In A Conceptual Straitjacket

Rasul B. Rais, an Assistant Professor in the Department of International Relations at Qaid-i-Azam University Islamabad, Pakistan, has written this book mostly at the Institute of International Studies, University of California, Berkeley. The book, however, fails to reflect either the Pakistani or the American point of view. One possible reason for this may be the conceptual straitjacket of the so-called ‘intrusive system’ paradigm developed by Cantori and Spiegal. This paradigm is defined by the author as consisting of the ‘politically significant participation of external powers in the international relations of the subordinate system’— another pseudo-academic jargon for the commonly known phrase like the great power intervention in the Third World.