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Reviewing the Reviewers: Ideological Bias in the APSR Book Section

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 November 2022

Michael Parenti
Michael Parenti*
Affiliation:
State University of New York, Albany
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Extract

I would like to give attention to that portion of the American Political Science Review which is most read and least criticized, the book review section. My reading of APSR book reviews in recent years leads me to the following observations:

Most of the books selected for review adhere to the orthodox ideological values of today's political establishment. More importantly, these books almost invariably are reviewed by political scientists who share the same centrist ideological slant as the authors they are reviewing. In the reviews dealing with international relations, for instance, cold war terms like “totalitarianism”, “Castroism”, “subversion” and “Free World” are employed uncritically. Western capitalist nations are described as having “governments”, while socialist nations are said to have “regimes”, usually identified as being under the tutelage of one personage, hence: “Mao Tse-tung's regime”, and “Fidel Castro's Cuba”. The idea that popular sentiments and democratic in-puts might be part of the governance of countries like Cuba or China is not entertained.

Type
Research Article
Information
PS: Political Science & Politics , Volume 7 , Issue 4 , Fall 1974 , pp. 370 - 374
Copyright
Copyright © The American Political Science Association 1974

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References

1 H. Malcolm MacDonald, September 1971, p. 825; Stephen Kertesz, June 1973, p. 705; Lowry Nelson, December 1973, p. 1389; Edward Gonzalez, December 1973, p. 1412–13. Citations herein are to be considered as illustrative rather than exhaustive. All references are to the APSR book review section unless otherwise indicated.

2 See James L. Nichols, June 1973, p. 717; and George P. Jan, December 1972, p. 1379.

3 Ivan Svitak, September 1973, p. 1074.

4 Edward Gonzaliz, December 1973, p. 1413, talking about Cuba.

5 George Blanksten, December 1973, p. 1443. Blanksten is concerned about German, Japanese and Soviet economic investment in Latin America.

6 Kenneth W. Thompson, December 1971, p. 1259.

7 S. G. Triantis, December 1973, p. 1373; see also Charles Wolf, Jr., December 1973, pp. 1445–46; and Charles R. Frank, Jr., December 1973, pp. 1447–48.

8 For a sampling of this literature see Hayter, Teresa, Aid as Imperialism (Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1971)Google Scholar; Weissman, Steve (ed.). The Trojan Horse: The Strange Politics of Foreign Aid (New York: Monthly Review, 1973)Google Scholar; Emmanuel, Arghirl, Unequal Exchange: A Study of the Imperialism of Trade (New York: Monthly Review, 1972)Google Scholar, Payer, Cheryl, “The Perpetuation of Dependence: The IMF and the Third World,” Monthly Review, 23, September 1971, pp. 37–49.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

9 Charles R. Frank, Jr., December 1973, p. 1447.

10 Paul Streeten, December 1973, p. 1411. Another of many uncritical reviews is Doris A. Graber, March 1972, pp. 288–89.

11 For instance, reviews by William Niskanen, September 1973, pp. 1020–21; and Rebecca Rollan, March 1973, pp. 224–25. It is true that only a small percentage of the published books can be reviewed. Yet there is room in the APSR for a friendly review of a book called Soviet Prison Camp Speech (September 1973, pp. 1054–55), a glossary of Russian prison terms which express the oppressive conditions of Soviet camps. But one waits in vain for a review of one of the many works dealing with the brutal and repressive conditions in Greek, Brazilian and American prisons as expressed in the language of prison inmates and other observers.

12 Niskanen, September 1973, p. 1020.

13 For a typical example see William Grampp's review and the book of collected essays he reviews, September 1973, pp. 984–85.

14 Eulau, September 1973, p. 994.

15 September 1971, p. 794. Petras's essay was just one of a number appearing in the book under review, but the reviewer still could have given us some idea of what Petras was saying. Time magazine siickness is not uncommon in the reviews of anti-establishment books. In his critique of a book on military justice, Sidney Ulmer writes like this: “Basically Sherriil argues that the military justice system and those who run it are bad, bad, bad!” Ulmer, September 1972, p. 1045.

16 To cite only two of the many instances of this: Robert B. Fowler, September 1973, p. 991; Richard V. Funston, September 1973, p. 988. Funston identifies the noted political scientist and historian Howard Zinn as one of the New Left “apologists.” He refers to “the facile treatment, rhetorical sleight of hand, and oversimplification characteristic of Zin [sic] and his ilk.” Funston's remarks are injected, without discussion or explanation, as opinionated side-swipes in a review that is not about Zinn's Disobedience and Democracy but about two other more conventional works on civil disobedience.

17 Jones, June 1972, p. 590.

18 For instance, Arthur Trueger, March 1974, pp. 253–54.

19 For one of many instances see Jospeh O'Malley, March 1973, p. 212.

20 Van Dyke, September 1971, pp. 793–94; Merelman, March 1972, pp. 216–17; Latham, March 1972, pp. 199–201; Long, June 1972, pp. 618–20. I found one radical book, Radosh's study of American labor and U.S. foreigh policy, which received a non-hostile review: see Robert Hattery, September 1971, pp. 813–14.

21 I was asked in 1970, when most of my work was still in the area of ethnic politics, to review a book on Black nationalism, an invitation I declined because I felt the job should go to any one of several Black political scientists who were doing work on the subject superior to mine.

22 Miliband, Ralph, The State in Capitalist Society (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1968), p. 182.Google Scholar

23 One might argue in this context that the Review's main concern is with the professional literature, the rigorous theory-building stuff written by students of politics rather than the policy-oriented work of non-political scientists, and to be sure, much of the critical work on Congress and public policy is by journalists. Congressmen, and public interest advocates. Yet this rule of professionalism does not hold in other areas; a good number of unrigorous, impressionistic books dealing with foreign policy and overseas aid and development are given supportive and respectful reviews in the APSR as noted earlier. These books almost always take an orthodox ideological position, and a striking number of them are written by past or present U.S. agency officials, ambassadors, foreign service officers and other establishment practitioners.

24 Zillah Eisenstein, “Connections between Class and Sex: Moving Towards a Theory of Liberation,” paper presented at a panel sponsored by the Women's Caucus, APSA annual meeting, September 1973.