Politics and the State61
Foran notes that several different regime-
types have been the site of social revolutions.
Perhaps most striking is his addition to the
mix of open democratic politiesnotably
Chile in 1973 with the election of Salvador
Allende. Foran argues that on several occa-
sions radical regime change came about
through mass actions to elect new leaders
aiming at radical changes in the social distri-
bution of power and wealth, and that such
events should count as social revolutions.
On the one hand, I think Foran calls our at-
tention to an extremely important and ne-
glected feature of political change, namely
the possibility of radical change by ballots as
well as bullets. On the other hand, to call
such events social revolutions and lump to-
gether open democracies with their effective
opposites as functionally equivalent
regimes leads me to wonder exactly what
causal mechanisms are at work.
Finally, while world-systemic openings
and economic downturns are often involved
in revolutionary events, the evidence seems
stretched on occasion to help some cases ful-
ly fit the theory. Iran in 197879 strikes me as
an economy overheated by debt and plagued
by inflation, but only by carefully choosing
reference points and focusing on some short-
term trends (e.g., the fall in oil prices in
197677) can one argue for an economic
downturn as a prior condition for the Iran-
ian Islamic Revolution.
However much of Forans causal theory of
social revolution one acceptsand whatever
the details, I think we must accept the ele-
ments of culture and contingency in some
fashionthat is only the first half of the
book. In many ways, the second half, which
deals with the failures and reversals of social
revolutions, is even more original and fasci-
nating.
There is not space in a brief review to do
justice to Forans rich accounts of revolution-
ary attempts and reverses, but I certainly
learned a great deal. One striking item is how
pervasive U.S. actions were in the reversal of
Third World revolutions: in Iran (in 1953),
Guatemala, Chile, Grenada, Bolivia, El Sal-
vador, and Haiti. U.S. intervention either
helped reverse social revolutions or prevent
them from coming to fruition. In other cases,
however, revolutionaries did themselves in
(e.g., Sendero Luminoso in Peru, the FMLN in
El Salvador), as their revolutionary move-
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ments failed because their aims and tactics
were so revolutionary as to block the forma-
tion of a coalition between radical popular
mobilizers and potential elite defectors. By
contrast, Ayatollah Khomeinis skill in craft-
ing such a coalition both enabled the success
of Irans Islamic Revolution and helped sus-
tain it against powerful external pressures.
Foran also brilliantly lays out the dilemma
of democratic revolutionary regimes in de-
veloping economies. Where new democratic
regimes were brought to power in part by ag-
grieved peasants whose subsistence farmland
had been taken over for commercial agricul-
ture and by workers whose low wages pro-
pelled growth in manufacturing, the new
regime faced strong demands to redistribute
land and raise wages. But both measures in-
evitably reduced the growth of production
for markets, and thus lowered taxable rev-
enues for the state, undercutting its ability to
reward elite supporters and provide welfare
benefits for the masses. Foran suggests that
this may explain why it has mainly been de-
mocratic revolutionary regimes that have
faced reversal and lost power, while more
authoritarian revolutionary regimes were able
to ignore these demands and exploit both
peasants and workers to labor for the new
revolutionary regime, regardless of their own
welfare.
Forans book has raised the bar for com-
parative studies of revolution. More than any
prior comparative work on revolutions, it
takes seriously culture, contingency, and the
importance of understanding revolutionary
attempts, failures, and reversals. In doing so,
Foran has set down a superior foundation for
us all. It should be the starting point for all
future work on modern revolutions.
Escalation and Negotiation in International
Conflicts, edited by I. William Zartman and
Guy Olivier Faure. New York, NY:
Cambridge University Press, 2006. 334 pp.
$29.99 paper. ISBN 0521672619.
