Barbara Gonzalez
I am reading Transforming Labor-Based Parties in Latin America: Argentine Peronism in a Comparative Perspective by Steven Levitsky, who is currently is associate professor of government and social studies at Harvard University. Drawing from the literature on party change, Levitsky argues that loosely structured party organizations have a better chance of surviving environmental challenges than their more rigid counterparts.
I am currently balancing excessive (and obsessive) dwelling on political party theory with The Enchantress of Florence by Salman Rushdie of which I have been yet to read beyond the introduction of an exciting main character which calls himself the “Mogor dell’ Amore.” A couple of weeks ago I finished the much hyped Petite Anglaise by Catherine Sanderson which is now promised as next year’s birthday present to the friend who recommended the blog on which the book is based upon. Though entertaining, Petite Anglaise reminded me of Julia Roberts’s analogy in My Best Friend’s Wedding: a common jello trying to pass as a sophisticated crème brûlée.
Jessica Hun
Governing China: From Revolution to Reform by Kenneth Lieberthal is one of those indispensable books for those who study or who are interested in the nature of the Chinese political system. I read the first edition when it came out in 1995 and found it extremely useful and easy to understand despite the intricacies of the Chinese political apparatus and decision-making processes. Lieberthal, an experienced China scholar, provides a systematic approach toward an understanding of the complex governing organizations of China from its imperial past, through the 20th-century revolutions, both Nationalist and Communist, until the current regime. Unlike many other China experts, Lieberthal doesn’t make any predictions. Through a close look at the largest bureaucratic structures including modern China’s power elite, their propaganda and coercive systems, the actual allocations of power in front and behind the organizational facade, the author illuminates the difficult issues and challenges facing contemporary China. China will remain authoritarian in the foreseeable future, he believes, even as it makes enormous economic advances.
This text has now been thoroughly revised and updated in its second edition to include discussions of:
• The consumer revolution that has brought China’s major urban areas to the forefront of the developed world and created a new middle class;
• An expanding private sector that has become the major generator of new employment in the overall economy as the state sector has shed jobs;
• The increase in foreign direct investment which has set China on track to becoming the manufacturing centre of the world;
• An enormous population migration from rural to urban areas and from the interior to the coast that is becoming one of the most massive movements of people in human history, and its significant impact on the environment;
• The unprecedented integration into the international economic system as China has joined virtually every major multilateral regime;
• The reactions of the top and the bottom of the political system to these recent developments and the continuing struggles between the government’s large bureaucratic structures and sporadic popular political movements.
Nonna Gorilovskaya
U.S. media coverage of India can sometimes leave the impression that the country is just a long string of modern cities filled with well-mannered young people who speak good English, take away American jobs and spend their disposable income drinking “cappuccino grandes” in “extra large grande” cups at Barista cafés. The White Tiger, winner of the 2008 Man Booker Prize, by the former Time Magazine South Asia correspondent Aravind Adiga shows the other India. The protagonist, Balram, calls it “The Darkness.” Balram considers himself a success story—a village boy turned Delhi chauffeur turned Bangalore entrepreneur. He is one of the few fortunate who has managed to escape the cycle of poverty, obligation and humiliation in rural India. He does it thanks to brains, cunning—and murder.
Adiga’s book is shows how entrenched severe poverty is in vast parts of India and just how powerless the poor are at a time when celebratory conversions about India’s rise leave them out.
There’s quite a bit of dark humor, and Adiga’s writing style is bare and matter-of-fact. “I appreciated that he did not go on for three pages about the mango tree,” as one of the girls in my book club puts it. I must admit that I happen to like deeply descriptive books and look forward to getting the visual elements when the film comes out, but I understand why this one wasn’t. A bigger problem for me was the lack of development of the characters, which left a lot of questions and made it difficult to identify with Balram or anyone else. Finally, the book also left me quite depressed about human nature. In the world according to Balram, the only way a poor man can become an autonomous individual in India is to completely disregard any semblance of morality, which is a luxury that can be partially reintegrated later, after making it.
