180 Journal of International Development: Vol. I No. I , Jan. 1989pp.180-196

BOOK REVIEWS

Political Change in the Third World. By CHARLES ANDRAIN. (London, Allen & Unwin, 1988, pp.296, €28 Wb, €9.95 p/b.)

This book offers five case studies ofpolitical change in theThird World, prefaced by an elaborate theoretical discussion linking general models of political systems to specific issues relating t o the shaping and processing of policy. The case studies (of Vietnam, Cuba, Chile, Nigeria and Iran) rest upon extremely substantial secondary sources, and provide, to varying degrees, adequate and reliable narratives of periods of intense political change. However, they d o not gain much from the theoretical prolegomena.

Drawing upon Apter’s system types, Andrain provides a lengthy description of folk, bureaucratic-authoritarian, reconciliation and mobilization models, and argues that moderate conflicts provoke within-system change, while intense conflict provokes between-system change. The utility of this discussion is vitiated by a number of awkward loose ends in the argument andsubsequent application to the case studies. I t first becomes apparent when Andrain presents a ‘theoretical explanation of political change’ (pp.52-75). Between-system change is said to be provoked, internally, by ineffective policy performance, loss of governmental ability to wield efficient coercive and consensual power, declining cohesion among supporting social groups, and waning governmental legitimacy and ideological commitment. All of these may precede or accompany change, but they bear no relationship to the specific features of the different models described, nor d o they get directly a t causality. At best, therefore, they provide a framework within which explanations can be advanced, to which the systems analysis provided is strictly irrelevant. Secondly, they deal only with breakdown, and Andrain admits that they offer little guidance to the direction in which change will go; we are dealing, therefore, with ‘from-system’ rather than between-system change. This is symptomatic of a larger failing running throughout the book: the distinction between within-system and between-system change becomes increasingly blurred as it proceeds. Andrain identifies Iran and Chile as mixed systems (and finds in the Chilean case elements of mobilization, reconciliation and bureaucratic-authoritarian systems!), and finds gradual movement from mobilization to bureaucratic-authoritarian systems in Vietnam, Cuba, and Iran, while accepting that change in Nigeria has been ‘between-system’, but has not been profound. The tangles into which he is led by his framework are well illustrated by the closing sentence of the Iran case study, which asserts that ‘In sum, guided by Islamic folk values, the elitist mobilization system has secured some radical changes while retreating backward into traditionalism’ (p.279). Here, and frequently elsewhere, Andrain’s detailed and sensitive handling of the cases is hindered rather than helped by the elaborate systems typology around which the book is organized. This is most obviously the case in the conclusion, which argues (very briefly, in view of the wealth

Book Reviews 181

of material that has gone before) and there is a general trend toward bureaucratic- authoritarian rule in the Third World, as a result of the instability of other system types. On closer inspection, it seems that two different arguments are beingdeployed, the first that reconciliation systems are vulnerable to breakdown, and the second that mobilization systems (authoritarian to begin with) are subject to a secular process of institutionalization, or bureaucratization. This approach lumps Iran and Chile with Vietnam and Cuba, and seems little different to the venerable distinction once made between democracy on the one hand, and totalitarianism on the other. In addition, it might be objected that a different set ofcasestudies would have yielded the conclusion that bureaucratic-authoritarian rather than reconciliation systems were fragile in the contemporary Third World.

All in all, the, this is a book which can be recommended for the quality of the case studies and the depth and sensitivity of reading they display, but one which would have been better, and far more approachable, if the systems typology had been discarded, and a conclusion had been provided which did justice to the points of comparison raised in the text between the case studies themselves.

PAUL CAMMACK Department of Government University of Texas at Austin

A History of Resistance in Namibia. By PETER H. KATJAVIVI . (London, James Currey and Paris, UNESCO, 1988, pp. xxxii + 152, €4.95 paperback.)

This book is the third in the new UNESCO series on Apartheid and Society. Whereas the first two, Endgame in South Africa? (Cohen) and Race, Class and the Apartheid State (Wolpe) dealt exclusively with South Africa itself, the subject of Peter Katjavivi‘s eminently readable text is South Africa’s colony, Namibia.

One of the tragedies of Namibia’s history of colonial domination and exploitation, first by Germany and then South Africa, has been the suppression of indigenous cultures, skills and education. Only in the last fifteen years or so have significant numbers of black Namibians, through their own perseverance and the efforts of the international community, been able to obtain higher education. This is essential not only for the individuals concerned but also for a future independent Namibia if it is to reach its true and full potential as a self-reliant state. One consequence of this process is that Namibians themselves are now increasingly contributing to the writing - or perhaps more accurately rewriting - of their own history. Hitherto our knowledge of this vast and beautiful country’s tragic history has relied on the writings of missionaries, settlers, colonists and their apologists, South African and foreign academics and authors, and international organisations.

Peter Katjavivi, a Namibian long active internationally in his country’s main liberation movement, SWAPO, recently obtained his doctorate from Oxford for a thesis on the rise of Namibian nationalism. That, indeed, is a key theme running