Bolt from the Blue or Avoidable Failure? Revisiting September 11 and the Origins of Strategic Surprise

Drawing on the strategic surprise, warning-response, and foreign policy literature, this article argues that the September 11 terror attacks should be regarded as a strategic surprise and examines a number of key factors that contributed to vulnerability and inhibited vigilance. Three broad explanatory "cuts" derived from the literature—psychological, bureau-organizational, and agenda-political—are deployed to sift through the rapidly expanding empirical record in an effort to shed light on the processes and contextual factors that left the United States vulnerable to the attacks. The article aims to improve our understanding of generic processes and practices that enhance or detract from vulnerability and vigilance.     

Attempts to Define ‘Terrorism’ in International Law

Netherlands International Law Review -     

Social capital

In parallel with, and as a complement to, globalisation, ‘social capital’ has enjoyed a meteoric rise across the social sciences over the last two decades. Not surprisingly, it has been particularly prominent across development studies, not least through heavy promotion by the World Bank. As a concept, though, as has been argued persistently by a minority critical literature, social capital is fundamentally flawed. Although capable of addressing almost anything designated as social, it has tended to neglect the state, class, power, and conflict. As a buzzword, it has heavily constrained the currently progressive departure from the extremes of neo-liberalism and post-modernism at a time of extremely aggressive assault by economics imperialism. Social capital should not be ignored but contested – and rejected.     

Tailoring Representative Democracy to the European Union: Does the European Constitution Reduce the Democratic Deficit?

Abstract Even if the institutions of representative democracy that have developed in the nation‐state context cannot be simply transposed to the European Union, for practical and normative reasons they do provide the main starting point for any reflection on the EU's ‘democratic deficit’. This article draws upon the Constitution prepared by the European Convention to reconstruct the concept of representative democracy in the EU. Drawing on the proposals put forward, it identifies two distinctive challenges that need to be overcome if the concept of representative democracy is to be successfully applied to the EU: the multilevel character of the polity and the shift of the centre of political gravity from legislative to executive politics. The article then examines the extent to which the institutional proposals contained in the Constitution go to meet these two challenges and also highlights some aspects in which these proposals fall short.     

Book reviews

Roland Axtmann, Liberal democracy into the twenty‐first century: Globalization, integration and the nation‐state (Manchester University Press, Manchester, 1996), 198 pp., ISBN 0–7190–4304–2 (hb), 0–7190–4305–0 (pb)

Paul Kapteyn, The Stateless Market: The European Dilemma of Civilization (Routledge, London and New York, 1996), 194 pp., ISBN 0–415–12232–5 (hb), 0–415–12233–3 (pb)

Richard Werbner and Terence Ranger (eds), Postcolonial Identities in Africa (Zed Books, London & New Jersey, 1996), 292 pp., ISBN 1–85649–415–2 (hb), 1–85649–416–0 (pb)

Mark Wheeler, Politics and the Mass Media (Blackwell, Oxford, 1997), 274 pp., ISBN 0–631–19783–4 (hb), 0–631–19784–2 (pb)

Nigel Harris, The New Untouchables: Immigration and the New World Worker (Penguin Books, London, 1995), 254 pp., ISBN 0–14–014689‐X (pb)

Gilles Kepel, Allah in the West (Polity Press, Cambridge, 1997), 273 pp., ISBN 0–7456–1557–0 (hb), 0–7456–1558–9 (pb)

Leonard Weinberg, The Transformation of Italian Communism (Transaction Publishers, New Brunswick, New Jersey, 1995), 147 pp., ISBN 1–56000–180–1 (hb)

Brian Jenkins and Spyros A. Sofos (eds), Nation and Identity in Contemporary Europe (Routledge, London, 1996), x + 294pp., ISBN 0–415–12312–7 (hb), 0–415–12313–5 (pb)

Stuart Parkes, Understanding Contemporary Germany (Routledge, London, 1997), 247 pp., ISBN 0–415–14123–0 (hb), 0–415–14124–9 (pb)     

Reviews

Anders Aslund, How Russia Became a Market Economy. Washington, DC: The Brookings Institution, 1995, xviii + 378 pp., £25.75/£9.95.

