The Development of the Balkan Region by George Petrakos; Stoyan TotevReview by: John BristowSlavic Review, Vol. 61, No. 3 (Autumn, 2002), pp. 607-608Published by:Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3090326 .

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Book Reviews 607

plaining the foreign policy issues involved in BSEC membership and Romania's often am- bivalent attitude toward the institution.

This work provides a comprehensive discussion of Romania's transition process and possibilities. Additional chapters on the development of civil society (an important actor in any transition process) and fewer chapters exploring such specific economic issues would have strengthened this volume. But Post- Communist Romania provides a balanced as- sessment of the country's problems as well as its real potential.

Steven D. Roper Eastern Illinois University

The Development ofthe Balkan Region. Eds. George Petrakos and Stoyan Totev. Burlington, Vt.: Ashgate, 2001. viii, 520 pp. Notes. Bibliography. Figures. Tables. $79.95, hard bound.

This volume consists of sixteen papers examining various aspects of Balkan economic change since 1990, the first half exploring multicountry themes and the second present? ing country-specific case studies. As defined here, the region includes Romania and Greece, although treatment of Albania and most ofthe former Yugoslav federation is spo- radic. The focus is on changes in the structure of production and trade, with little refer- ence to macroeconomic developments. With a few exceptions, the methodology consists of tabular presentations of data dealt with in a somewhat qualitative, and even descriptive, manner rather than well-specified hypotheses and rigorous statistical techniques.

The opening chapter, by the editors, explores a dominant theme?changes in the structure of production and trade?that recurs through much ofthe book. This chapter provides a competent review of this subject, but it also presents two recurring difficulties. First, the data are rather out of date, with nothing after 1997 and some series terminating as early as 1994. Second, and more fundamentally, the analysis is based on the long-term convergence properties suggested by trade theory, and there is insufficient recognition of the fact that, apart from Greece, changes in the Balkans are dominated by transition from the very distorted structures produced by central planning. In the period covered by the data, this transition response to what is probably the greatest shock ever experienced by any economy, is likely to overwhelm any expected convergence as a dynamic, equilibrium process.

A historical chapter that goes back over a century is well done, but of doubtful rele- vance to an understanding of current issues. Other chapters in the first half cover foreign direct investment, privatization, and infrastructure, and, although they provide useful (if again rather outdated) information, these chapters are almost entirely descriptive with little investigation of such important issues as the quality of privatization as a tool of re- structuring and the relationship between foreign direct investment and privatization.

A piece by Marvin Jackson and Petrakos on changes in the structure of output and trade and the relation between structural change and general performance is, for this economist reviewer anyway, the most satisfying in the book, making a praiseworthy effort to use basic statistical techniques to explore coherent hypotheses. It is not entirely suc- cessful, however, and its defects include the use of coefficients of structural change that are simply correlation coefficients with no significance tests; the regressing of gross do- mestic product on these coefficients, again with no significance tests; and the investigation ofthe inter-/intraindustry trade question with data at the 2-digit level, which is too high a level of aggregation for this purpose. Econometrically much better is the estimation and use of a gravity model (though the fact that the data sets end in 1997 again somewhat di- minishes its value), where the conclusions drawn are appropriately tentative and thought- ful. Overall, this is a useful and interesting essay.

Of the chapters in the second half, those on Albania and Romania, while largely de? scriptive rather than analytical, comprise for students of transition useful compendia of in? formation on two less-researched countries. The chapter on Bulgaria is somewhat more analytical, with some interesting thoughts on why that country's transition performance

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608 Slavic Review

has been relatively weak, although it manages to talk about agriculture without reference to the appalling disruptive effects of a poorly implemented land-restitution program. The final chapter, on Bulgarian and Romanian trade, is more rigorously analytical, but the data are even more out of date.

In general, this is a useful volume, with the editors achieving quite good coherence in terms of themes (which of course comes at the price of some overlap between chapters). Because of the dominant methodology, it will probably be more attractive to geographers than to "straight" economists, but any reader will find the long interval between the in- formation presented and the date of publication a defect in an area where things are changing (even in direction) so rapidly. Its market will probably be libraries and very spe- cialized readers.

John Bristow Trinity College, Dublin

The Diplomacies of New Small States: The Case of Slovenia with Some Comparison from the Baltics. By Milan Jazbec. Burlington, Vt: Ashgate, 2001. x, 237 pp. Notes. Bibliogra- phy. Figures. Tables. $74.95, hard bound.

Slovenia can certainly be said to have been a success story over the past five decades or so. After the terrible civil war of 1943-46, the scars of which are still present?though not al? ways visible?this small Alpine-Adriatic country gained an increasingly important role in- side Josip Tito's communist Yugoslavia, under the leadership of a shrewd and canny Marx- ist ideologue, Edvard Kardelj (1910-1979). Once the unorthodox socioeconomic system he had shaped (the so-called self-management) entered a terminal crisis, Slovenia started moving, cautiously but firmly, toward independence from Belgrade, a market economy, and a parliamentary democracy. Thanks to various factors, including a strongly homoge- neous population and a reform-oriented communist elite, the transition proved smooth, despite a brief armed conflict with the Yugoslav Federal Army in early July 1991. Now, a de? cade later, Slovenia is about to achieve full membership in both the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the European Union (EU).

Currently deputy defense minister, Milan Jazbec, provides many indications that he

played an important role in the aforementioned transition, especially in the field of secu- rity and foreign policies, including the daunting task of having to build a Ministry of For? eign Affairs from scratch. This book is a product of this very practical experience, coupled with a thorough command of specialized literature (especially on diplomacy at large and international relations), and its contents were most likely presented as a doctoral disserta- tion at the University of Klagenfurt, Austria.

Jazbec's purpose is twofold: he tries to assess the historical meaning and relevance of the fin-de-siecle processes of disintegration and integration in Europe, while at the same time empirically and systematically elaborating on Slovenia's sudden appearance on the international scene, caused by the disintegration of Yugoslavia. Jazbec's approach is dry and technical: the book draws on his rich personal experience only seldom, and there is no room for the anecdotal side of diplomacy, which usually counterbalances the some? times oppressing stiffness of rules and procedures. True, the book deliberately does not mean to amuse the reader: a more informal title could have been: A Manual on How to Become a (Small) Country, Get in Touch with Others (Mostly Bigger), and Be Reasonably Visible.

In the first part, the author explains the meaning and relevance of the processes of disintegration and integration but provides little, if any, explanation of why certain multi- national entities?Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, the USSR, the Warsaw Pact, Comecon? fell apart and others?the Council of Europe, the EU, and NATO?were enhanced in scope and membership. The fact that we already might know the answer (thanks to the thousands of publications that have appeared over the past decade) does not diminish our interest in a Slovene insider's point of view. In the second part, Jazbec describes who be- came part of the newborn diplomacy but shies away from disclosing which category he

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