Book Reviewsgove_1483 357..376

The State of Sovereignty: Territories, Laws, Populations. Douglas Howland and LuiseWhite, eds. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2009. 296 pp. $24.95 (cloth).

Humanitarian Intervention: Confronting the Contradictions. Michael Newman, ed.New York: Columbia University Press, 2009. 256 pp. $27.50 (hardcover).

There is no shortage of scholarship on questions about state sovereigntyand international intervention. Particularly in the field of internationalrelations (IR), historical, theoretical, legal, and ethical treatments of howthe concept and institution of state sovereignty have evolved over timein response to developments in state discourse and practice haveremained an enduring feature of the literature since IR was first estab-lished as an academic discipline (e.g., Hinsley 1986; James 1986; Jou-venel 1957; Kelsen 1920). Indeed, much of modern Western politicaltheory, on which most of contemporary IR theory is based, was preoc-cupied with questions of sovereignty and order, dating back at least tothe early writings of Jean Bodin (1992). Envisaged most fundamentallyas an attribute of the political communities that we today call states,sovereignty constitutes the basis for the most fundamental right ofstates—that of nonintervention. Most observers of international affairsshare an intuitive understanding of what sovereignty is and what itmeans for a state to be sovereign, yet also tend to agree that sovereigntyis constantly under attack and evolving according to prevailing practiceand discourse. Sovereignty is thus, paradoxically, the most fickle—andat the same time the most enduring—feature of the internationalsystem.

The prevailing literature leads us to two broad insights about statesovereignty. First, there exists both a general scholarly consensus andan agreement in state practice that sovereignty has something to do withthe right of a political authority to rule over a specific piece of territoryto the exclusion of other political authorities, both internal and external.Objectively, sovereignty requires that a reasonably effective politicalauthority exist, that it be the sole or superior political authority in aparticular territory, and that is in exclusive control over its externalrelations with other sovereign states. In practice, however, to be sover-eign is to be recognized as such by other sovereign states and is fre-quently a function of “political” rather than principled considerations(Brownlie 2003). The recent Russian recognitions of South Ossetia andAbkhazia, made explicitly by Russian officials in the context of previous

Governance: An International Journal of Policy, Administration, and Institutions, Vol. 23, No. 2,April 2010 (pp. 357–375).© 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc., 350 Main St., Malden, MA 02148, USA, and 9600 GarsingtonRoad, Oxford, OX4 2DQ, UK. ISSN 0952-1895

US and EU recognitions of Kosovo, are particularly illustrative of theoftentimes whimsical politics of sovereign recognition.

This leads to the second basic fact we know about sovereignty: that it isessentially contested, historically contingent, socially constructed, and, ofcourse, constantly being challenged. Rather than a timeless principle, sov-ereignty is a function of “revolutions in ideas” throughout history and iscontingent upon both popular state practice at any given time, as well asprevailing normative conceptions about the proper relationship betweenauthority, territory, population, and international recognition (Bartelson1995; Biersteker and Weber 1996; Fowler and Bunck 1996; Philpott 2001;Spruyt 1994; Weber 1995). Furthermore, these conceptions of sovereigntyare ideal types that in the abstract are considered long-standing (ifdynamic) norms, but in practice are frequently violated. As StephenKrasner (1999) famously put it, sovereignty is “organized hypocrisy.” Insum, we have an idea of what it means for a state to be sovereign in theabstract, but not only is this ideal type a function prevailing normativeconceptions at any given period in history, it remains an ideal type whoseinfluence on state behavior is often in question and constantly subject tochallenge.

These “challenges” to sovereignty typically come in the form of somesort of “intervention” and the different justifications or bases for suchintervention (Lyons and Mastanduno 1995). To borrow from Krasner’s(1999, 26) terminology, sovereignty is challenged through either conven-tion, in which case the state authorities voluntarily agree to limit theirautonomy in some way; or through coercion (actual or threatened),whereby the relinquishment of autonomy is forced or involuntary.1 Eventhough it is common to talk about voluntary international associations(such as the European Union or other treaty-based institutions) as chal-lenges to or encroachments upon state sovereignty (Craig 2000, 41; Sassen1996, 29), “intervention,” as it is commonly understood, refers to the latterkind of challenge. That is, intervention is a prima facie violation of a state’ssovereignty, though again paradoxically, such intervention can be a viola-tion of state sovereignty and at the same time an act that affects itsmeaning (Byers 1999; Drumbl 2003, 409–431).

The two works presently under review fall squarely within this generalconceptual discussion of sovereignty and intervention, and largely add toconventional wisdom on these subjects, rather than change our thinkingabout them in any substantial way. Both of these works neverthelessachieve their stated purpose. In The State of Sovereignty: Territories, Laws,Populations, editors Douglas Howland and Luise White seek to provide ahistory of the concept of sovereignty by examining a series of historicalcases primarily from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The overallgoal is to paint a picture of the different ways in which political authorityis exercised over territory and the different kinds of authority structuresthat have existed among sovereign, autonomous, and semi-autonomouspolitical units.

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While the cases examined in this anthology vary from extraterritorialityin East Asia, to sovereignty in Eastern Europe after the Cold War, many ofthe chapters focus on the continent of Africa and emphasize the role ofcolonialism and neocolonialism as they pertain to conceptions of authorityand territory on that continent. Such an emphasis, in the editors’ view, iswarranted because of their observation that the study of sovereignty hasbeen eclipsed by the study of nationalism in that states are a function ofnationalist ideas about territories as homelands for nations. The cases inthis volume, by contrast, seek to elucidate the effect that these particularexperiences and events have on how different sovereign political formshave been defined throughout history. Chapters on Panamanian sover-eignty vis-à-vis the United States in the Canal Zone, colonial sovereigntyin Manchuria and Manchukuo, the French “neocolonial” role in Africaafter World War II, and how the creation of national parks in Central Africaconnects to conceptions of state sovereignty, all illustrate different andcomplex relationships between territories, populations, and politicalauthority that defy the traditional nation-state ideal.