Boris Kagarlitsky, Restoration in Russia: Why Capitalism Failed. London: Verso, 1995, 172 pp., £39.95/£11.95.

Simon Clarke (ed.), Management and Industry in Russia: Formal and Informal Relations in the Period of Transition. Aldershot: Edward Elgar, 1995, xii + 244 pp. £45.00.

Jan Adam, Why Did the Socialist System Collapse in Central and Eastern European Countries? The Case of Poland, the Former Czechoslovakia and Hungary. London: Macmillan, 1996, xii + 244 pp., £40.00.

? Bogeti? & Arye L. Hillman (eds), Financing Government in the Transition: Bulgaria. The Political Economy of Tax Policies, Tax Bases, and Tax Evasion. Washington, DC: The World Bank, 1995, xv + 254 pp., £19.95.

Vladimir Tismaneanu (ed.), Political Culture and Civil Society in Russia and the New States of Eurasia. Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 1995, xiii + 384 pp., $22.95.

Alexander Maksimovich Yakovlev, Striving for Law in a Lawless Land—Memoirs of a Russian Reformer. New York: M. E. Sharpe, 1996, xvi + 237 pp., $62.95.

Tuomas Forsberg (ed.), Contested Territory: Border Disputes at the Edge of the Former Soviet Empire. Aldershot: Edward Elgar, 1995, xi + 267 pp., £45.00.

Graham Smith (ed.), The Nationalities Question in the Post‐Soviet States. London: Longman, 1996, xiv + 524 pp.

Aleksandr’ G. Savel'yev & Nikolai N. Detinov, The Big Five: Arms Control Decision‐making in the Soviet Union. Westport, CT: Praeger, 1995, xiv + 204 pp., £47.95.

Keith L. Nelson, The Making of Detente: Soviet‐American Relations in the Shadow of Vietnam, Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995, xvii + 217pp., £29.00.

George Ginsburgs, Alvin Z. Rubinstein & Oles M. Smolansky (eds), Russia and America: From Rivalry to Reconciliation, New York: M. Sharpe, 1993, xi + 353 pp.

Diego Cordovez & Selig S. Harrison, Out of Afghanistan: The Inside Story of the Soviet Withdrawal. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995, ix + 450 pp., $35.00.

Andrei S. Grachev, Final Days. The Inside Story of the Collapse of the Soviet Union. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1995, xviii + 222 pp., £22.50.

Ilya Prizel & Andrew A. Michta (eds), Polish Foreign Policy Reconsidered. Challenges of Independence. Basingstoke, Macmillan, 1995, xiii + 174 pp., £25.00.

James Riordan, Christopher Williams & Igor Uynsky (eds), Young People in Post‐Communist Russia and Eastern Europe. Aldershot: Dartmouth, 1995, xvi + 215 pp., £39.50.

James von Geldern & Richard Stites (eds), Mass Culture in Soviet Russia: Tales, Poems, Songs, Movies, Plays and Folklore 1917–1953. Bloomington and Indianapolis, IN: Indiana University Press, 1995, xxix + 492 pp., £39.50 h/b, £19.50 p/b.

Katerina Clark, Petersburg, Crucible of Cultural Revolution. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995, xii + 377 pp., £25.50.

Anna Feldman Leibovich, The Russian Concept of Work: Suffering, Drama, and Tradition in Pre‐ and Post‐Revolutionary Russia. Westport, CT and London: Praeger, xv + 166 pp., £44.95.

R. Antony French. Plans, Pragmatism & People. The Legacy of Soviet Planning for Today's Cities. London: UCL Press, 1995, xi + 233 pp.

Roger Brunet, Denis Eckert & Vladimir Kolossov, Atlas de la Russie et des pays proches. Montpellier‐Paris: Reclus‐La Documentation Franchise, 1995, 208 pp., 220Ff.

Bruce Grant, In the Soviet House of Culture: A Century of Perestroikas. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995, xvii + 225 pp., £12.00.

Michael Bourdeaux (ed.), The Politics of Religion in Russia and the New States of Eurasia, The International Politics of Eurasia, Volume 3. Armonk, NY and London: M.E. Sharpe, 1995, xiv + 321 pp., $49.95 h/b, $19.95p/b.