Obama's World

Contemporary Security and Strategy, edited by Craig A. Snyder, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2008, 285 pp., $42.00, ISBN 0-230-52096-0

Dead Aid: Why Aid Is Not Working And How There Is Another Way for Africa, by Dambisa Moyo, Johannesburg, Penguin Books, 2009, $20 (paperback), ISBN 978-0-141-03118-7

Jan Smuts: South Africa, Makers of the Modern World Series, Haus Histories, by Anthony Lentin, London, Hus Publishers, 2010, 221 pp., $19.95, ISBN 978-1-906701-82-8     

Small State Discourses in the International Political Economy

Abstract

This article supports growing calls to ‘take small states seriously’ in the international political economy but questions prevailing interpretations that ‘smallness’ entails inherent qualities that create unique constraints on, and opportunities for, small states. Instead, we argue that discourses surrounding the ‘inherent vulnerability’ of small states, especially developing and less-developed states, may produce the very outcomes that are attributed to state size itself. By presenting small states as a problem to be solved, vulnerability discourses divert attention away from the existence of unequal power structures that, far from being the natural result of smallness, are in fact contingent and politically contested. The article then explores these themes empirically through discussion of small developing and less-developed states in the Commonwealth and the World Trade Organization (WTO), considering in particular how smallness has variously been articulated in terms of what small states either cannot or will not do.     

The Link Between Public Service Motivation and Volunteering: The Case of South Korean Civil Servants

Despite the consensus on volunteering as a behavioral consequence of public service motivation (PSM), research has not yet empirically examined how various PSM constructs relate to an individual’s volunteering, and the underlying mechanism between PSM and volunteering remains a mystery. This study identifies common motivational grounds between PSM and volunteering and examines how the four PSM types—rational, normative, affective, and self-sacrifice—predict public service employees’ volunteering. The findings from the survey of employees in the Korean National Government suggest a connection between public employees’ volunteering and the rational dimension of PSM, i.e., their desire to influence public policy process.