Any themes that emerge from such a varied group of cases are nec-essarily going to be broad, and perhaps not surprisingly, the themes thatemerge from this volume fall more or less in line with the conventionalwisdom about sovereignty outlined above; that is, taken together, thechapters collectively suggest that sovereignty is not a timeless principlethat accrues naturally to states, but rather is a socially constructed, his-torically contingent set of practices. Thus, this book largely confirms whatIR theorists have been arguing about sovereignty for some time now. Thecontribution of this volume is therefore not that it changes how we thinkabout sovereignty or how it evolves and changes to reflect prevailingrealities throughout history. Nor does it really outline the causal pro-cesses that are thought to bring about such change. Rather, the contribu-tion lies in the rich and well-researched empirical case-study chaptersthat demonstrate in detail the various different ways in which territory,populations, and authority structures have been organized relative to oneanother in different places and times. The chapters thus provide indi-vidually useful contributions to the already substantial empirical/historical record that tells us that sovereignty is historically contingentand socially constructed. But given that sovereignty’s uncertainty hasbeen its most enduring feature, and that this is broadly accepted amongscholars who study these issues, there is little need to restore the “uncer-tainty” of sovereign status to the study of states, contrary to what theeditors argue (16).

One does come away from this volume with the sense that sovereigntyis perhaps even more historically contingent than even the IR literaturesuggests (if it is even possible to speak in “degrees” of historical contin-gency). This perhaps has to do with the diverse array of cases that involvequestions of territory and authority that are placed under the broadbanner of “sovereignty” in this volume, which makes the editors correct to

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talk about different sovereignties, rather than some coherent set of prac-tices that lead to a single, however, contested, conception.

While The State of Sovereignty provides more empirical/historical evi-dence to suggest that the notion of sovereignty changes over time to reflecttrends in state practice, the second title under review, Humanitarian Inter-vention: Confronting the Contradictions, by Michael Newman, seeks toexamine the most recent and sustained challenge to the institution ofsovereignty: that of humanitarian intervention. While Newman’s book ismore about humanitarian intervention—defined narrowly as the use offorce by states against other states without the latter’s consent aimed atpreventing or ending widespread or grave violations of fundamentalhuman rights—than it is sovereignty, one can situate it among the broaderdiscourse about how international human rights and humanitarian prin-ciples are affecting traditional conceptions of state sovereignty.

It has become common especially among human rights scholars toargue that the widespread acceptance of international human rightsnorms that flow from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights consti-tutes a new sort of “standard for civilization (Donnelly 1998, 1–24). Statesnearly universally agree, in principle, that the right of sovereignty is notabsolute and that they do not in fact have the right to brutalize their ownpeople arbitrarily. Thus, a vast majority of the limitations that internationalhuman rights law places on states’ autonomy are undertaken with theirfull consent in the form of treaties and thus challenge sovereignty in asomewhat benign way. In this sense, agreeing to behave humanely towardone’s own citizens is perhaps best understood as an aspect of the exerciseof sovereignty rather than an erosion of it (Donnelly 2005). States haveagreed, in principle, to treat their people with a minimum level of dignityand respect, and if they do not, then again in principle, their internalbehavior becomes subject to scrutiny—or “interference”—by outsideactors.

Most of the time, this “interference” comes in for form of censure byinternational bodies and diplomatic protest by states, which has somenormative and moral force but still largely leaves human rights behaviorto the discretion of states. Less frequently, this interference can be morecoercive—entailing criminal prosecution of alleged war criminals, eco-nomic sanctions, and in the most exceptional cases, actual military inter-vention. It is this kind of “intervention” that provides the most seriousaffront to sovereignty, for what is at issue is the degree to which a state’sinternal behavior toward its citizens make it a legitimate target of externalmilitary coercion—a violation of a states’ sovereignty par excellence. Thesubject of humanitarian intervention—and indeed Newman’s book—istherefore not only part of the discourse on human rights and sovereignty,but also on the ethics, law, and politics of armed conflict.

Much has been written about the subject of humanitarian interventionin the decade that followed the 1999 Kosovo intervention by the NATO.Furthermore, the now well-known Responsibility to Protect doctrine

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drafted by the International Commission on Intervention and State Sov-ereignty (ICISS) in 2001 has been endorsed by the UN General Assembly.In principle, the doctrine establishes that when a state fails in its “respon-sibility to protect” its citizens from egregious abuse and suffering, thenthis responsibility defaults to the international community, and inextreme cases, may entail the use of military force (ICISS 2001). It is thusfair to say that some sort of “humanitarian intervention”—if not outrightmilitary intervention—is gaining legitimacy in international society(Wheeler 2000; Williams and Bellamy 2005). Humanitarian Intervention:Confronting the Contradictions attempts to make sense of the now volu-minous literature on humanitarian intervention by advancing a funda-mentally critical examination of the various international policies on thissubject by examining their impact on those states where humanitarianemergencies are most likely to occur—that is, on developing andso-called “transitional” states.

