The Welfare State and Equality: Structural and Ideological Roots of Public Expenditures.

Abstract

during the 196os and that the only reason for such interest was its own balance-of-payments problems. Problem III deals with efforts to reform the international monetary system from the late 196os up until the publication of the Committee of Twenty's First Outline of Reform in Nairobi in September 1973. Here the emphasis on the exchange-rate regime is somewhat exaggerated. Although the background materials on the issue of exchange-rate flexibility are well presented, the fact is that the exchange-rate regime itself was not discussed extensively by the Committee of Twenty. This portion also suffers from an associated failure to present the European of the reform negotiations-a view which emphasized the importance to the Europeans partly for political reasons of convertibility, or settlement, arrangements that would establish constraints on United States economic policies. Most of my objections concern the organization of the book; but these defects are not sufficiently important to detract substantially from its overall usefulness. As long as a teacher using it in a course on international politics or economics is able to supply his own framework for the discussion and his own questions-the questions provided by Meier often have little direct relation to the text material-the book should be very useful to students. It does contain a few flaws-the confidence problem is mentioned (p. 14) but is not immediately defined; it is not made clear (p. 28) that the prohibition in the IMF Articles of Agreement on controls applies primarily to current account transactions; and no definition of the United States persistent deficit in its international transactions from 1950 to 1971 is provided (p. 98); but such flaws are minor. This is a very useful and well-written book. It would be even more valuable if it had an index and if all the references to source materials were collected in one place.