Book Reviews 521

politics and socio-cultural roots. This line of argument assumes that public and voluntary agencies could be largely substituted for each other. Chapters 5 and 6, on the other hand highlight the ways in which charities assist-and can be assisted by-governments in Britain and in the Third World, and how they may also come into conflict with them.

Having thus surveyed the ground, the three subsequent chapters focus on the politics of disaster relief, public sector sponsorship of the charities, and charities’ educational and lobby- ing activities in Britain itself. The final chapter speculates on how these issues may develop and considers the scope for charities to cooperate more with each other, concluding that this is rather limited.

For a reader with prior experience of development charities, this book will probably hold few surprises and provoke little indignation. The picture that emerges is of a loose web of organisations, united perhaps above all by a paradoxical belief in the potency of individual initiatives coupled with a tendency to set themselves intractable tasks which they struggle to achieve while remaining only too aware of the many factors beyond their control that affect their success. The dilemmas that they face on the way-to take a strong political stance but to risk alienating some supporters, to accept state sponsorship but to risk co-option, to provide humanitarian relief but at the risk of prolonging conflict, to professionalise but to risk becoming more bureaucratic, to increase income but by using emotive imagery-are all faithfully reflected. How many outsiders will have the stamina to follow the argument through is another question, especially as the route takes numerous diversions, frequently crosses over itself and is not always clearly signposted.

Burnell is at his best when addressing the issues that political scientists are most familiar with, such as the extent to which government support for development charities in Britain has acted as a fig leaf to hide the paucity of official aid (Chapter 8), and the apparent ineffective- ness of the development charities’ lobbying (Chapter 9). However, in these and other cases, I found myself wishing that Burnell’s laudable quest for impartiality and balance might have been relaxed a bit more. Is the success of the development charities compared to other charities attributable in part to the creation of a misleading image of their effectiveness? Are their muted political and educational activities sufficient to exonerate them from the charge of perpetuating inequality by mollifying affluent consciences? Most development practitioners, for whom time to ponder such questions is scarce, would probably benefit from the considered judgement of a professional political scientist, even if they would not readily admit it.’

Burnell might respond by pointing out that the book was written for outsiders not insiders or other academics. In the Preface he alludes to the danger that academic commentary may ‘undermine the credibility of development education’, turn it into an ‘esoteric spectator sport’, and ‘fail to engage with the general public.’ But charities surely need the discipline and challenge of independent public criticism of their activities no less than does government or business.’ And perhaps engaging the general public actually requires more pith and punch, even it is at some cost to the charities’ image and short-term marketability.

JAMES COPESTAKE Centre for Development Studies, Bath University.

-urnell is also surely right in observing a lack of serious academic investigation of the subject-particu larly, in my view, from a comparative sociological perspective. To what extent, for example, do the development charities in Britain-in their religious, political, ethical and cultural dimensions-represent a last vestige of empire? 2 T ~ o recent articles by James Fenton in The Independent are particularly relevant to this issue. The first, ‘you call it charity, I call it interference’ (15 February 1993) drew criticism from five major development charities, to which he responded with a second article ‘Just enough net for a man to trap himself (22 February 1993) in which he observed that ‘One is not allowed to take a critical attitude to charity work inpublic or to say precisely the things that charity workers say to each other.’

AN INTRODUCTION TO HEALTH PLANNING IN DEVELOPING COUNTRIES Andrew Green Oxford University Press, 1992,351 pp.

This book is aimed primarily at health planners and other professionals working in the public sector in developing countries. At the same time, it seeks to introduce prospective health

528 Book Reviews

professionals to the need to engage in the planning process. Its explicit intention is to introduce readers to the technical aspects of planning within a broader political context. It rightly emphasises that health planning cannot be a neutral activity since it is concerned with the promotion and implementation of policies and is thus based upon values (which here derive from the principles of primary health care).

The book is essentially organised into two main thematic sections. The first, represented by chapters one to five, covers the main issues in health planning: the health planning rationale, theories of health planning, the implications of primary health care for planning, the integration of non-government health sectors (NGO, private and traditional) in public health sector plan- ning, and health financing. The second section (chapters six to thirteen) discusses in some detail each of the stages of the planning cycle identified in the first section, viz hzalth infor- mation, situational analysis, priority setting, opportunity costing, appraisal and evaluation, resource allocation, implementation and human resource planning.

I recommend this book most strongly to teachers and students of health planning. It is very much a text book in the conventional sense, raising a number of key conceptual and technical aspects of health planning and illustrating these with self-standing examples. The lists of references are comprehensive and appropriate, particularly the suggested key introduc- tory texts which appear at the end of each chapter. To facilitate and reinforce the instructional approach the text contains a number of brief well-presented exercises and an excellent case study of a planning system in the final chapter.

In a text with such a breadth of coverage it would be unfair to be overly critical of its failure to address in detail any specific aspect of the planning process. However, given the current importance attached by many international donors to harnessing the private-for-profit sector to the development of a multi-channel health delivery system in many Third World countries, it is disappointing that this issue is largely ignored in the chapter on the role of the non-state sector. Although the text, by necessity, tends towards generalisation in places, it does manage to effectively illustrate the varied socio-political and economic contexts in which planning takes place, and provides a number of good examples of how a planning system might tackle specific issues.

NEIL PRICE Centre for Development Studies,

University of Wales, Swansea