Newman’s main argument is that the various military interventions inrecent years have had only limited success in bringing about an enduringpeace in those states that were targets of such interventions and that this isbecause of the overly narrow conception of “humanitarianism” underwhich most advocates of intervention operate. Thus, the author’s mainpurpose is to advance a broader notion of humanitarianism that not onlyaddresses the various acute and “conscience-shocking” crimes that wenormally see as being grounds for humanitarian intervention, but that alsoaddresses the problems of global inequality and poverty. In this sense,Newman seeks to take a more macro approach to the problem of humansuffering that avoids the all-too-common tendency to address theseproblems only after gross violations of human rights have manifestedthemselves.

Newman’s method in this study is to draw on the existing literature“rather than contributing original research into specific cases of humani-tarian intervention” (6) and is therefore best described as a broad surveyof the topic that aims to “rethink” it rather than one addressing specificconcerns that arise from its practice. The first two chapters consist of broadreviews of well-known legal and normative arguments about the topicthat prevailed both during and after the Cold War. This is followed inchapter 3 by a discussion of the conditions under which humanitarianintervention is said to be permissible, wherein the author concurs with thewidely held view that the criteria for intervention should be highly restric-tive. Yet this is where he begins to make his own contribution to thedebate—that is, by arguing for his broader notion of humanitarianism thatincludes the structural causes of the human suffering at issue. Chapters 4and 5 seek to flesh out this broader notion of humanitarianism by exam-ining, respectively, the effects that neoliberal economic institutions and thetrend toward political democratization have had on human welfare in thestates of the global South, and the shortcomings of the internationalgovernmental regimes that are established after the combat phases of

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humanitarian interventions have ended. According to Newman, theseshortcomings reinforce the need to adopt a wider notion of humanitari-anism, which the author subsequently does in his final chapter by endors-ing the ideas of human security and the famous “responsibility to protect”doctrine. In sum, Newman argues that this broader notion of humanitari-anism can provide a basis for human protection by not only providinglegitimacy to using military force in truly emergency situations of humansuffering but also by addressing issues of poverty and inequality, whichare the root cause of the emergency situations that humanitarian interven-tion typically seeks to remedy.

In terms of the broader discussion on state sovereignty, Newman’sadvocacy of a broader concept of humanitarianism and endorsement ofthe idea of the responsibility to protect can be understood in a coupledifferent ways. First, it can be thought of as further evidence of howinternational practice and discourse are shaping the international con-sensus on sovereignty in a way that is increasingly accepting of certainlimits on their sovereignty in terms of human rights. In this sense, New-man’s book, like Howland and White’s volume, provides evidence tosupport the conventional view that state sovereignty is historically con-tingent and reflects prevailing practice of any given period in time.While the contribution of the volume in this sense is in demonstratingthat specifically humanitarian norms and discourse are affecting concep-tions of state sovereignty, it is not itself a particularly unique insight(Barkin 1998).

A perhaps more productive way to view Newman’s book is to readinto it as a deliberate attempt to affect the overall discussion of sover-eignty in favor of a more cosmopolitan ethos of global responsibility thattranscends the symbolic force of state borders. Newman’s approach hereis to apply insights from other areas of humanitarian studies to the dis-course on humanitarian intervention that seek to get at the root causes ofhuman suffering rather than just addressing emergency situations, bywhich time the international community has already failed the vulner-able populations with whom it is concerned. In this sense, the funda-mental contribution of the book is its spirited endorsement of theResponsibility to Protect doctrine that fleshes out some of its bare-bonesdoctrinal prescriptions, highlights its contradictions, yet still providescompelling reasons why the implementation of this doctrine wouldimprove the human condition.

Both of these books achieve what they set out to accomplish, and bothmake sound contributions to the extant scholarship on sovereignty andintervention. Yet neither will change how the scholarly community thinksabout these issues in any meaningful way, except for perhaps continuingto emphasize and advocate the evolution of sovereignty to come to reflectthat of a responsibility rather than a license. Yet this is not to diminish thecontributions of these volumes, for in many ways there has been so muchwritten on these topics that it is increasingly difficult to say anything

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paradigm-changing or present any new evidence that does not largelyconfirm what has been argued for some time now. I therefore come awayfrom these books with the following broad observations, which suggestpossible areas for future research on these themes.

First, it is no longer helpful to point out that sovereignty is historicallycontingent, socially constructed, or otherwise predicated on prevailingstate consensus. Thus, if the debate is to move forward, it behoovesscholars investigating these issues to focus on the causal processes thatare thought to drive this evolution forward rather than recounting thehistorical record and concluding that different conceptions of sover-eignty prevail at different times and places. Even the task of explaininghow norms evolve has attracted the focus on many (mainly social con-structivist) IR scholars in recent decades (Crawford 2002; Finnemore2004), yet any new works on this agenda would seemingly be valuedmore for their theoretical innovation rather than contributing “yetanother” genealogy or conceptual history of state sovereignty. It wouldalso be refreshing to read about the actual current “state of sovereignty.”With the breadth of evolutionary and historical accounts of sovereigntythat exist in the literature, a more forward-looking research agenda issorely needed if we are to conceptualize and theorize an internationalorder that is not premised upon the existence of spatially differentiatedautonomous political units. For all the proclamations of the end of sov-ereignty, there have been relatively few suggestions for alternative orga-nizing principles.

