BOOK REVIEW-THE SECURITY OF SMALL STATES IN THE THIRD WORLD

This comprehensive book review critically examines the scholarly literature on the security of small states in the Third World, analyzing how different academic works conceptualize and explain the unique security challenges facing small developing countries. The review assesses theoretical frameworks, methodological approaches, and empirical findings in the emerging field of small states security studies. The analysis examines how various works interpret the security predicament of small states in different regional contexts, including Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Caribbean. The article evaluates the treatment of both traditional military threats and non-traditional security challenges in the literature. The review also identifies theoretical gaps and methodological limitations in existing scholarship and suggests directions for future research on small state security in the global South.

The security challenges of small states in the Third World represented an emerging focus of international relations scholarship during the early 1980s, with this review providing a critical examination of the literature in this field. The review begins by situating the study of small states security within broader international relations theory, analyzing how different theoretical traditions—including realism, liberalism, and dependency approaches—conceptualize the security predicament of small developing countries. The analysis examines how different works define and categorize small states, assessing various criteria based on population size, economic capacity, military power, and diplomatic influence in the specific context of developing regions. The review evaluates theoretical frameworks employed in the literature, examining how concepts like vulnerability, permeability, and asymmetric power relations explain the security challenges of small states. The article assesses methodological approaches used in studying small state security, including comparative case studies, regional analyses, and theoretical syntheses, examining their respective contributions and limitations. Based on the comprehensive assessment, the review identifies both significant advances and persistent gaps in understanding small state security and suggests directions for future research that could enhance both theoretical understanding and policy relevance. The analysis contributes to academic discourse by providing a systematic evaluation of how the security challenges of small states in the global South were being studied and understood during a period of significant international transformation.