Book Reviews: Comparative Politics

tolerate the emergence of barter and giro circuits but also to participate in them. As Woodruff observes, "in such subtle ways is sovereignty surrendered" (p. 147). Money Unmade provides a timely and erudite corrective to two troubling theoretical trends in comparative politics. First, it demonstrates that the predominant narrative frame for studying postcommunist economic transformations, that of market reform, fatally obscures our understanding of the development process now taking place in Russia. Woodruffs approach reveals the emptiness of phrases such as "rentseeking," "corruption," and "reformers" when applied in the Russian context. Marketization advocates in Russia and the West (those concentrating on price liberalization, privatization, and stabilization) mistakenly thought that they were fighting the twentieth-century battle of the budget, when they were actually fighting the nineteenth-century battle for state control over money. As Woodruff notes, "that the emergence of barter in Russia came as such a surprise and appeared so absurd reflected a profound failure of historical perspective" (p. xii). The focus on monetary consolidation allows him to explain developments that have confounded those focused on market reform, such as the apparently erratic behavior of the Central Bank of Russia, the ultimate failure of shock therapy, and the reemergence of barter even as monetary stabilization took hold in 1994. These competing narrative frames also yield completely different policy prescriptions, inasmuch as monetary consolidation requires active efforts at state-building rather than mere economic decentralization. Moreover, by contesting the voluntarist vision of the state underpinning the market reform paradigm, Woodruff ultimately presents a fundamental critique of the way in which rational choice approaches have been used to evaluate postcommunist economic developments. Second, Money Unmade occupies a refreshing middle ground in the ongoing debate between "transitologists" and "area specialists" over the uniqueness of postcommunist transformations. On the one hand, Woodruff actively seeks comparable cases in the book's final chapter, relates the Russian case to familiar historical efforts at state-building and monetary consolidation, and seeks to make generalizable theoretical claims based on the Russian experience. On the other hand, he admits the difficulty of making accurate comparisons given the changed circumstances of states in the twentieth century and the unprecedented institutional legacies left by the command economy. Woodruff encourages us to evaluate postcommunist transformations on their own terms, investigating the evolving institutional development process without presuming to know the outcome ahead of time. As a result, Money Unmade affirms the vital importance of careful case study without retreating into disciplinary parochialism. Like most outstanding books, Money Unmade contains sins of omission rather than commission. In particular, Woodruffs decision not to address dollarization in Russia or the temporary persistence and subsequent breakup of the ruble zone seems strange for a book about monetary consolidation. Furthermore, his analysis of Russia's exploding nonmonetary economy cries out for a deeper investigation into the parallel monetary economy and for a more explicit look at the role of Western aid and advice in inadvertently facilitating the emergence of barter. These, however, are minor matters. This is simply the best book yet published on postcommunist political economy, and it demands a close and careful reading by any scholar interested in understanding this momentous era of institutional transformation. Political Change in Eastern Europe since 1989: Prospects for Liberal Democracy and a Market Economy. By Robert Zuzowski. Westport, CT, and London: Praeger, 1998. 176p. $57.95.