Second, the debate over humanitarian intervention has become stale tothe point that most new publications on the subject tend to be meta-analyses of existing literature that seek to sort through the already well-known and widely discussed contradictions inherent in this activity. Allwe really know about humanitarian intervention is that it is sometimespermissible under international law, but not very often; it is sometimesmorally permissible under certain extreme conditions of human suffering,though the precise nature of these conditions is subject to debate; andstates are unlikely to undertake it, unless they have some other compellinginterest at stake besides humanitarianism. As new humanitarian crisespresent themselves, such as in Darfur, Sudan, we get new debates onwhether humanitarian intervention would be legal, moral, or politicallypossible in such situations. Certainly, there will always be the need toapply existing insights to new realities, yet Newman’s book goes somedistance in shifting the terms of the debate to think more broadly aboutpreventing these catastrophes before they explode into situations thatrequire military intervention to avert. But this in and of itself requires arethinking of the idea of sovereignty to the point where political elites nolonger think in terms of “them and us” and are able to transcend theparochial interests of “their state” and act in the interests of humanity. Thisseems to be Newman’s ultimate (if implied) solution to the humanitarianintervention problem as it pertains to state sovereignty, yet it is premised

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upon an alternative and hypothetical global organizing principle forwhich neither theory nor concept have been developed.

ERIC A. HEINZE, University of Oklahoma

Note

1. Krasner’s typology is actually fourfold: contract, convention, coercion, andimposition.

References

Barkin, Samuel J. 1998. “The Evolution of the Constitution of Sovereignty and theEmergence of Human Rights Norms.” Millennium 27 (2): 229–252.

Bartelson, Jens. 1995. A Genealogy of Sovereignty. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Uni-versity Press.

Biersteker, Thomas J, and Cynthia Weber. 1996. State Sovereignty as Social Construct.Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Bodin, Jean, and Julian H. Franklin. 1992. On Sovereignty: Four Chapters from the SixBooks of the Commonwealth, Trans. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Brownlie, Ian. 2003. Principles of Public International Law. 6th ed. Oxford: OxfordUniversity Press.

Byers, Michael. 1999. Custom, Power and the Power of Rules. Cambridge, UK: Cam-bridge University Press.

Craig, Barker, J. 2000. International Law and International Relations. London:Continuum.

Crawford, Neta C. 2002. Argument and Change in World Politics: Ethics, Decoloniza-tion, and Humanitarian Intervention. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge UniversityPress.

de Jouvenel, Bertrand. 1957. Sovereignty: An Inquiry into the Political Good. Chicago:University of Chicago Press.

Donnelly, Jack. 1998. “Human Rights: A New Standard of Civilization?” Interna-tional Affairs 74: 1–24.

———. 2005. “State Sovereignty and Human Rights: Presented at the annualmeeting of the International Studies Association, Honolulu, Hawaii, March 5.

Drumbl, Mark A. 2003. “Self-Defense and the Use of Force: Breaking the Rules,Making the Rules, or Both?” International Studies Perspectives 4 (4): 409–431.

Finnemore, Martha. 2004. The Purpose of Intervention: Changing Beliefs about the Useof Force. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.

Fowler, Michael Ross, and Julie Marie Bunck. 1996. Law Power and the SovereignState: The Evolution and Application of the Concept of Sovereignty. University Park,PA: Pennsylvania State University Press.

Hinsley, F.H. 1986. Sovereignty. 2nd ed. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge UniversityPress.

International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty (ICISS). 2001.The Responsibility to Protect. Ottawa, Canada: International DevelopmentResearch Centre.

James, Alan. 1986. Sovereign Statehood: The Basis of International Society. London:Allen & Unwin.

Kelsen, Hans. 1920. Das Problem Der Souveränität Und Die Theorie Des Völkerrechts.Tübingen: Mohr.

Krasner, Stephen D. 1999. Sovereignty: Organized Hypocrisy. Princeton, NJ:Princeton University Press.

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Lyons, Gene M., and Michael Mastanduno. 1995. Beyond Westphalia? State Sover-eignty and International Intervention. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins UniversityPress.

Philpott, Daniel. 2001. Revolutions in Sovereignty: How Ideas Shaped Modern Interna-tional Relations. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Sassen, Saskia. 1996. Losing Control? Sovereignty in an Age of Globalization. NewYork: Columbia University Press.

Spruyt, Hendrik. 1994. The Sovereign State and Its Competitors: An Analysis ofSystems Change. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Weber, Cynthia. 1995. Simulating Sovereignty. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univer-sity Press.

Wheeler, Nicholas J. 2000. Saving Strangers: Humanitarian Intervention in Interna-tional Society. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Williams, Paul D, and Alex J. Bellamy. 2005. “The Responsibility to Protect and theCrisis in Darfur.” Security Dialogue 36 (1): 27–47.

The Political Economy of Water and Sanitation. Matthias Krause, ed. New York:Routledge, 2009. 274 pp. $105 (cloth).

The provision of water and sanitation services in developing countries is atopic that has prompted heated debate within the international develop-ment community. In the context of often ideologically charged exchangesregarding the relative merits of public provision, privatization, and newforms of public–private partnerships, Matthias Krause’s concise, clear, andbalanced study provides a helpful reminder that the political and institu-tional context for service provision greatly influences the ability ofutilities—public or private—to finance investments and thereby improveand extend services to deserving populations. While the theoretical frame-work is familiar, the book’s empirical content suggests a number of fruit-ful avenues for future research on the political economy of infrastructuremanagement.

