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Compiling a handy dictionary of politics is an ambitious undertaking. The range of relevant ideas, policies and movements is vast, made only vaster by the political experience of nation states. The task becomes almost impossible when the authors take the entire world as their oyster and even more so when figures and ideas from the historical past are included. Nonetheless, the editors (British academics at Leeds, Oxford and Sheffield) have made a brave attempt at covering the field in a volume of over 1,800 entries. Finding its shortcomings is easy, and I have noted some of them below, but Messrs Brown, MacLean, MacMillan and their collaborators (around 100 of them) have produced a workman-like book. With the exception of half a dozen contributors at foreign universities, this work is a British production from first to last.
This new edition is a fresh departure as it includes international relations for the first time. It has meant some surgery to excise the existing entries for which there was no longer any room. It also requires a consistent policy of selection for the new material. In their preface the editors announce their policy as follows. Candidates for entries have to pass several tests: first, how frequently they appear in three well-established international relations textbooks; second, whether they figure largely in existing international relations courses; and finally whether specialists in the field feel their inclusion would be merited. In a paperback like this, already quite fat and with the print set in little type, the extended title has meant that space is at a premium.
This fourth edition was preceded by earlier versions in 1996, 2003 and 2009 (RR 2010/014). The crucial...