International public goods: incentives, measurement, and financing edited by MARCO FERRONI and ASHOKA MODY (Boston, Kluwer Academic Publishers for the World Bank, 2002, pp. 196)

✍ Scribed by P. B. Anand

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 2003
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 38 KB
• Volume: 15
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0954-1748
• DOI: 10.1002/jid.978

✦ Synopsis

available to British and German leaders in the first decades of the twentieth century, it would have been impossible for them to monitor these indices in order to initiate World War I at exactly the right moment ' (p. 57). Lemke thus puts the proverbial cart before the horse-it is power transition theory that should guide the decision to go to war! In a global political environment denoted for its unpredictability, such bold determinism is surely misplaced.

More profoundly, there is the question of whether econometric analysis is the best way to approach these complex questions. American political scientists often display a particularly strong penchant to applying econometric techniques to their analyses. Yet, as Frances Stewart (1998) has pointed out, econometric analysis has not usually been capable of throwing light on anything more than a small proportion of conflicts-there are too many qualitative issues at stake which cannot be dealt with adequately within the confines of an econometric model. In the final resort, this quantitative-type of approach to studying international relations either appeals or it does not. In the opinion of this reviewer, it is unconvincing-the econometrics are based on variables which are at best poor proxies of power and conflict, and the author has some trouble explaining his own results (Chapter 5).

Some of the basic precepts of the econometric modelling could also be questioned. For example, Lemke (p. 70) sustains that power degrades over distance, and this is represented in the model as a simple inverse logarithmic function of miles between the home country and foreign country, bearing in mind the type of terrain to be traversed, and the type of transport technology used. As Lemke's extensive discussion of this variable reveals (pp. 67-97), the application of this kind of formula to the identification of local hierarchies is, in practical terms, highly problematic. At times, Lemke himself seems to be somewhat sceptical of his own choice of variables-for example, he uses an indicator of 'status quo dissatisfaction' which reflects 'extraordinary military build-ups', an indicator which the author admits is 'a less than perfect indicator of the theoretically relevant concept of status quo evaluations, and readers may want to discount my findings accordingly' (p. 109).

To sum up, Lemke's book asks some interesting questions, but the author makes exaggerated claims for his own theoretical, methodological and empirical work. Certainly, for specialists in developing countries, if the concern is to identify the 'root causes' of conflicts and related humanitarian emergencies, the analytical approach used in this book is probably not the most appropriate.

REFERENCE

Stewart F. 1998. The root causes of conflict: some conclusions. Queen Elizabeth House Working Paper Series, QEHWPS16, June.