Book Reviews

• Author: Corwin D. Edwards
• Published date: 01 December 1973
• Date: 01 December 1973
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/0003603X7301800412
• Subject Matter: Book Reviews

BOOK

REVIEWS

883

Heinrich Kronstein, The Law of International Oarteie, Ithaca,

N. Y.: Cornell University Press (1973),469 pp.,

$21.50.

This book is not concerned with international cartels in

the narrow sense, but with the entire phenomenon of coordi-

nated restrictive power in international business. An inter-

national cartel is viewed, not as a mere restrictive agreement

among enterprises in several national states, but as a complex

and widely ramified body of restrictions, in which interrelated

agreements are bolstered and extended by corporate affilia-

tions, vertical integration, and control of intellectual property

rights.

Though the exposition does not consist of tightly related

deductive generalizations derived from a few postulates,

the

complex pattern

that

it

portrays is a conceptual model.

Par-

ticular power structures before and

after

World

War

IT

are

used as illustrative examples of

parts

of the model; but, as

described, few

if

any of them achieved

full

development.

There is no attempt to present aquantitative estimate of the

extent of cartelization today and the degree to which it is

reenforced by the various means included in the model.

Rather, the book states the potential of international restric-

tion that might be attained

if

the various available restrictive

means were fully used.

It

is a model of international private

restriction, as a model of free trade in competitive markets

is a model of absence of restriction. As such,

it

persuasively

coordinates and extends the current concepts of international

restrictive action and thus provides bench-marks to which

particular patterns of restrictions can be compared.

It

justi-

fies the conclusionthat, because synthetic analysis of post-war

structures of business power has been neglected, the extent

and potential of contemporary cartelization are seriously

underestimated.

Analytical description of the nature of international pri-

vate restriction occupies about two-fifths of the book. The

rest, the account of the law of such restrictions, is essentially