Recent Council Publications Bureaucracy, Politics, and Decision Making in Post-Mao
Intellectuals et Militants de L'Islam Contemporain [Intellec-
China, edited by Kenneth G. Lieberthal and David M. Lampton. Studie on China, 14. Based on a conference held in Tuc on, Arizona in June 1988 and ponsored by the Joint Committee on Chine e Studie . Berkeley: University of California Pre , 1992. xii + 384 page .
tuals and Militants in Contemporary Islam], edited by Gille Kepel and Yann Richard. Partly sponsored by the Joint Committee on the Comparative Study of Muslim Societies. Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1990. 290 pages.
Detailed treatment of decision making in China typically inve tigate economic decision under the reforms. To what extent doe thi literature accurately portray decision making in the country's other major bureaucratic y tern -personnel, the military, and propaganda and education? Doe the picture change in the economic and other bureaucracies as analy i shifts from the center to the province , the major municipalitie , the countie , and the town hip ? Thi volume bring together detailed analy e of each of the e dimen ion of China' huge bureaucratic tructure, with mo t chapters informed by interview and field re earch, a well a by documentary source . Thi entree into Chine e officialdom and the volume' comparative approach pre ent a vivid picture of China' bureaucratic land cape. Kenneth G. Lieberthal i profe or of political cience and re earch a ociate of the Center for Chine e Studie at the Univer ity of Michigan, Ann Arbor. David M. Lampton i pre ident of the National Committee on U.S.-China Relation. 14\1TEM
The nine papers assembled in this volume explore a crucial area of re earch throughout the Muslim world: the transformation of the role of intellectuals, Mu lim clerics, and Islamic militants in Mu lim societie . Among the mo t dramatic shifts to occur in many Mu lim ocietie over the past three decade has been the marginalization of the "We ternized intellectual" and the growing importance of ideologies articulated not by the I lamic "e tablishment" but by a new generation of I lamic militants. For much of the mid-20th century, political and economic life in many Mu lim ocieties, as in other part of the Third World, wa influenced to an exceptional degree by the activitie of intellectual who were educated in the We t and teeped in the categorie and approache of We tern political and ocial thought. Anti-colonial nationali t movements, and the po t-colonial tate that re ulted from them, were profoundly haped by the ecular, ocialist, and democratic idea the e intellectual "imported" from the We t. Since the late 1960 , however, the influence of the e ecular intellectuals ha been broadly, and
often ucce fully, challenged by the expansion of Islamic ocial and political movements. Led by young activists and scholars, many of whom came of age during the po t-colonial period and are the products of their countries' po twar secular educational sy terns, the e movements are a significant expre ion of the ongoing struggles to define core ocial, political, economic, and cultural value and practices in these societies. The causes and consequences of this bift, and everal manife tation of it, are carefully reviewed in the wideranging contributions to this volume. Among tho e cited in Gille Kepel' thoughtful introduction are the weak claim to authenticity of We tern versu Islamic discour es, and the relative uperficiality of We tern political vocabularie in the mind of Mu lim populations engaged in a very different political and cultural tradition; the declining appeal of the political rhetoric of anti-coloniali m, ocialism, and eculari m a the nationali t truggles that drew mo t heavily on them have receded into the past; and the association of We tern ideologie with the failure of tate-centered economic development trategie and the persi tence of repre ive, ingle-party regime. Foeu ing rather heavily on the Middle East and North Africa, with Ie coverage of non-Middle Eastern Mu lim oeietie, the volume represents a useful and valuable alternative to simplistic explanations that have singled out the VOLUME
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