Internationalization and Domestic Politics.

• Author: Sneh, Itai

Robert O. Keohane and Helen V. Milner, (eds.) (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996) 308 pp.

The preface alone signals the problems that considerably diminish the impact of this volume. The editors state that the periodical that commissioned this project, the International Organization, where Keohane and Milner serve as editors, declined to publish it as a special issue or as a companion to one of the regular editions. There are several reasons why this book does not contribute effectively to existing literature. First and foremost, it is largely synthetic, compiling pieces that do not add to works already published by the same authors either in International Organization(1) or in other forums.(2)

Secondly, the stylistic presentations are written in a circuitous manner not easily understandable to the lay reader. The authors misapply fundamental concepts such as capitalism and transaction cost. Capitalism is, in essence, used by the authors as a synonym for resources rather than as a system of complex social relations. Transaction cost seemingly refers to intra-institutional bargaining. Consequently, the analysis does not fully address the mechanisms that determine price and create efficiency and thus it largely ignores the daily fluctuations of the open market. Finally, the authors offer little that is counter-intuitive; the scope and breadth of interest is limited to traditional research.

Consequently, this volume is largely predictable, suffers from truisms, and is not worthy of the high stature almost automatically secured by the fact it was published by Cambridge University Press as part of its prestigious series of Cambridge Studies in Comparative Politics. While the assembly of academics is first-rate, the views represented offer little contrast. The group lacks intellectual diversity and appears incapable of deviating from the dominant line. The book offers continuity rather than novelty and it functions as a codification of orthodoxy in the field.

Indeed, this highly-placed circle is inside the same `theoretical loop' that lacks the tools to properly address technological advancements, the recent innovations in the field of communication, changes in political culture since the collapse of communism and the dramatic expansion in the scale of international economic activity. These essays are limited mostly to high-brow scholarship with a dispassionate tone that is steeped in the discourse of the 1970s. As such, they often...