The Web of Power: Japanese and German Development Cooperation Policy. (Book Reviews).

THE WEB OF POWER: Japanese and German Development Cooperation Policy. By Kozo Kato. Lanham (Maryland): Lexington Books. 2002. xxii, 187 pp. (Graphs.) US$65.00, cloth. ISBN 0-7391-0311-3.

If you search for "web of power" online, you will be directed quickly to a popular boardgame originally issued as "Kardinal und Konig" (Cardinal and King). Just as this game apparently bears very little substantive relation to its name, you will be disappointed if the title of Kozo Kato's book led you to expect a book about political online ventures. If, however, you are seeking an insider's description of some elements of the differences between recent Japanese and German development policy, the subtitle of this book has perhaps led you to the right place. The book attempts to highlight some of these differences since the 1970s and attempts to trace Japan's ascendancy to its role as a--or perhaps even the--major player in global development assistance.

Unfortunately, the book falls short of its analytical ambitions. Originally setting out to question the tendency of the comparative politics literature to group Japan and the Federal Republic together in terms of their foreign policy, this book does little more than provide snippets of information on how the development policy of these two states differs. Instead, the author devotes a large share of the book to an analysis of how development assistance was institutionalized in early postwar Japan. Kato's argument as to the importance of socioeconomic contexts in the selection of development policy preferences remains difficult to evaluate at best, given that policy differences between the two countries are not fully explored in the book; the assertion that Japan's and Germany's development cooperation policy diverged markedly since the 1970s remains an article of faith.

Although the final substantive chapter of the book does offer some indications of the difference in policies, very little evidence is cited and the few bits of information that emerge from the book are not really explored in their implications. The tables presented in the book and their accompanying explanations seem to raise more questions than they answer. Whenever these tables (and there are only eight tables and figures in total) list shares of particular elements of development policy, the reader is left to wonder about the absolute level of development assistance behind these relative weights, and vice versa.

The lack of an empirical exploration also shows in the absence of an attempt to define the elements of development policy that are to be compared. Direct investments (FDI) are frequently mentioned in the book, but should these really be considered development assistance in the context of public policy analysis? Even if a theoretical case were to be made for the lumping of FDI and development assistance, Kato's argument for the more regionally-oriented German development policy relies to a large extent on German investment within Europe that was to be an element of the socioeconomic context which is offered to explain development policy. While German policy is thus described as being situated in a socioeconomic context that privileges regional development, the socioeconomic context ofJapanese policy making is asserted to be "globalized" and "information-rich" without any exploration of what this characterization actually means beyond the initial attractiveness of these buzz-words. In the context of this dichot omy between Japanese and German policies, German civil society actors are portrayed as being largely concerned with selfish protectionism vis-a-vis developing countries, while Japanese economic actors are selflessly targeting the developing world with FDI. As the recent UN Security Council ambitions of Japanese governments are not mentioned as a motivation for the increasing prominence of Japanese development assistance, the book left this reader feeling like the author may have been too much of an insider to Japanese policies to compare these productively with German policies.