Krause’s book investigates the influence of “governance” upon theperformance of both public and private water and sanitation utilities. Inthis study, the term “governance” refers to both the political governance ofa country or subnational political environment as well as sector-specificinstitutions and regulations. In taking this analytical approach, the bookdraws on a well-developed body of theory in political economy mostclosely associated with Brian Levy and Pablo Spiller’s 1996 volume ontelecommunications regulation. Levy and Spiller argue that institutionalenvironments and sector-specific institutions and regulatory laws thateffectively constrain regulatory discretion will encourage greater levels ofinvestment. Savedoff and Spiller (1999) and Shirley (2002) apply similarapproaches to the water sector. Krause’s review of this literature and hisaccompanying welfare economics-based analysis of the desirability ofcommon water and sanitation reform objectives are extremely clear andthorough. These two chapters would constitute excellent readings forpublic policy courses focusing on regulation at the master’s, doctoral, orundergraduate level.

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Krause’s study represents an effort to provide more systematic andbroad-based empirical support for this theoretical perspective on utilitiesmanagement and regulation than that included in the Savedoff andSpiller (1999) and Shirley (2002) volumes, which are edited collections ofcase studies. The book combines a cross-national investigation of theassociation between democratic institutions and service coverage levelsin water and sanitation and a within-country analysis of the influence ofpolitical context and water sector-specific institutions upon the internalefficiency and service improvements achieved by municipal utilities inColombia.

Krause’s cross-national chapter presents the results of regression analy-ses of the relationship between political institutions and measures ofincreases in access to improved water and sanitation services obtainedfrom the World Health Organization and UNICEF’s Joint MonitoringProgram (JMP). The associations he finds between institutional checks andbalances, as well as democratization, and higher rates of coverageimprovement are certainly consistent with case studies of service exten-sion to poor neighborhoods as they obtained greater political clout fol-lowing democratization.

Given the well-known problems with the JMP coverage estimates,which are based on survey and census figures reported by national gov-ernments utilizing often quite different definitions and methodologies—problems that Krause himself acknowledges—the reader is loath tointerpret his results as anything other than suggestive.1 Moreover, cov-erage data only tell one part of the access story, as residents in manydeveloping countries may have network connections but receive waterthat is either nonpotable or only available a few hours a day. Oneemerges from this chapter with a sense of how future research mightprovide more definitive evidence: Cross-national regressions could bepaired with carefully chosen subnational case comparisons from acountry with differential levels of democratization across municipalitiesor provinces, and for which one could rely upon a single set of censusdefinitions.

Krause’s second empirical chapter, which examines the influence ofpolitical context and sector institutions upon service provision in Colom-bia, is far richer. Krause begins by providing an incredibly detailed andclear description of the actors, institutions, and regulations affectingservice provision in the country. This section of the book will provide avery helpful primer on the workings of the sector to both practitioners andacademics beginning water projects in the country. Krause’s categoriza-tions are crisp and the material is presented in an extremely clear fashion.For example, one learns that the country has witnessed different institu-tional designs for both public sector and private sector management in thesector, including public companies incorporated under public and privatelaw, and long-term contracts with private operators for both managementand investment (concession contracts) and just management.

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The Colombia chapter contains two main empirical components. First,Krause examines the relationship between private sector management inthe sector and improvements in internal efficiency and coverage expan-sion with a set of cross-sectional regressions using data from 30 Colom-bian utilities. The chapter reports a statistically significant relationshipbetween private sector participation and the chosen indicator for internalefficiency (unaccounted for water), and no relationship between privatesector participation and greater rates of coverage expansion. As with thecross-national regressions, these results should be interpreted as sugges-tive; one harbors concerns about omitted variable bias, particularlybecause of the unavailability of data on local governance, which the authorhimself stresses as so important.

The second empirical component of the Colombia chapter comparesfour different municipal utilities: two private providers (one holding aconcession contract and the other holding a lease contract involvingminimal investment obligations) and two public providers (a public enter-prise and a publicly owned stock corporation). The cases are rich, welldocumented, and outline a variety of ways by which local institutionalarrangements and other sociopolitical factors may influence utility perfor-mance. Krause’s cases suggest that while better local governance is asso-ciated with superior internal efficiency, higher levels of internal efficiencyalso correlate with more favorable socioeconomic conditions, institutionalsettings that minimize political intervention in hiring decisions and theawarding of contracts, and historical performance levels. Because onlyfour cases are considered, and each involves a different institutionaldesign, however, it is impossible to identify the respective influence oflocal political context, sector-specific institutional arrangements, andother factors. Scholars can build upon Krause’s work through researchdesigns structured so as to assess the respective influence of each of thesefactors.

In summary, The Political Economy of Water and Sanitation provides ahelpful reminder that the effects of privatization and other types ofreforms in infrastructure sector will vary greatly depending upon both thebroader institutional and political environment and sector-specific insti-tutions and policies. The book suggests a number of promising avenuesfor future research, including examination of the varying levels of efficacyof different forms of public and private provision and the effects of localsocio-economic and political factors upon utility performance.

ALISON E. POST, University of California, Berkeley

Note

1. For instance, while some countries would classify a standpipe servicing1,500 residents as an “improved” water source, others would only apply thisterm to household connections.

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References

Levy, Brian, and Pablo Spiller, eds. 1996. The Institutional Foundations of RegulatoryCommitment: A Comparative Analysis of Telecommunications Regulation. Cam-bridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Savedoff, William, and Pablo Spiller. 1999. Spilled Water: Institutional Commitmentin the Provision of Water Services. Washington, DC: Inter-American DevelopmentBank.

Shirley, Mary, ed. 2002. Thirsting for Efficiency: The Economics and Politics of UrbanWater System Reform. Oxford: Pergamon.

Governance and the Depoliticisation of Development. Wil Hout and Richard Robison,eds. London and New York: Routledge/GARNET Series, 2009. 228 pp. $140.00(cloth).

