Reviews are listed alphabetically by authors. Book Reviews This volume consists of a collection of Professor Bauer's papers, almost all of which have been published in substantially the same form during the past two decades. The collection is organized into three subdivisions of which the first is by far the longest. Part I ("Ideology and Experience") surveys Bauer's approach to a number of standard themes. The doctrines of a "vicious circle of poverty" and of "a widening gap" between rich and poor countries are dismissed as lacking empirical foundation. Foreign aid is treated as more likely to have a negative than a positive impact on legitimate development efforts on the principal ground that international transfers of resources should be undertaken on commercial terms if their utilization is to be effective. But the harshest judgments are reserved for those who hold that comprehensive planning has a useful role to play in promoting economic improvement in poor countries. Within Bauer's frame of reference, significant intervention by the state in the allocation of resources necessarily implies an unfortunate distortion in economic performance and invites socially iniquitous coercion. These themes are further elaborated in Part II ("Case Studies") in which Bauer resurrects some of his discussions of marketing boards in West Africa and of India's balance of payments. Part III ("Review Articles") is a compilation of Bauer's criticisms of the development literature of the 1950s and 1960s. Those already familiar with Bauer's work will find no surprises here. But there is one element of novelty-or at least of heightened explicitness. In the author's introductory gloss on these materials, the reader is enlightened on some of the basic presuppositions which inform the approach. Why, Bauer asks, are the standards of development economics so "unduly low"? Part of the answer, he suggests, is to be found in a "systematic bias" which "probably reflects the pursuit of unacknowledged objectives which often have political or emotional bases" (p. 20). In particular, he maintains, many of the opinion-makers in the developed countries are people who "have come so to dislike major institutions of western society, especially the market economy and its corollaries such as private property, that they regard the radical weakening of these institutions as a major objective of policy" (p. 20). Such attitudes, in turn, are allegedly re-enforced by the "operation of widespread feelings of guilt in contemporary western society" (p. 21). It is further suggested that a factor underlying the "emergence of these feelings of guilt could well be the erosion of a sense of personal sin, which in turn reflects both the de-emphasis of the individual compared to the collectivity and of personal responsibility compared to environmental influences" (p. 22). Moreover, it appears that this sense of guilt is necessarily the enemy of detached analysis of the development process. Bauer writes: "The obstacles to the adoption of technical reasoning and the attitudes appropriate to it are accentuated in this sphere by an overwhelming concern with policy, even more intense and pervasive than in other branches of economics. This concern is so intense that it has lent a missionary and almost messianic tenor to much of the discussion, which is inappropriate to a technical subject" (p. 289). While others may have faltered, Bauer makes clear that his own faith is unshaken. Under his stewardship, the doctrines of classical liberalism are alive and well-at least as instruments for passing judgment on the modem world and on other commentators on development economics. Bauer's writing has both the strengths and the weaknesses of uncompromising consistency. A venerable tradition, to be sure, underpins this perspective in political economy. Nevertheless, the form in which it is articulated in this volume is not fully satisfying. The study of economic development has moved some distance during the period in which these essays were written. A number of the approaches which dominated discussion in the 1950s have been recognized to be less than fully adequate by some of the analysts who first recommended them. Unfortunately, these shifts in the contours of debate get little recognition from Bauer. Doggedness runs the risks of being both repetitive and out-oftouch with the living reality. 845 Downloaded from http://ajae.oxfordjournals.org/ at UQ Library on June 14, 2015 Bauer, P. T., Dissent on Development: Studies and Debates in Development Economics, Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 1972, 550 pp. ($15.00) 846 / Am. J. Agr. Econ. BOOK REVIEWS It is disappointing too that Bauer does not respond more directly to the doubts of many economists who do not share his faith. The position of those who lack complete confidence in the alleged optimizing effects of uninhibited market forces in poor countries cannot be explained fully by the political and emotional biases to which Bauer attaches such weight. The concerns expressed in much of the recent discussion about the significance of agrarian structures (in which production for exchange is far from ubiquitous) and about the implications