The Power of Institutions: Political Architecture and Governance (review)

528Book Reviews adopt. He is willing to take a critical view of both media organizations and political forces. The author incorporates citations ofprevious works to back up assertions he makes, and includes current research that is relevant to his study. Structurally speaking, McCargo aids the reader by providing a preview for each chapter as well as conclusions which often are supplemented by bulleted information. He gives the reader useful headings as he moves from one subject to another. Stylistically, the text reads very smoothly and at a level that is clear but articulate. The presentations are thorough, well-organized, reasonably paced, sufficiently explained, and supported by arguments that are carefully developed. The author leaves the reader with much to consider, as well as a framework for viewing unfolding events in these countries as the press attempts to cover them. Susan A. Hellweg School of Communication San Diego State University San Diego, California, USA The Power ofInstitutions: PoliticalArchitecture and Governance. By Andrew Maclntyre. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 2003. 195 pp. The Power ofInstitutions, by the Australian political scientist Andrew Maclntyre, is one of the latest books in the distinguished series in Cornell Studies in Political Economy under the editorship of Peter Katzenstein. The book grew out of the author's longstanding interest and research in political institutions, particularly in Asia. In broad terms, one could say that Maclntyre's purpose here is to explore the effects that the dispersal of governmental decision-making power can have on public policy, and he wants to explore these effects not in the advanced industrial democracies, on which much ofthe extant literature has focused, but in "the world of semi-democracies and non-democracies (pp. 2-3)". He argues that since institutions in developing countries are likely to be either highly centralized or very fragmented, they are especially "susceptible to problematic patterns of governance". In fact, countries with highly centralized decision-making power are likely to experience serious problems with policy volatility, while those with fragmented decision-making institutions will be prone to policy rigidity (pp. 8-9). He sets out to test this hypothesis by examining how the Book Reviews529 governments of Thailand, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Indonesia responded to the economic crisis of 1997-98. The book is essentially based on four case studies of how and why the "political architecture" ofthe four countries affected their response to the economic crisis, but the case studies are masterfully integrated into a fascinating, truly comparative work that will be of interest to scholars in comparative politics and international relations. The first three chapters lay out clearly and concisely the theoretical framework of the enterprise, drawing on what research has shown on advanced industrial democracies and showing how these findings are helpful in elaborating a framework to investigate the effects ofpolitical architecture in developing countries. At the time of the economic crisis, Indonesia and Malaysia lay at the extreme of highly centralized structures for decision-making (either a single "veto" wielding player, as in the person of Suharto in Indonesia; or very few veto wielding players, as in the person of Mahathir together with UMNO in Malaysia), and should therefore have been susceptible to policy volatility in response to the crisis. Thailand lay at the opposite extreme ofhaving a highly fragmented political architecture (with many veto wielding players) and should therefore have been susceptible to policy rigidity. The Philippines had a decentralized political architecture, but not as fragmented as Thailand, and therefore would have been expected to handle the economic crisis better than any of the other three countries. Two chapters are then devoted to testing out the theoretical framework. Chapter 4 focuses on how the political architecture of the four countries affected policy-making in the economic crisis. As expected, highly centralized decision-making processes in Indonesia and Malaysia initially were beneficial in that the governments could react quickly to the crisis as it began to unfold in 1997. But this advantage of centralization was overcome in short order as the policies of both countries became especially volatile, subject to arbitrary, and quickly changing, decision-making by a small number of veto wielding players. Thailand's extreme of decentralization, with bickering among many...