LOUIS KRIESBERG
Syracuse University
lkriesbe@maxwell.syr.edu
This book responds to a critical, yet relative-
ly neglected, issue in the analysis and resolu-
tion of conflicts: the relations between con-
Contemporary Sociology 36, 1
62Politics and the State
flict escalation and negotiation. It is a prod-
uct of the Processes of International Negotia-
tion (PIN) Network, at the International Insti-
tute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) in
Laxenburg, Austria. The authors of the twelve
chapters are affiliated with institutions in sev-
eral European countries as well as in North
America and they have backgrounds in soci-
ology, political science, psychology, and oth-
er disciplines. They each build on their prior
work to analyze an aspect of the complex re-
lations between escalation and negotiation.
One important theme in several chapters,
notably in Guy Olivier Faures chapter focus-
ing on deadlock, is that escalation and nego-
tiation are not entirely distinct. He discusses
how they overlap and certain kinds of
changes in either may undermine the other,
or, in other circumstances, advance the oth-
er. Patrick M. Morgan, in his chapter, exam-
ines and illustrates such relations in analyzing
deterrence during the Cold War. These in-
sightful essays and the editors introductory
chapter provide the context for the examina-
tion of particular processes affecting escala-
tion and negotiation and of conditions affect-
ing the transition from escalation to negotia-
tion.
Some chapters discuss important social
processes that particularly contribute to esca-
lation. Rudolf Avenhaus, Juergen Beetz, and
D. Marc Kilgour use game theory to examine
the arms race dynamic and the security
dilemma that leads to war. Paul W. Meerts
examines entrapment, whereby a person or
group is increasingly unable to escape from
the costs and investments already made,
which reduces alternative courses of action.
Entrapments contribution to the persistence
and escalation of a conflict is analyzed, and
its possible role in sustaining de-escalation,
once that begins, is also noted. Sung Hee
Kim analyzes revenge in its various forms
and how it fosters escalation and hinders ne-
gotiation.
Other chapters focus on the processes and
conditions of transition from escalation to ne-
gotiation. Previously, I. William Zartman has
contributed much to explaining this matter in
his work on the mutually hurting stalemate
(MHS) combed with the sense of a possible
way out to create ripeness for negotiation. In
this volume, he discusses different escalation
sequences, whether the escalations are in-
tended to call or match the opponents level
Contemporary Sociology 36, 1
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of action or to raise or exceed the opponen-
ts action level; the latter may surpass, match,
or fall short of the others level. Variations in
these regards affect reaching a MHS and en-
tering negotiations.
Daniel Druckman focuses on turning
points in international conflicts, making valu-
able contributions to a critical issue. He ex-
amines conflicts that differ in source, in type
of negotiations, and in having inside or out-
side precipitants. He relates these variations
to escalatory or de-escalatory consequences,
finding interesting variations in sequences.
Lisa J. Carlson examines the effects of differ-
ent kinds of crises upon managing the crisis
by negotiation. She distinguishes between
one-sided crises, when only one side be-
lieves it is in a crisis, and two-sided crises,
when both sides believe so. Parties in one-
sided crises are more likely to employ nego-
tiations than those in two-sided crises. Crises
triggered by violent acts are more likely to be
managed violently than those triggered non-
violently. D. Marc Kilgour extends simple
game theory models to include escalation
and finds, with the assumed preferences, that
escalation is risky and of limited value.
Several authors develop ideas related to
the ripeness proposition. Thus, Dean G.
Pruitt and Karin Aggestram, in their chapters,
examine the role of mediators in enhancing
the adversaries hope that a mutually accept-
able agreement is possible. Pruitt also dis-
cusses the readiness of each party to negoti-
ate and Aggestram also examines motivations
to de-escalate as well as pre-negotiation
strategies to enhance ripeness. The editors
close the book with discussions of the re-
ported findings and wise principles to pre-
vent escalation, recommendations for effec-
tively managing it, and strategies to enter ne-
gotiations.
One area that I believe is especially in
need of future analysis is the effect of differ-
ences in kinds of inducements used in esca-
lation. Conflict escalation is usually discussed
in this book, and elsewhere, only in the form
of increased coercion, particularly violent co-
ercion. More attention should be given to dif-
ferent degrees and kinds of violence. In ad-
dition, escalation also has non-coercive
forms, including conducting persuasive ef-
forts and proffering future benefits. Such in-
ducements generally provide a context for
whatever coercive means may be used. Some

of the authors mention non-coercive actions
and variations in coercive methods. Howev-
er, systematic analyses are needed of the
consequences of different kinds of escalation
strategies for transitions to negotiations and
equitable and enduring settlements.
