. . . Snooks is interested in the causes of institutioinal and organizational variation and their linkages to economic performance. Throughout human history, he argues, societies have pursued one of four distinct strategies: family multiplication, conquest, commerce, and technology. Strategists formulate and execute these programs; antistrategists lurk on the sidelines ready to hijack effort into rent seeking if strategic confidence falters; nonstrategists are the exploited and/or dependent population who lack seats at the decisionmaking table. Strategies don't follow each other in inexorable sequence, and institutions and organizational structures are largely derivative of prevailing programs, rather than having much independent influence on their own. Existing civilizations are thus ephemeral, and their evolution does not necessarily represent progress along some immanent path of development. . . .

. . . The "theory" part of the book is devoted to clearing the decks of just about any other approach that claims to provide insight into these issues. Frameworks criticized include neoclassical, satisficing, new institutional, sociobiological, and Marxian. The author includes an eight-page glossary of terms and concepts as an aid to understanding his new model, which extends work developed in his previous book, The Dynamic Society. . . .

Institutional scholars everywhere: Professor Snooks would like a word with you - THE EPHEMERAL CIVILIZATION: Exploding the myth of social evolution (London & New York: Routledge, 1997).

In this powerful extension of his earlier work, Graeme Snooks takes aim at what he calls "the myth of social evolution". Put another way, Snooks has once again ridden into battle wielding his demand driven model, and the direct opponent of his charge is institutional social science.

I have to admit that before I encountered Snooks' work, I was an avowed institutionalist myself. Douglass North and Mancur Olson occupied prominent spaces on my bookshelf and in my heart. I was content that institutional change was one of, if not the, motive force of economic development.

Reading Snooks changes all that. The supply-side shackles melt away. Snooks' great contribution is that he cogently argues that dynamic demand must be given primacy in the analysis of human behaviour, and by extension, the analysis of the secular rhythms of life itself.

But Snooks is about process as much as he is about outcomes. As his earlier work attests, the deductive method of twentieth century social science is a wrong-headed approach to tackling real-world problems. The correct model is an inductive one - empirical, 'existential' - that has explanatory power in a backward and a forward direction. The `true' model may not be exactly as Snooks has defined it. But given the chasm between Snooks' methodology and the ahistorical approach of his orthodox deductive opponents, one can safety say his work is a material advance upon existing `grand theories' of economic and social development.

If the law is the egg, and the demand for law is the chicken, then Snooks has resolved the eternal riddle in favour of the fully-realised fowl.