The Consulting Trap: How Professional Service Firms Hook Governments and Undermine Democracy
By Chris Hurl and Leah B Werner. Fernwood Publishing £17.95
In the words of our reviewer, Hilde Rapp from the Centre for International Peacebuilding, this collection of ‘detailed and informative case studies of consultancy failures’ represents ‘public sociology at its best’. In this ‘passionate and immensely readable book’, Chris Hurl and Leah Warner provide a ‘trenchant critique’ of how the design and delivery of public services has been outsourced to transnational firms with devastating consequences for governments and their people. The book documents numerous instances of ineffective management, including consultants in Britain charging fees of more than £6,000 a day during the Covid pandemic. The Montreal-based authors explain how the ‘knowledge gained in the public sector is sequestered and used to line the pockets’ of private investors, devaluing the ‘work of experienced public servants’.
On top of that, this ‘sequestered knowledge’ generates serious hurdles to the activists, journalists, researchers and academics seeking to hold governments to account, especially those ‘unwilling to disclose the extent to which they have become dependent on consultants and at what cost’. Despite their self-proclaimed limited expertise, the authors are aware of the politics of enclosing and reselling public knowledge, especially to administrations in the Global South, and they offer reading suggestions from ‘intellectuals based in the Global South, who condemn this practice as neo-colonial’. The book ends with a ‘search for solutions to combat the consulting trap’ that includes practical examples from Britain and Canada. The ‘combination of determined democratic activism with deep knowledge of public governance’ makes the book ‘particularly valuable’.
To read the full review in International Affairs, click here
What Really Went Wrong: the West and the Failure of Democracy in the Middle East
By Fawaz A Gerges. Yale University Press £25
With almost 10 books under his belt, Middle East expert Fawaz Gerges returns with a re-examination of the roots of authoritarianism in the region. In What Really Went Wrong, he argues that western interventionism at the height of the Cold War laid the foundations for democratic failure in the Middle East. The author presents two case studies from the 1950s: the CIA’s toppling of Mohammed Mossadegh, Iran’s prime minister, and America’s alienation of Gamal Abdel Nasser, Egypt’s president.
Elham Fakhro from Chatham House commends this ‘valuable contribution’ and its ‘grim portrait of how interventionism sowed the seeds of instability with devastating implications, well before the US troops set foot in Afghanistan and Iraq’.
To read the full review in International Affairs, click here
Why AI Undermines Democracy and What to do About it
By Mark Coeckelbergh. Polity Press £14.99
Although books should not be judged by their covers, this one could not have a more indicative title. For reviewer Mahmoud Javadi, Mark Coeckelbergh offers a ‘timely and thought-provoking examination of the detrimental role of AI in democracy’. This ‘illuminating book’ is comprehensive in its coverage, featuring discussions of how AI can undermine informed decision-making and civic participation as well as raise ethical concerns if used in surveillance. Coeckelbergh offers strategies for fortifying democracy in the light of AI’s increasing prominence that are ‘particularly enlightening’ and will ‘empower readers to critically engage with the challenges and opportunities AI presents’.
To read the full review in International Affairs, click here
No Cloak, No Dagger: a Professor’s Secret Life Inside the CIA
By Lester Paldy. Rowman & Littlefield £25
Lester Paldy’s dual career, working with the CIA and the FBI as an academic ‘contractor’, makes his memoir an important source of knowledge on the intriguing relationship between America’s intelligence agencies and US universities. No Cloak, No Dagger traces Paldy’s involvement in agent recruitment through the decades, making contact with scientists and diplomats from other countries and underscoring the role of American intelligence during Ukraine’s nuclear disarmament in the 1990s.
Richard Aldrich, a professor at the University of Warwick, concludes that ‘this is a unique book from an insider–outsider, filled with sagacious observations and altogether more interesting than it first appears’.
To read the full review in International Affairs, click here
