary to beboastful because he deems himself to be someone who should be listened to.

To this reviewer, the collective flavor of many of the articles is one of arrogance.There is no mercy spared on his perceived foes, nor room for disagreement with hisviews. Bhagwadi’s comparative advantage rests with his positions on internationaltrade. They are unequivocal. He is opposed to any interventions in the worldmarketplace by any government in virtually any situation no matter how they arerationalized. Unfortunately, he is less familiar with the issue of immigration and,when he seemingly seeks to make free immigration the reciprocal of free trade, hispositions quickly devolve into intellectual nonsense with only the force of expressionto support them.

As for the trade issue, he is opposed to “aggressive unilateralism” (which he describesas being the policies of the Clinton Administration); to any effort to assure reciprocityamong trade partners; to any preferential trade agreements (like the North AtlanticFree Trade Agreement); to any concept of “managed trade” (such as “voluntary exportrestrictions” or “voluntary import expansions” which the United States at times soughtfrom Japan); to any form of industrial policies intended to be sure a nation has certainindustries among its industrial structure; and to the concept of “strategic trade policy”(a notion that, because international competition involves oligopolistic firms, tradepolicies of governments may justifiably seek to shift some of their excess corporateprofits and activities to themselves as opposed to other nations).

Bhagwadi is unconstrained in his support of the World Trade Organization (WTO)as the means to accomplish the goal of universal free trade. Ironically, in hisintroduction he says that “a society is best organized when its economics embracesopenness...” and when “its politics are democratic.” Yet the WTO, as a disputesettlement body, is the antithesis of both concepts. It relies on the use of closedproceedings, no appeals, secret submissions of information, and decisions made bysecret ad hoc panels of judges who may have conflicts of interests with the outcomes.

Bhagwadi expresses no sympathy for the effort of some nations to linkenvironmental or worker protections to trade policies. He regards these concernsas being important but they are separate issues and should be kept so. But what ifthe people of democratic countries think otherwise? The WTO is authoritarian inits structure even though membership is ostensibly voluntary. The WTO procedurescompletely reverse the processes that democratic societies have developed over theyears to address and to settle issues. Moreover, given the massive corporate lobbyingthat surrounded its formation in 1994 and the widespread opposition expressed byenvironmental and labor groups to its creation, it is hard to escape the conclusionthat the WTO format subordinates societal values for commercial values. Bhagwadican support the WTO for economic efficiency reasons associated with conformityto international trade theory but he cannot simultaneously say he is an advocate ofdemocratic procedures and openness in societal institutions. There is an element

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of Orwell’s 1984 in these essays. What he says he favors is often the opposite of whathe says he believes.

As for the issue of immigration, Bhagwadi is at a disadvantage. He allows emotionto dominate reason. Repeatedly, he mentions his admiration for the free market viewsof the “Chicago school of economics” but he fails to appreciate the views of one of itsmost illustrious founders, Henry Simons, on the subject of immigration. Simons wrotethat “to insist that a free trade program is logically incomplete without free migrationis either disingenuous or stupid. Free trade may and should raise standardseverywhere.... Free immigration would level standards, perhaps without raising themanywhere” (Simons, 1948, p. 251). Simons went on to say that immigration policy“must be disciplined by tough-minded realism and practical sense.” Bhagwadi doesnot go so far as to call for completely open borders but he is clearly sympathetic tothe notion (p. xlviii). He does call for substantial increases in immigration to theUnited States and he accepts the basic precepts of the existing immigration laws thatpay scant attention to human capital attributes of would-be immigrants. He baseshis support, however, on alleged beliefs that have been totally refuted. For example,Bhagwadi claims that immigrants pay more in taxes than they require in public services(p. 321). The National Research Council (NRC), however, in its definitive study of thefiscal impact of immigration on the U.S. economy found precisely the reverse to betrue (NRC, 1997, p. 293). Furthermore, he skirts the issue of the severe adversedistributional effects of prevailing immigration policies. The NRC report catalogs thefact that the educational attainment levels of post-1965 immigrants have steadilydeclined (NRC, 1997, pp. 185-190). As a direct consequence, immigrants havedisproportionately increased the segment of the nation’s labor force that has the lowesthuman capital endowments and, in the process, has lowered the wages of all workersin the lowest skill sector of the labor market (NRC, 1997, p. 236). The chief beneficiariesof existing policy are the immigrant workers themselves whose wages are usuallyconsiderably higher than if they had stayed in their homelands (NRC, 1997, p. 191).But whose interests are policymakers of the United States supposed to protect?Economist Mevlin Reder, also of the Chicago “school of thought,” has wisely observedthat “our immigration policy inevitably reflects a kind of national selfishness of whichthe major beneficiaries are the least fortunate among us” (Reder, 1963, p. 230).

