Books: International Relations

D. Allen and A. Pijpers (eds), European Foreign Policy-Making and the Arab-Israeli Conflict (Dordrecht, Martinus Nijhoff, 1984)
Sydney D. Bailey (ed.), The Making of Resolution 242 (Dordrecht, Martinus Nijhoff, 1985
David Howard Bain, Sitting in Darkness, Americans in the Philippines (Boston, Houghton Mifflin Company, 1984
C. Coker, The Future of the Atlantic Alliance (London, Macmillan, with the Royal United Services Institute, 1985)
C. Rose, Campaigns Against Western Defence (London, Macmillan, with the Royal United Services Institute, 1985)
G. R. Berridge and A. Jennings (eds), Diplomacy at the UN (London, Macmillan, 1958)
John Burton, Global Conflict: The Domestic Sources of International Crisis (Brighton, Wheatsheaf Books for The Center for International Development, University of Maryland, 1984)
B. J. C. Kercher and D. J. Moss (eds), Shadow and Substance in British Foreign Policy 1895–1939 (Edmonton, University of Alberta Press, 1984)
D. Holloway and J. M. 0. Sharp (eds), The Warsaw Pact (London, Macmillan, 1984)
W. R. Louis, The British Empire in the Middle East 1945–1951: Arab Nationalism, The United States, and Postwar Imperialism (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1984)
Brian Murphy, The World Wired Up: Unscrambling the New Communications Puzzle (London, Comedia, 1983)
Steve Smith (ed.), International Relations: British and American Perspectives (Oxford, Basil Blackwell, in association with the British International Studies Association, 1985)
I. Wallerstein, The Politics of the World Economy (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1984)     

The Big Society: Back to the Future

This article contributes to the steady flow of critiques of the big society idea contained in The Political Quarterly. It focuses chiefly on two sets of parallels. The first is between the big society and the policies pursued by the Thatcher government which, despite their obvious rhetorical differences, contain many striking similarities, including their neoliberal origins, application of the ‘crowding out’ thesis and uncritically idealised notions of community. The second is between the big society and a policy with the same name pursued doggedly by the Chinese Communist Party for nearly 20 years until being abandoned as a failure. Lessons for the Prime Minister's flagship policy are drawn from the Chinese experience. The article concludes with a welcome for the rediscovery of the social by public policy and some suggestions as to how a more participative and democratic state could follow from this breakthrough.     

The Developmental Roles of the State: Moving Beyond the Developmental State in Conceptualizing Asian Political Economies

This article examines the role the state has played in the development of a variety of Asian nations through a series of "paired comparisons" to evaluate the model of the developmental state that has become prevalent in the analysis of East Asian political economy. The cases included in the study indicate that neither the state nor the market (as argued by neoclassical economists) can explain developmental outcomes by itself. Too many strong and interventionist states succeeded to gainsay the idea that economic competitiveness can be manipulated. However, the statist faith in strong and autonomous developmental states does not fare very well either. Strong states failed as well as succeeded. In fact, the strongest and most autonomous states may well be in the greatest danger of degeneration because they can resist pressures for change and can use their powers to become a "predator" over society. In addition, quite a few of these mini case studies directly imply that the nature of society is an important variable in deter-mining how well a political economy operates. Thus, the case for "bringing society back in" appears to be a strong one.     

ENGLISH METROPOLITAN GOVERNMENT SINCE ABOLITION: AN EVALUATION OF THE ABOLITION OF THE ENGLISH METROPOLITAN COUNTY COUNCILS

The Local Government Act 1985 abolished the Greater London Council (GLC) and the six English metropolitan county councils (MCCS); but it did not abolish the services for which they were responsible. It transferred them: some directly to the lower-tier borough or district councils, others to a variety of joint boards, joint committees, residuary bodies, and special purpose agencies. As a result, there are, in at least some of the former MCC areas, many services still operated wholly or partially on a county-wide basis. The first part of this article compares the contrasting approaches adopted in the six metropolitan areas to the retention or re-creation of county-wide services after abolition. The second part attempts to explain these contrasting approaches: why, for instance, significantly more county-wide institutional arrangements were voluntarily negotiated by the districts in West Yorkshire and Greater Manchester than by those in South Yorkshire and Merseyside.