International development defies easy explanation. Over the past twodecades, the predominant paradigm for understanding why nations arerich or poor stresses governance—decision-making procedures and insti-tutional “rules of the game” for state and society. Whereas the earlierconventional wisdom about development in official circles (the so-calledWashington Consensus) tended to take governance for granted, today’smainstream “Post-Washington Consensus” is that transparent, account-able governance is a precondition for efficient markets and, hence, forsocial and economic advancement. Put the right rules and public institu-tions in place, many scholars and policymakers believe, and that willunleash the creativity and productive power of civil society no matterwhat the other initial social conditions are.

The idea that governance underpins development is hardly new, ofcourse, but has a venerable intellectual lineage stretching back to MaxWeber and Adam Smith. The reason for its high regard today is thedisappointing performance of “structural adjustment” and liberalizationstrategies in the 1980s and early 1990s. Many aid donors had naivelyassumed that creating capable market systems was primarily a matter of“getting the prices right,” but the unwelcome appearance of crony capi-talism at the end of the Cold War cast the light more clearly on governanceissues. Efficient and equitable markets, it is now more generally acknowl-edged, necessitate a legal and regulatory framework that supports wide-spread ownership and exchange. These tasks are more complex thanshrinking the state, which the Washington Consensus had emphasized.Still, the message of the Post-Washington Consensus is confident andhopeful: The rich nations and the international financial institutions knowwhat structures of authority will release developing and transitional coun-tries’ economic potential.

The contributors to Governance and the Depoliticisation of Developmentchallenge this new orthodoxy about governance. The book grows out oftwo conferences held at the International Institute of Social Studies in theNetherlands in 2006 on North–South development issues. Written mainly

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for an academic audience, but also of interest to practitioners, its theme isthat the governance approach to global development represents lessimprovement than advertised over the market fundamentalism it super-seded. In addition to theoretical overview chapters by the editors, WilHout and Richard Robison, there are case studies on the World TradeOrganization, on the European Union’s aid program in the Mediterraneanregion, on transnational policy communities, on the role of legislativebodies in governance reform, as well as country-oriented studies lookingat governance programs in India, Indonesia, the Philippines, CentralAmerica, Timor Leste, and Lebanon.

As is typical of conference proceedings, the authors are not all in tightagreement with the central arguments of the conference organizers. In thisvolume, those arguments might be paraphrased as follows: Governancereform is a donor-driven initiative to impose one-best solutions withoutaccounting adequately for local conditions, the donors are repeating theclassic error of trying to isolate public administration from politics, theirtrue agenda is to neutralize or bypass majority opinion and create favor-able climates for investment, and entrenched elite interests will adapt towhatever superficial technocratic changes in governance occur in waysthat preserve their own power and block broad-based development. Theseunfavorable points are thoroughly explored, if at a high level of abstrac-tion, in the general chapters. The more applied chapters, however, some-times provide a more subtle and nuanced picture of governance reform.

In the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh, for example, Jos Mooij suggeststhat recent neoliberal governance undertakings are largely homegrown,not driven mainly by the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, orother international organizations and bilateral government agencies.Results have been mixed, as is true of most public policies. Mooij reportsthat some of the new public management efforts to increase accountabilityand transparency did not work, whereas parallel attempts to achieve thesame broad results through information technology did work. Governancereform failed to break the back of clientelism as had been hoped, however,and instead created new channels for distributing patronage to politicalsupporters.

Guatemala and Nicaragua appear to have been more influenced bydonors than India, but nevertheless they do not quite fit the picture ofimposed governance reform strengthening elite interests at the expenseof popular forces. According to Kees Biekart’s chapter, local civil societyorganizations in those two countries availed themselves of the opportu-nities provided by the US Agency for International Development and theWorld Bank to gain greater voice for the poor. Enhancing poor people’spolitical power may not have been the donors’ real goal (as opposed totheir stated or rhetorical goal) in Central America, but that would not bethe first time a public policy had unintended outcomes. Some groupseven used the donors as a shield against their conservative politicalopponents.

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Timor Leste is an extreme example of a postconflict state whose gover-nance capacity had been destroyed by colonialism and civil war. Here thedonors’ concern was building institutions from the ground up to deliverbasic public services, not just to make a market-friendly environment.According to Andrew Rosser, results are uneven. In some sectors, such asbudget management and health, there is measurable progress. The Min-istry of Education, on the other hand, performs poorly.

These particular case studies are a caution against jumping too quicklyto conclusions about where current efforts to promote developmentthrough better governance are going to end up. The Post-WashingtonConsensus is based on a simplistic model of impartial, expert-orientedadministration, as the title of this book implies. But the practical results ofthat model are not entirely predictable once various political actorsbecome engaged in its implementation.

ARTHUR A. GOLDSMITH, University of Massachusetts Boston

Sustainable Development for Public Administration. Denise Zeynep Leuenberger andJohn R. Bartle. Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, Inc., 2009. 160 pp. $39.95 (paper); $79.95(cloth).

Sustainable Development for Public Administration introduces publicadministrators (practitioners not teachers and researchers in the field) tothe basics of sustainable development and to the design and implemen-tation of public policies in the fields of water supply, food security andsafety, solid waste management, transportation, energy, and climatechange, which are systemically sustainable, intertemporally and distri-butionally equitable, and economically efficient. Its authors believe thatsustainability ought to be a fundamental value premise of public admin-istration and that public administrators must take the lead in achievingenvironmentally sustainable communities. That is, to the extent that thework of public administrators is concerned with converting existingstates into better ones, the latter should be defined in terms of a sustain-able future, with building communities that choose long-run successover failure.