of the post-war demographic explosion for poor countries largely escape his notice. Unhappily, the term "debates" in the sub-title of this work is a misnomer. WILLIAM J. BARBER Wesleyan University This book, a product of the Harvard Law School International Tax Program, is a study which goes well beyond law or even the bounds of conventional public finance. It can best be described as the developmental political economy of land taxation. Its geographic scope embraces all major regions in which developing nations predominate, plus some historical studies of land taxation in presently developed nations. In addition to this broad empirical base, the book covers a broad frontage of theoretical analyses and integrates the empirical and theoretical materials into a well-defined, yet comprehensive examination of tax policy issues. Initially Bird identifies general issues related to tax policy which are drawn from contemporary economic development literature. He also demonstrates empirically the widening divergencies between the tax policies recommended by development analysts, especially those of the two-sector model inclination, and what governments of developing countries are actually doing. This sets the stage for analysis of the varied structures of tax systems and the reasons for administrative successes and failures in meeting the objectives assigned to them. The book then analyzes conceptually the incidence of various types of taxes, their allocative and developmental effects, and the social and power relations which are likely to affect land tax administration systems under varying sets of assumed conditions. In the concluding chapters the various aspects of the analysis are brought to a focus in a general appraisal of the strategies and possibilities of land taxation as an instrument of economic development policy in the social, political, and administrative context of developing countries. This appraisal emphasizes the potentials of land taxes as means to improve local government services. Downloaded from http://ajae.oxfordjournals.org/ at UQ Library on June 14, 2015 Bird, Richard M., Taxing Agricultural Land in Developing Countries, Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 1914, xvi + 361 pp. ($14.50) The thoroughness and scope of this study is remarkable in a volume of only 295 text pages. Its thoroughness is indicated by the bibliography of about 360 separate items. While only rudimentary formal statistical material is presented to test specific hypotheses, an impressive quantity of evidence, especially case analyses, is provided to show (a) that, in general, agricultural taxes, and specifically land taxes have declined in importance over time, (b) that they have been ineffective substitutes for land tenure reforms and other programs designed to redistribute incomes and wealth, and (c) that with minor exceptions sophisticated systems based on an imperative of extreme equitability and designed to serve multiple functions have generally failed. The strength of this book is its success in isolating and analyzing policy alternatives in this much neglected area of subject matter. It is made possible because the author recognizes that meaningful policy analysis must isolate and address itself to the strategic characteristics of the political, social, bureaucratic, and economic matrix of the problem situation. The issue is the isolation of the best of severely restricted alternatives, not the development of theoretically ideal but unworkable programs. For example, he opts for crude but workable systems based on gross land classifications and land measurements based on aerial photographs in cases where cadastral surveys are expensive and time-consuming, revenues in short supply, and administrative personnel overloaded. He leans heavily toward earmarking land taxes for use in services needed by agriculture and rural people especially at a local level to make them politically more acceptable and administratively more enforceable. But most of all he pleads for careful analysis of the unique facets of each situation including the historical antecedents of politics, public administration, and tax policy which determine available options. The multifaceted analysis provided in this book will provide opportunities for criticism by disciplinary specialists, especially economic theorists. Scope in analysis has its price; but in this case the net value of the study is immensely enhanced by its broad problem-focused approach. A format feature which virtually destroys the value of extensive documentation and footnoted qualifications of the author's arguments is the placement of all footnotes at the end of the entire text where all but the most dedicated readers will pass them by. This reviewer has no reservation in recommending the book for inclusion in personal libraries of agricultural development specialists and academic institutions, especially those with programs in public finance, public administration, and economic development But it would be especially valuable to technical assistance agencies and indigenous agencies of developing countries with responsibility for fiscal, land, and agricultural development policy, an etIec-
