The Ferris-Lincoln book is a welcome and useful addition to the scanty literature on comparative Latin American foreign policies. It is a work that should stimulate scholars to careful examination of their methods for this kind of study. It should also be useful as a college textbook. This reviewer might have wished to see less use of the professional vocabulary of political scientists in places where it seems unnecessary, but the writing is generally clear and effective.
Lincoln’s “Introduction” (chap. 1) sets the tone of the work: that of a search for an appropriate basis of comparative study. She argues that policy during the years 1945–70 was basically concerned with national development and national security, while after 1970 it became more concerned with global and regional objectives. Alfred Stepan, Kenneth M. Coleman, Luís Quirós-Varela, and William A. Hazelton discuss some general aspects of policy in Chapters 2, 3, and 4 of Part One. The four chapters of Part Two, by Wayne A. Selcher, Guy Poitras, Stephen M. German, and Wolfgang Grabendorff, are case studies of Brazilian, Mexican, Peruvian, and Cuban “global” policies. The Grabendorff chapter, “Cuba’s Involvement in Africa …,” is especially interesting and timely.
Part Three, entitled “Latin American Regional Policies,” contains a chapter by Robert D. Bond that discusses Venezuelan and Brazilian policies with respect to the Amazon, and one by Howard T. Pittman that considers geopolitical aspects of Argentine, Brazilian, and Chilean policy. Douglas H. Shumavon treats the problem of Bolivian access to the sea (chap. 11), John F. McShane considers Mexico’s role in the Caribbean and Central America (chap. 12), Juan M. del Aguila writes on Cuban policy in the Caribbean and Central America (chap. 13), and Jacqueline A. Braveboy-Wagner discusses developments in the regional policies of the English-speaking Caribbean nations (chap. 14). In Chapter 15, with which the book ends, Elizabeth Ferris provides a careful examination, in large degree from the dependency and economic development points of view (though not eliminating others), of the problem of analyzing foreign policy and policy formation. Within this short review it would be impossible to discuss the thirteen challenging hypotheses she presents for empirical testing in further research. Suffice to say that these hypotheses, while stimulating, will also raise some questions in the minds of HAHR readers.
Vasant Kumar Bawa, author of Latin American Integration, received his education in Poona, India, at the Georgetown School of Foreign Service, and at Tulane University (Ph.D.). His study of the efforts to achieve integration in Latin America on a regional or subregional basis is particularly welcome as the fresh point of view of a scholar from India. Currently, Bawa is a Senior Fellow in the Indian Council of Social Science Research, attached to the Institute of Politics and Economics at Poona. Although much of the research was done in the United States, it indicates nonetheless the concern for Latin American study in India.
The central theme of the book is the Raúl Prebisch theory of the “periphery” as developed in the United Nations Economic Commission on Latin America, applied in Latin American development, and, through the UN, in the world at large. Chapter 2 presents the role of Prebisch in Latin American development, a role that provides two emphases: the need for revising international trade patterns and the need for long-range planning. The defects revealed during the years from the end of World War II to 1970 are examined in succeeding chapters. After 1970, Bawa notes that a shift in emphasis to subregional integration and more realistic national planning gave a more practical turn to development. His book reveals considerable reliance upon the dependency concept and, in this respect, resembles the approach to policy analysis in the Ferris and Lincoln volume. Bawa is less concerned, however, with the search for a methodology revealed in the latter work, and makes much less use of technical and professional language of contemporary political science. This is a highly useful book.