The diversity of views among the contrib-
utors to this volume yield some seeming in-
consistencies, which attest to the complexity
of the matters the contributors examine. The
differences should prompt further analyses
and syntheses that will specify how adver-
saries escalate and de-escalate their conflicts.
The ways in which adversaries can escalate
their conflict yet limit its destructiveness, and
then construct a mutually acceptable out-
come, deserve reflection and research.
The book makes many valuable contribu-
tions to explaining how escalating conflicts
do and do not lead to negotiations. It should
be of great interest to scholars, practitioners,
and students in the fields of conflict analysis
and resolution, international relations, and
large-scale social interaction.
Inequality and Prosperity: Social Europe vs.
Liberal America, by Jonas Pontusson. Ithaca,
NY: Cornell University Press, 2005. 242 pp.
$19.95 paper. ISBN: 081489709.
MONICA PRASAD
Northwestern University
m-prasad@northwestern.edu
Jonas Pontussons new book is a catalogue of
what we know about the great question of
whether economic growth can be reconciled
with democratic equality. In the 1950s, 60s,
and 70s, several European states (social mar-
ket economies, or SMEs) seemed to have
squared the circle by attaining growth with
social provision. Then it all fell apart. In the
1980s and 1990s unemployment rose, eco-
nomic growth slowed, and demographic
changes led to persistent budgetary pres-
sures. What can we learn from this historical
experience? Are the European welfare states
in decline? Can they be revived? Can other
countries, such as the more free-market, lib-
eral market economies or LMEs like the U.S.,
learn from them?
Pontusson manages the difficult feat of
summarizing the state of our knowledge
while also expanding it. Particularly novel
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Politics and the State63
(among many interesting insights) are his at-
tempts to show that inequality is rising every-
where, even in the Nordic countries; that
there is no insider/outsider polarization in
the European welfare states with regard to
women, youth, and unskilled workers; that
the employment growth success of the LMEs
was a result of deficit spending, which the
SMEs chose not to engage in; and that there
has not been a race to the bottom in social
spending so much as a convergence to the
middle. Other strengths include a terrific in-
troduction to German co-determination
(chapter 6).
Pontusson concludes with recommenda-
tions for both SMEs and LMEs, but these suf-
fer from lack of systematic treatment. He sug-
gests that the SMEs should dismantle em-
ployment protection and implement active
labor market policiesthat is, make it easier
to fire workers, while helping the fired work-
ers to find new jobs, as the Nordic countries
do. This sits uneasily with the observation
coming from the varieties of capitalism liter-
ature that employment protection is one of
the institutions that encourages skill forma-
tion, and Pontusson unfortunately does not
investigate this tension. He also suggests that
SMEs should shift from regressive payroll tax-
es to progressive income taxes. This goes
against a great deal of literature arguing that
income taxes are politically unsustainable
and distort economic growth, and again Pon-
tusson does not investigate the question. For
the LMEs, Pontusson suggests that they
should become more like the SMEs, as his
overall balance sheet on the experience of
the European welfare states is positive, but
the discussion of this question is somewhat
unclear: at one point (pp. 211212) Pontus-
son hints at a theory of why the sudden in-
troduction of wage equalization into LMEs
will backfire, but a few pages later (p. 218)
advocates the introduction of wage equaliza-
tion into LMEs. A more careful discussion of
how this could be done to avoid the prob-
lems identified earlier would have been valu-
able.
A more important problem is that Pontus-
sons methodbivariate correlations of key
variables for the advanced Organization for
Economic Cooperation and Development
(OECD) countriesseems to have no clear
standards of execution. Consider an instruc-
tive debate mentioned in passing in the foot-
Contemporary Sociology 36, 1