The GOVERNANCE blog

  In the current issue of Governance, Phyllis R. Pomerantz of Duke University reviews Betrayed: Politics, Power and Prosperity by Seth Kaplan.  Kaplan calls this a “handbook for political and economic change in less developed countries.”    It is a well-written and pragmatic volume, says Pomerantz, although marked by a contradiction.  It “is about empowering the poor but looks explicitly to development country elites . . . to make that happen.”  Read the review.And Dechao Sun of Jilin University reviews The Causes, Escalation and Management of Public Conflicts in China by Yao Xu.  The book “contributes to an overall understanding of the various stages of the escalation of public conflicts in China” and provides a “rich accumulation” of case studies that will prove useful to other researchers.  Read the review.