Denise Zeynep Leuenberger and John R. Bartle argue that as a practicalmatter, this means that administrators must learn how to use systemstheory (Daneke 1999) to design and implement robust institutional/environmental arrangements that will work satisfactorily no matter whatthe future throws at us (Lempert and Popper 2005). By work satisfactorily,they mean: “All assets must be used in a way that increases, or at least doesnot decrease” the productivity of total social capital, including naturalcapital (environmental assets), human capital (the stock of human knowl-edge and abilities), and physical capital (buildings, machinery, and equip-ment) (Lempert and Popper 2005, 27). They call this condition “weaksustainability.” A satisfactory policy is therefore one in which weak

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sustainability would be achieved under the least favorable future state orcontingency.

Leuenberger and Bartle vigorously advocate the use of predict-then-actanalysis, although they do not use that term. Like benefit–cost analysis,predict-then-act analysis begins with agreement on models for predictingthe consequences of alternative actions under various future states and thelikelihoods of those states. But instead of trying to identify a best alterna-tive, it seeks to identify a set of alternatives, each of whose performance islargely insensitive to our uncertainties about the future, and to clarifyintrinsic trade-offs among the set of equally robust alternatives.

Leuenberger and Bartle’s approach to thinking globally and actinglocally calls for combining scientific knowledge with time and placeknowledge to design processes and mechanisms that are both feasible interms of resources, time, commitment, and understanding, and workable.Consequently, Leuenberger and Bartle echo recent Nobel Laureate LinOstrom in noting that pure markets and hierarchical government controloften adversely affect community sustainability, because both rob indi-viduals of the capacity to govern themselves and because both tend todiminish local time and place knowledge. Like Ostrom (whom they oftencite), Leuenberger and Bartle insist that higher levels of government mustnot crowd out self-organization at lower levels. They also support thefollowing: Environmental rules should clearly define who gets what, goodconflict resolution methods must be in place, the duty to maintain socialcapital should be proportional to the benefits from its maintenance, moni-toring and punishing should done by the people who use assets orsomeone accountable to them, and asset users must be allowed to partici-pate in setting and modifying the rules. Notice the absence of top-downgovernment solutions.

At the same time, Leuenberger and Bartle recognize that public admin-istrators must take a leadership role in this process. Voluntary collectiveaction on behalf of sustainable communities probably will not just spon-taneously occur: Opportunities for collectively beneficial action must beidentified, individual contributions established, performance monitored,and defectors sanctioned. To put things somewhat differently, voluntaryaction can be organized and must be managed. To the extent that man-agement implies a manager, it follows that someone, most likely a publicofficial, must be charged with mobilizing the community, organizing assetuse, creating incentives, and supervising enforcement of communitynorms (Powers and Thompson 1994). Another important role for publicadministrators they identify is bringing scientific knowledge to localactors.

We have a model for the effective provision of both roles: the USDepartment of Agriculture’s (USDA) Agricultural Extension Service. Thebee story shows how the Agricultural Extension Service works. Econo-mists once taught that because bees are a collective good, they must beundersupplied. That is not what we observe in practice, however. We can

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put this outcome down to human ingenuity in designing social arrange-ments à la Ostrom. Nevertheless, it is important to stress that an adequatesupply of bees did not just happen. The USDA’s Extension Service fieldagents provided the knowledge to fruit growers of what to do and how todo it. This information gave growers a solid technical basis for groupnorms governing the behavior of individual growers. The field agentsdetermined how many hives were needed and fairly apportioned respon-sibility for their provision. They also played a role in monitoring compli-ance with group norms and in passing that information along to growers.In so doing, the field agents could identify shirkers and the subsequentshortfall in the provision of bees that had to be made good by the rest ofthe community. Moreover, the USDA provided growers with a powerfulcollective sanction against free riders in the form of marketing orders andquota. Free riders were not merely subject to social ostracism; othergrowers could have denied them access to the most lucrative markets.

In sum, this is a very good book. My main regret is that it is not longer.For example, I wish Leuenberger and Bartle had told us how govern-

mental entities ought to be configured to promote the kind of leadershipcommunities need. It is clear that they are skeptical of machine bureau-cracies, which they insist are often ill equipped to deal with complex,systemic problems. But how should the activities of public administratorsbe organized? One place to start in answering this question might beUSDA’s Extension Service (Carpenter 2001). That answer probably doesnot go far enough, unfortunately. Leuenberger and Bartle stress that build-ing sustainable communities requires the collaboration of a variety ofgovernment agencies and offices, nongovernmental organizations, busi-ness associations, and community groups. The fact of the matter is that itis hard to join-up government, let alone effectively partner it with a varietyof nongovernmental collectivities.

Maybe technology will come to our rescue. Lempert and Popper (2005),for example, argue that “computer-based tools will enable more-effectivecollaboration across offices and agencies . . . [allowing] a kind of ‘virtualrestructuring’—reorganization without the need to shuffle organizationalboxes.” But there is an inherent contradiction between the basic buildingblock of most nonmarket productive relationships—hierarchy—and thenet-centric vision inspired by the architecture of modern informationtechnology. To realize information technology’s potential, a differentpattern of cognitive and social practices must be put into place. Thesepractices distinguish effective networked organizations from traditionalbureaucracies. The experience with the construction of the US Departmentof Defense’s Global Information Grid, by far the world’s most ambitiousattempt to use technology to join-up government, shows that the neces-sary cognitive and social changes do not come easily and may not come atall (Thompson 2006). Besides Leuenberger and Bartle warn us againstrelying on “undiscovered or undeveloped technologies instead of onrevising current behavior” (8).

