Regions of War and Peace by Douglas LemkeReview by: Jack S. LevyPolitical Science Quarterly, Vol. 117, No. 4 (Winter, 2002-2003), pp. 697-698Published by: The Academy of Political ScienceStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/798159 .

Accessed: 17/12/2014 18:34

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

.

The Academy of Political Science is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access toPolitical Science Quarterly.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 128.235.251.160 on Wed, 17 Dec 2014 18:34:33 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

BOOK REVIEWS | 697 BOOK REVIEWS | 697

sion for his subject may also explain why the book is brimming with minutiae- for example, article-by-article dissections of treaty texts, which should have been relegated to appendices if not excised altogether. The book could have benefited from a firmer editorial hand.

Because of its excessive level of detail and sometimes dry writing style, Dis- armament Sketches is unlikely to appeal to a general readership. Nevertheless, it is a very important historical document and will undoubtedly be consulted by historians of arms control and American foreign policy in the late twentieth century. Students of bureaucratic politics and organizational behavior will also find in this book a rich mine of case study material.

IDO OREN University of Florida

Regions of War and Peace by Douglas Lemke. New York, Cambridge University Press, 2002. 246 pp. Cloth, $65.00; paper, $23.00.

Power transition theory, developed by A. F. K. Organski in 1958, focuses on the competition for power and the likelihood of war among the leading states in a hierarchically-ordered international system. A dominant power uses its strength to create a set of political and economic structures and norms of behav- ior that enhance the stability of the system while advancing its own interests. Differential rates of growth lead to the rise and fall of states, and the likelihood of a major war is highest when a rising but dissatisfied state, which hopes to establish a new international order with benefits commensurate with its own growing strength, reaches parity with the dominant power.

While power transition theory has developed into an influential research program, the limitation of its scope to great power behavior leaves it unable to explain the vast majority of wars that have occurred in the last half-century. Lemke aims to correct this deficiency by extending power-transition logic to a number of regional or local subsystems that are nested within the overarching international order. Each local system includes a dominant regional power, a regional status quo, satisfied and dissatisfied states, and a competition among regional actors for the "privilege to write the rules" that govern their mutual relations (p. 68). While external great powers occasionally interfere in regional systems, in the absence of such interference the dynamics of behavior within local hierarchies parallels great power behavior within the overall international power hierarchy. Wars are most frequent when power parity coincides with dis- satisfaction with the status quo. This is the book's basic hypothesis, and Lemke devotes much of his time to testing this hypothesis empirically. This is an enor- mously demanding task, given difficult problems of operation and measure- ment of key theoretical concepts, but the way Lemke deals with these problems is a real strength of the book.

sion for his subject may also explain why the book is brimming with minutiae- for example, article-by-article dissections of treaty texts, which should have been relegated to appendices if not excised altogether. The book could have benefited from a firmer editorial hand.

Because of its excessive level of detail and sometimes dry writing style, Dis- armament Sketches is unlikely to appeal to a general readership. Nevertheless, it is a very important historical document and will undoubtedly be consulted by historians of arms control and American foreign policy in the late twentieth century. Students of bureaucratic politics and organizational behavior will also find in this book a rich mine of case study material.

IDO OREN University of Florida

Regions of War and Peace by Douglas Lemke. New York, Cambridge University Press, 2002. 246 pp. Cloth, $65.00; paper, $23.00.

Power transition theory, developed by A. F. K. Organski in 1958, focuses on the competition for power and the likelihood of war among the leading states in a hierarchically-ordered international system. A dominant power uses its strength to create a set of political and economic structures and norms of behav- ior that enhance the stability of the system while advancing its own interests. Differential rates of growth lead to the rise and fall of states, and the likelihood of a major war is highest when a rising but dissatisfied state, which hopes to establish a new international order with benefits commensurate with its own growing strength, reaches parity with the dominant power.

While power transition theory has developed into an influential research program, the limitation of its scope to great power behavior leaves it unable to explain the vast majority of wars that have occurred in the last half-century. Lemke aims to correct this deficiency by extending power-transition logic to a number of regional or local subsystems that are nested within the overarching international order. Each local system includes a dominant regional power, a regional status quo, satisfied and dissatisfied states, and a competition among regional actors for the "privilege to write the rules" that govern their mutual relations (p. 68). While external great powers occasionally interfere in regional systems, in the absence of such interference the dynamics of behavior within local hierarchies parallels great power behavior within the overall international power hierarchy. Wars are most frequent when power parity coincides with dis- satisfaction with the status quo. This is the book's basic hypothesis, and Lemke devotes much of his time to testing this hypothesis empirically. This is an enor- mously demanding task, given difficult problems of operation and measure- ment of key theoretical concepts, but the way Lemke deals with these problems is a real strength of the book.

