America's regions and US foreign policy

Peter Trubowitz, Defining the National Interest: Conflict and Change in American Foreign Policy. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1998. Pp.xvi + 353, biblio., figs, maps, index. $55 (cloth); $18.95 (paper). ISBN 0–226–81302–9.     

AFRICAN REGIONAL ORGANISATION' PEACE OPERATIONS

This paper reviews recent developments among African regional organisations in undertaking peacekeeping operations, as well as in preparing for future missions. It focuses on those that have been the most active: the Organisation of African Unity/African Union, the Economic Community of West African States and the Southern African Development Community. The paper goes on to briefly describe and analyse the activities of the French, UK, and US capacity-building programmes designed to develop African peacekeeping capacities. The author then identifies some specific concerns and recommends actions to help meet today's challenges. The paper concludes with a short analysis of African organisations' capacities and proclivities to provide a peacekeeping force for Sudan.     

Book reviews

Book Review: The Future of the Defence Firm: New Challenges, New Directions. Edited by Andrew Latham and Nicholas Hooper NATO ASI Series, Kluwer Academic Publishers ISBN 0–7923–3268–7

James E. Payne and Anandi P. Sahu (eds.) Defense Spending &; Economic Growth, Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1993.     

Budgetary trade-offs of security expenditures in Turkey

This paper investigates the budgetary trade-off structure of security (defence+internal security) expenditures in Turkey for the period 1983-1998. A modified version of Todaro's distributive share index of social welfare is used to quantify the impacts on the growth of primary budget expenditures of Security, Education, Health, General Administration, Infrastructure, and Social Services. We find that defence expenditures dominate overall security expenditures and are less affected in times of bottlenecks in the economy. A systematic pattern of negative budgetary trade-offs of security expenditures in terms of other components is not identified. We also analyse the expenditures of the Defence Industry Support Fund in an attempt to find the cost of the modernisation program to the economy.