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Finally, I might note that, in my opinion, Leuenberger and Bartle’srelentless focus on community survival, critical as that is, leads them toneglect the role that our natural environment plays in making human lifeworth living. I wish they had occasionally taken the space to remind theirreaders of the importance of stopping to smell the (wild) roses.

FRED THOMPSON, Willamette University

References

Carpenter, Daniel P. 2001. The Forging of Bureaucratic Autonomy: Networks, Reputa-tions and Policy Innovation in Executive Agencies, 1862–1928. Princeton, NJ:Princeton University Press.

Daneke, Gregory A. 1999. Systemic Choices: Nonlinear Dynamics and Practical Man-agement. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press.

Lempert, Robert J., and Steven W. Popper. 2005. “High-Performance Governmentin an Uncertain World.” In High-Performance Government: Structure, Leadership,Incentives, ed., Robert Klitgaard and Paul C. Light. Santa Monica, CA: PardeeRAND Graduate School.

Powers, K.J., and Fred Thompson. 1994. “Managing Coprovision: Using Expect-ancy Theory to Overcome the Free-Rider Problem.” Journal of Public Adminis-tration Research and Theory 4 (2): 179–196.

Thompson, Fred. 2006. “Netcentric Organization.” Public Administration Review 66(4): 619–623.

Reforms at Risk: What Happens after Major Policy Changes Are Enacted. Eric Patashnik,ed. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2008. 236 pp. $55.00 (cloth), $22.95(paper or e-book).

This is a very fine book—an example of American political science at itsbest, which is to say, very good indeed.

Eric Patashnik’s study starts from one of those insights that, once stated,seem obvious . . . but have not been obvious until that moment. It is best toquote his own words: “It is no small thing to win the adoption of general-interest reforms in the United States. . . . But what is required to initiatepolicy reform should not be confused with what is required to sustain it”(155, emphasis in original). The book is about why some reforms aresustained and others are not: in other words, why some reforms getembedded after enactment and set up a dynamic that make them endure,and why some, after all the hard work of enactment, are subsequentlychipped away, or are even abandoned.

Readers will immediately recognize that this study is in two establishedtraditions of policy analysis in the United States. The first comprises thoseconcerned with the problems posed by veto groups and entrenched, par-ticularistic interests in the American policy process. The second comprisesthose of which the most distinguished political science example is prob-ably Pressman and Wildavsky on Implementation, who examine why ambi-tious program commitments so often end in failure.

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If I have a quibble, it is that Patashnik, working within these prettywell-established literatures, spends a bit too much time on product differ-entiation: on telling us just how his work departs from what we alreadyknow. Patashnik rightly argues that while his work overlaps with theimplementation failure literature, his concerns are wider, going beyondthe problems of institutional blockages or failed intelligence. While hedisavows any ambition to contribute to the literature on why generalinterest proposals fail—since his focus is on what happens after themoment of legislative success—the structure of the book actually meansthat we learn a good deal also about why proposals do indeed succeed orfail. At its heart are six chapters that cover seven cases. These studiesmostly draw on the secondary literature but are nevertheless models ofscholarship. They encompass attempted reform of: the tax code; farmsubsidy payments; pensions and Medicare catastrophe coverage, in asingle chapter; public procurement; airline regulation; and pollutioncontrol. Each chapter is fairly conventionally organized: It starts with theprereform situation, goes to the politics of reform adoption, and only thengets stuck into the problem of why the reform did, or did not, endure. Thecase studies are folded between chapters that analyze the existing litera-ture and a fine synthetic conclusion that tries to generalize reasons forfailure and success, and that draws out some practical implications for thepolicymaker. The mix of rich case studies and analytical argument meansthat the book will be valuable to the scholar but will also function well inteaching, especially to advanced undergraduates and graduate students.

Patashnik’s tone and language are throughout a model of balance, buta book this ambitious is inevitably going to be highly contestable. Let usconcentrate on the most obvious: What is the big deal about generalinterest policymaking? Why not just focus on any ambitious program andits fate? There are some powerful undertones here, partly arising from thetradition in which Patashnik works, and partly arising from normativecommitments that are not, I think, sufficiently well defended. Patashnikties himself in quite a few analytical knots in thinking aloud about themeaning of a general interest policy, and finally gets to it thus: “a conscious,non-incremental shift in a preexisting line of policymaking intended to producegeneral benefits” (16, emphasis in original). Virtually everything in thisdefinition is clear and defensible, except for the one element that reallyneeds to be: What does “general benefits” mean? It means, we learn on thenext page, “benefits for diffuse groups.” And, as if to make the extent ofreliance on a poorly articulated normative position even more obvious, welearn that “General-Interest reforms are policies that would theoretically beadopted if information, organization and transaction costs of the generalpolity were zero” (18, my emphasis). This is to invite a thought experi-ment of dizzying complexity. It helps explain why the cases chosen,though all substantively interesting and important, make a bit of an oddpackage. Patashnik might have been more convincing had he simply saidto the reader: “Look, these are important policy programs; some, like

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airline deregulation, stuck; some, like Medicare catastrophe coverage,were abandoned almost at the moment of enactment; I will explain to youwhy.”

Fine scholarship informs and leaves the reader arguing with it through-out; by these two measures this is fine scholarship indeed.

MICHAEL MORAN, University of Manchester, UK

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