There are ample equity reasons to support a strong and enforceable immigrationpolicy for the nation but they are not those that Bhagwadi advocates. Most of theimmigration policy changes he offers are simply unthinkable. For example, he suggeststhat the United States should cease interior enforcement efforts to apprehend foreignnationals. All deterrent activities, he says, should be devoted to enhanced bordermanagement. This would mean that those illegal immigrants who enter the UnitedStates with documents but who then seek work when their visas prohibit such activityor those whose visas permit them to work temporarily but who overstay their timelimits would have free access to the U.S. labor market. Already it is the case that almosthalf of all illegal immigrants who enter the United States each year are believed to besuch visa abusers. His proposal would guarantee that many more would be. Also, bordermanagement would be primarily directed at apprehending Mexicans (and to a lesserdegree Canadians). It would certainly be discriminatory to design a strategy to deteronly illegal immigrants from these two countries when you know that the major entryprocess used by those from all other countries would no longer be impeded. Most ofhis other recommendations are, likewise, poorly thought through. They certainly donot meet Simons’ aforementioned criteria of being realistic and practical.

For instance, his attack on policies that impose sanctions against employers whohire illegal immigrants entirely misses the point. Employer sanctions in a free society

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cannot stop illegal immigration, but they do set the moral tone. They define what isseen to be right and wrong. The existence of employer sanctions means illegalimmigrant workers and those employers who hire them are both law breakers. Thesituation is analogous to the reason the nation has equal employment opportunitylaws. These laws have not ended labor market discrimination but they have reducedits incidence and they define what is acceptable behavior and what is not. Still, someemployers choose to discriminate. No one would suggest, I hope, that Title VII of theCivil Rights Act of 1964 be repealed because it has not been totally effective. Thesame logic applies to the employer sanctions provisions of the Immigration Reformand Control Act of 1986. It is the lack of commitment of attention and resources toenforcement, not the law itself, that has allowed illegal immigration to continue despitethe bans on the presence of illegal immigrants in the work place.

Public policymaking is not the same as academic theorizing and pontificating. Aseconomist and former U.S. Secretary of Labor John Dunlop has poignantly observed,“theories are intellectually exciting and challenging but their relevance and applicationto policymaking is scarcely within the reach of most researchers” (Dunlop 1979, p.275). Such is clearly the case with Bhagwadi’s discussion of immigration policy.

VERNON M. BRIGGS JR., is a Professor of Labor Economics at Cornell University.

REFERENCES

Dunlop, J. (1977). Policy decisions and research in economics and industrial relations. Indus-trial and Labor Relations Review, April, 275–282.

NRC [National Research Council]. (1997). The new americans: Economic, demographic, andfiscal effects of immigration. Washington DC: The National Academy Press.

Reder, M.W. (1963). The economic consequences of increased immigration. Review of Eco-nomics and Statistics, August, 221–230.

Simons, H.C. (1948). Economic policy for a free society. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Harold Scott

Dragonwars: Armed Struggle and the Conventions of Modern War, by J. Boyer Bell.New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 1999, 445 pp.

Coercive Military Strategy, by Stephen J. Cimbala. College Station, TX: Texas A&MUniversity Press, 1998, 183 pp.

The sudden and dramatic collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 has had a paradoxicalimpact on American national security. This ideological and military threat had suchprimacy in our nation-state relations that national security strategy could focus oneither matching security efforts to identifiable and plausible threats, or to availableresources. The current environment provides a very different threat to US interestsand security best described as the “promise of uncertainty.” In such a dynamic anduncertain world, the activity of planning for, and realizing the capability to participatein, future military operations has become more complex. Both books under revieware broadly concerned with the problem of transforming national security strategy inan uncertain international environment. They do this however, by taking completely

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different approaches. The approach of Cimbala, Coercive Military Strategy, draws onexamples from the Cold War to identify the principles of military coercion. Specificallyhe argues that understanding these principles and their proper implementation are anecessary condition for success in future conflict, which will likely be a mixture ofhigh-technology equipment low-technology strategy. By contrast, Bell, in Dragonwarstakes a less normative approach. He believes the American military and policyestablishment is woefully deficient in its approach to unconventional conflicts or“dragonwars.” He provides a description of this vast world of unconventional conflictand its engagement with the conventional and the rational.

