Reviews for Partnering Against Terrorism: Summary of a Workshop

The average rating for Partnering Against Terrorism: Summary of a Workshop based on 2 reviews is 2.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2013-11-04 00:00:00 Sukhbir Basra The premise of this book is interesting, and, I think, fundamentally sound. It argues that many political interventions premised on a "market failure" rationale themselves fail when one takes into account the possibility of technological innovation. The argument that a market requires correction implicitly assumes that it is stable, when in fact it is impossible to predict how new disruptions will break up old equilibria, as they almost inevitably have in the past. Regulation to correct for the market in that case often ends up calcifying existing arrangements, and preventing the kind of innovations that would have helped a market evolve. The problem is that many articles presented in this book do little to prove the argument, and instead assume it as given and then try to show how technology breaks down the case for many current interventions, such as a government post office, electrical grid, or highway system. Curiously, this makes the book itself have a short half-life. Published in 2003, it is hardly revelatory today to read about things like multispace parking meters or universal electronic tolling and how those could help privatize roadways. Showing more examples of how this technological/regulatory dynamic actually worked in the past would have better demonstrated the point (how about the famous almost 20 year antitrust case against IBM, just as it was losing market share to Apple and others?) The only really historical investigation, exposing the false rationale behind the lighthouse as an example of a classic "public good" (in Britain they were originally constructed with fees paid per ship landing in nearby docks), was already done much better by the Nobel award winning Ronald Coase back in 1974. Why repeat it? A few anecdotes, like how the Consumer Products Safety Commission was mainly intended to use information to inform the market but instead became a regulatory empire builder, even after studies showed it had almost no effect on injuries and its recalls had significant costs to companies, are informative. Many discussions, however, seem to be there just for different types of techno-junkies; say, those curious about the nature of distillation in water supply systems, or on identifying ownership of individual fish through genetic coding. On the whole, its probably not worth the time.

Review # 2 was written on 2014-04-13 00:00:00 Krishna Juelfs This book mounts a defense of 'dialogic democracy' [as opposed to delegative democracy] in which 'hybrid forums' of experts, and sundry configurations of laypeople coalesce to debate socio-technical controversies, leading to the reconfiguration of social institutions. I thought the first three chapters were the best; these focused on elucidating the relationship between the functioning of science [in its 'secluded' or 'in the wild' varieties] and civil society. The authors propose that hybrid forums be encouraged, and that these enrich democratic institutions by bringing multiple conflicting viewpoints into contact. I especially like the discussion of the 'laboratorization' of society, whereby expertise attempts to reconfigure society to mirror controlled conditions. I also liked the discussion of the relation between representation and expertise. Despite all the emphasis on fluidity and emergence, the second half of the book unselfconsciously proposes what seems like a flowchart for implementing said forums. The two major blindspots in the book seem to be any discussion of the relationship between these forums and the state, and the character of public discourse. The authors seem to accept a fairly conventional view of the state, assuming that the outcomes of hybrid forums can easily be worked back into the formal political process. An obvious way to extend and problematize their framework would be to consider situations in which hybrid forums constitute governing or steering bodies, as well. Bizarrely, Habermas receives only a brief dismissal, and there is no discussion of the many English-language replies to his work by Calhoun, Warner, Fraser, etc. This seems like a huge oversight, given that what would seem to define a hybrid forum is its heterodox nature relative to the conventions of public discourse.