Books

The Law of International Trade in Agriculture Products by Melaku Geboye Desta.
Kluwer Law International: ISBN 90 411 9865 2

This new book analyses the current realities and future prospects for global trade in agricultural products. It seeks to explain the real or apparent rationale behind the virtual exemption of agricultural trade from the operation of the law governing international trade in general, focusing on the GATT/WTO system but examining a variety of nation-source policy reasons that generate this crucial counter-current to the general sweep of trade liberalisation.

All professionals interested in the effective and equitable development of international trade, as well as officials involved in trade or agricultural regulation at any administrative level, will find both informed insight into present and future concerns and realistic assessment of a critical area of global policy in this remarkable book.

US Economic Statecraft for Survival 1933-1991 by Alan Dobson.
Routledge: ISBN 0 415 28184 9

US Economic Statecraft for Survival 1993-1991 concentrates on an important and neglected facet of America's fight for survival in the latter half of the twentieth century. Dobson charts an extraordinary change in US policy, from its defence of neutral rights to trade in wartime to its denial of trade to prospective enemies in peacetime. From his explanation of how it developed and evolved over the years there emerges a new perspective. This study emphasises the importance that economic instruments of statecraft have for symbolic, communication and political bargaining objectives. Economic instruments of statecraft are more important for what they say than what they do in an instrumental sense. Without being aware of these factors it is not possible to give a credible account of much of US economic statecraft in the post-war period.

Professor Dobson from the politics department will discuss the contents of this book and specifically the impact of the US strategic export embargo directed at communist states on European allies at a conference in Italy this summer. Alan Dobson has been invited by Professor Luciano Segreto of the Universita Degli Studi Di Firenze to take part in an international research seminar on economic relationships in Cold War Europe at the Villa Finaly in Florence, 21-22 June 2002.



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