Dragonworld is an elastic term used to incorporate classical revolutionarymovements and contemporary terrorist organizations, peasant insurgencies, etc. Thesocial scientist concerned with methodological rigor would object to this casuallumping of such a wide and diverse political spectrum. However, Bell explicitly rejectstraditional analytical frameworks, which he argues either over-emphasize tactics orprovide general explanations that stress misleading measuring criteria. Bell wants toconvey the dynamics of the struggle by describing the strategic ecosystem. Thegenerals, the ambassadors, and the analysts often impose an artificial order. Oftenthey are apt to imagine the area as an ordnance map with an agenda of statisticalcharts and percentage points. Bell contends that this makes for an asymmetric conflictbecause the terrorist, the insurgent will always focus on energy. In Vietnam, “Americanswere not so much engaged in the wrong war as another war only tangentially relatedto that of their opponents.”

Bell attributes America’s chronic inability to deal with irregular conflicts to culturalforces, the instinctive American belief that more is better and that superior forceapplied efficiently will secure objectives in any conflict. Such disasters as Vietnam,and Beirut have had little effect on the establishment’s behavior. The military’sconventional rational approach consistently traces policy failure to inadequateattention to detail. Bureaucratic inertia plays a part here. An army exists to pursuewar as a real army. Colonels might write papers about these missions but colonelswanted to be generals in real armies. “The great purposes remained: America mustdeploy conventional power, prepare for the next generation of weapons, and assumethe emergence of serious enemies rather than wait until too late.” Thus, there is rarelysatisfactory doctrinal response or bureaucratic preparation for the unexpected,irregular, and unconventional threat.

For Bell, the fundamental factor is not a group’s propensity for violence or itscapabilities, but the dream and the energy it gives to the believers. The dream thatfuels the irregular campaign is that which provides the seemingly unreasonablecommitment to a movement’s capacity to impose change and to change history . Nomatter how dreadful the center might find them, such revelation is not simply zealousfantasies sold as analyses. The dragon warriors assume that the idea is the solution,the necessary and singular solution to injustice. The imperfect match between thedream and the reality that the dream seldom reaches the whole people or nation haslittle relevance for the revolutionary prospects. That a man dies for the dream isvindication and validation. Bell notes that greedy warlords and bandits are moreamenable to the “reality” of the arena of struggle than those driven by a transcendentaldream that requires the faithful to change history. The conventional national securitymanager—anxious over schedules, eager to find a military solution or technologicalfix—will find this sullen persistence, “the protraction of an armed struggle withoutthe skills or tools to win is beyond easy understanding.”

Bell’s explanation of what motivates the armed struggle is interesting and animportant contribution, and to his credit Bell accomplishes this without becoming

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overly romantic or demonizing. Nonetheless, the author does belabor this point, whichleads to a depiction of the insurgent world (perhaps inadvertently) as exotic andsomewhat irrational. Dreams or political fictions serve similar functions in theorthodox politics of the center. Indeed, some have argued that what has made theUnited States politically stable is the persuasiveness of the fiction of popularsovereignty, (e.g., Morgan, 1998)1.

This leads to some other critical points concerning Bell’s work. He steadfastly resistsproviding a clear typology which makes it difficult to distinguish between theephemeral cult, the criminal, or the serious revolutionary. The style strikes this readeras post-modern, although to be fair Bell does not explicitly place his work within thisliterature. This approach has some merit since it provides a medium for the author toillustrate the overpowering importance of the phenomenological. The author alsomakes clear the corrupting consequences of searching for explanations in too glibtheories that impose an artificial order. Readers with more social scientific interestswill however quickly become impatient with this overlong book. That is unfortunatebecause Bell’s main points should not be dismissed lightly. National security managerswill need to develop empathy for the grievances and belief-systems of the dragonworld.The dominant American belief that massive force can effect a swift and final resultwill cause more heartbreak in future conflicts with the unconventional. In theseprotracted conflicts, less is more.

Much like Bell, Cimbala believes that Vietnam demonstrated that a military forcedesigned for high-intensity conflict with an industrialized opponent could not simplybe reduced in size and reassigned to a low-intensity conflict. Moreover these conflictsinvolve ambiguous political missions and they threaten the military’s sense ofprofessionalism. Cimbala however, does not restrict his analysis to unconventionalconflicts. He argues that future success in conflicts, conventional as well asunconventional, will require a different vision of the role of military force.Understanding the principles of military coercion is a necessary condition for successin diplomacy.