This content downloaded from 128.235.251.160 on Wed, 17 Dec 2014 18:34:33 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

698 | POLITICAL SCIENCE QUARTERLY 698 | POLITICAL SCIENCE QUARTERLY

The empirical evidence provides considerable support for Lemke's multi- ple hierarchy model. The joint presence of power parity and dissatisfaction sig- nificantly increases the probability of war in local hierarchies, especially in the Middle East and the Far East but also in South America and Africa, though these patterns are not quite as strong as they are among the great powers in the larger international system. These effects persist when Lemke controls for other possible factors leading to war or incorporates a measure of outside great- power interference. One puzzle that does emerge from this study is the pres- ence of substantial cross-regional variation, not predicted by the multiple hier- archy model, such as surprisingly low levels of interstate warfare in Africa and South America. Lemke demonstrates that these anomalies do not disappear, at least within local hierarchies in Africa, when other possible variables (including political instability and underdevelopment) are considered. This leaves an im- portant puzzle for further research.

One critical region that Lemke does not address is Europe, which is in- cluded only as part of the system-wide hierarchy dominated by global powers. This precludes a meaningful test of power transition theory against the balance of power hypothesis, developed with the European but not the global system in mind. Extreme concentrations of power do not lead to stability and peace under a dominant power; instead they lead to the formation of balancing coali- tions and an increased probability of major war.

For the great power system as a whole, however, and for local systems in four important regions, Lemke has demonstrated substantial empirical support for his important theoretical extension of power transition theory. In doing so, he provides a superb model for rigorous and systematic quantitative empirical research in the face of some very difficult methodological problems.

JACK S. LEVY

Rutgers University

The Effects of Violence on Peace Processes by John Darby. Washington, DC, U.S. Institute of Peace Press, 2001. 163 pp. Paper, $14.95.

As the study of conflict management advances, we develop a more complex understanding of the processes of peace and conflict, rather than seeing two straight tracks at the fork in the road: make war, make peace. We learn that the war track often paces the peace track until the very end as a policy option, and we learn that parties often hop back and forth from one to the other.

Darby, founder of INCOME at the University of Ulster and now at the Kroc Institute at Notre Dame, has done much work on this question, first in a larger work, The Management of Peace Processes (coedited with Roger Mac- Ginty in 2000) and now with this smaller work focusing specifically on the rela- tion of violence to peace processes. The book is a composite work, half of which is Darby's reasoning on the question; the other half is comprised of five fine

The empirical evidence provides considerable support for Lemke's multi- ple hierarchy model. The joint presence of power parity and dissatisfaction sig- nificantly increases the probability of war in local hierarchies, especially in the Middle East and the Far East but also in South America and Africa, though these patterns are not quite as strong as they are among the great powers in the larger international system. These effects persist when Lemke controls for other possible factors leading to war or incorporates a measure of outside great- power interference. One puzzle that does emerge from this study is the pres- ence of substantial cross-regional variation, not predicted by the multiple hier- archy model, such as surprisingly low levels of interstate warfare in Africa and South America. Lemke demonstrates that these anomalies do not disappear, at least within local hierarchies in Africa, when other possible variables (including political instability and underdevelopment) are considered. This leaves an im- portant puzzle for further research.

One critical region that Lemke does not address is Europe, which is in- cluded only as part of the system-wide hierarchy dominated by global powers. This precludes a meaningful test of power transition theory against the balance of power hypothesis, developed with the European but not the global system in mind. Extreme concentrations of power do not lead to stability and peace under a dominant power; instead they lead to the formation of balancing coali- tions and an increased probability of major war.

For the great power system as a whole, however, and for local systems in four important regions, Lemke has demonstrated substantial empirical support for his important theoretical extension of power transition theory. In doing so, he provides a superb model for rigorous and systematic quantitative empirical research in the face of some very difficult methodological problems.

JACK S. LEVY

Rutgers University

The Effects of Violence on Peace Processes by John Darby. Washington, DC, U.S. Institute of Peace Press, 2001. 163 pp. Paper, $14.95.

As the study of conflict management advances, we develop a more complex understanding of the processes of peace and conflict, rather than seeing two straight tracks at the fork in the road: make war, make peace. We learn that the war track often paces the peace track until the very end as a policy option, and we learn that parties often hop back and forth from one to the other.

Darby, founder of INCOME at the University of Ulster and now at the Kroc Institute at Notre Dame, has done much work on this question, first in a larger work, The Management of Peace Processes (coedited with Roger Mac- Ginty in 2000) and now with this smaller work focusing specifically on the rela- tion of violence to peace processes. The book is a composite work, half of which is Darby's reasoning on the question; the other half is comprised of five fine

This content downloaded from 128.235.251.160 on Wed, 17 Dec 2014 18:34:33 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions