Reviews: Development strategies, privatized infrastructure
In the current issue of Governance, Vivek Srivastava reviewsWorking with the Grain by Brian Levy. “Levy’s central objective of the book is to stake out the middle ground between ‘one-size-fits-all’ best practice approaches on the one hand and ‘every country is unique’ on the other hand . . . Levy’s primary contribution is in providing a relatively simple, elegant, and appealing characterization of ‘context.’ He makes a reasonably convincing case for the framework with the cases he presents.”Read the review.And Judith Clifton reviews Foreign and Direct Investment in Argentina: The Politics of Privatized Infrastructure by Alison E. Post. “Post comes up with a surprising finding: Foreign-dominated investment was four times more likely to end up with a prematurely canceled contract than investments dominated by a domestic investor. Developing country investors enjoyed an organizational structure better suited to take on a more patient, culturally sensitive,and longer-term investment than their international counterparts.” Read the review.