Cimbala’s concept of coercive military strategy builds upon Alexander George’s ideasabout coercive diplomacy; the significant difference is that Cimbala includesdeterrence and compellence terms that imply heavy reliance on coercive threats. InGeorge’s theory, de-escalation of the pace and scope of the fighting was preferred, notterribly surprising given the prospects of a nuclear conflict involving the United Statesand the Soviet Union. His theory therefore offers coercive diplomacy as an instrumentof crisis management, an alternative to military action. Since the demise of the SovietUnion has virtually eliminated the problem of a great power war in Europe, Cimbaladoes not see crisis management as essential as dealing with smaller conventionalwars. Cimbala argues that escalation sometimes offers a better chance of securingpolitical objectives in these situations. He sees coercive military strategy as a moreinclusive and open-ended theory on whether it is better to escalate or de-escalate.

Cimbala uses several well-known cases from the Cold War but adds significant andprovocative twists to the case analyses to illustrate how to apply the principles ofmilitary coercion successfully. For example, Cimbala argues that the Cuban missilecrisis can be seen as an instance of successful coercive military strategy, as well as anescape from inadvertent mutual disaster. He contends that the knowingly dangerousblockade of Cuba (control of incidents at sea are notoriously beyond the reach ofshore commanders even under the best communication conditions) pushes this

1 See for example Edmund Morgan, Inventing the People, The Rise of Popular Sovereignty in England andAmerica(New York: Norton, 1988)

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encounter beyond George’s model of coercive diplomacy. This risky strategy succeededbecause the United States combined demonstrative military action with bargaining.The approach allowed for “mutual perspective taking,” a crucial component ofCimbala’s conception that distinguishes coercive military strategy from brinkmanship.

Knowing your adversary is another distinctive feature of Cimbala’s theory, and hisuse of Vietnam as an example of a flawed coercive military strategy, develops thispoint further. The chief culprit here is the widely shared assumption that the way toimprove government is to run it as a business. Given that the politics of war differsfrom the politics of business, Cimbala contends that this had unfortunate consequencesfor the U.S. effort at a number of different levels. For example, the logistics andtechnological aspects of war are problems amenable to mathematical solutions; thewill of the enemy is not. Had U.S. leaders ascertained correctly the politico-militarycontext they would not have underestimated the determination of their NorthVietnamese foes. The U.S. coercive air war proved unable to pressure North Vietnamto the conference table and ultimately the United States mostly coerced itself.

When we consider the use of air power in the Gulf War, the argument for Vietnamas an example of a misperceived coercive strategy gains considerable credibility. Acoercive air campaign with conventional forces should be a counter-force (targetingemphasizes the destruction of enemy forces and supporting military capability) ratherthan a counter-value (targeting emphasizes the destruction of social and economicvalues). Cimbala argues that the allies designed the air campaign not only to destroya complex of targets in Iraq, but also to punish the Iraqi leadership by influencing itsexpectation of further damage to come. He notes an important qualification that noair war is completely counter-force, since airpower is not a surgical instrument andcoercion is more likely if the enemy government that is losing a military campaign isdivided into various factions. Nevertheless “air power is judged for its effectivenessas a persuader albeit a persuader by means of coercive destruction.”

The charge of American “Prussianism” would be appropriate were it not for deftpresentation. First his argument for a coercive military strategy rejects the image oftotal war and calls for a more restrained approach to war found in the classical militarytheories of Sun Tzu and Karl von Clausewitz. In this approach, psychological factorsor the “moral influence,” and the sense of harmony among the people, their rulers,and fighting forces receive much more emphasis than force structures. Here againthe Vietnam example is instructive. Waging a limited war creates the expectation thatforce can be used in a discriminating and humane manner, an expectation not alwaysshared by combatants, or possible to accomplish in the fog of war. Given thestrategically zero-sum character of revolutionary civil war in Vietnam, it is conceivablethat a coercive military strategy did not exist. Those who apply the coercive strategymust engage in perspective-taking and perception management, not only betweenlocal enemies but also between each of them and the international force sent to putout the fire. This book says a lot with little space. It provides an interesting frameworkfrom which to begin thinking about future conflicts conventional and unconventional.

HAROLD SCOTT is an Assistant Professor at the University of Pittsburgh.