bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
The Future of Teledemocracy. By Ted Becker and Christa Daryl Slaton. Westport, CT: Praeger, 2000. 248p. $65.00 cloth, $24.95 paper.
Authors: Barney Darin
Published: May 2008

As Ted Becker and Christa Slaton affirm in their introduction to The Future of Teledemocracy, this is not “just another book” of scholarly reflection but, rather, an account of “a way of life” (p. xii) in which they have played a central role. Consequently, instead of a detached, critical investigation of the dynamic encounter among technology, communication, and democratic politics, or even a dispassionate appraisal of the implications of a particular aspect of this encounter, what we receive in this book is an intimate digest of Becker and Slaton's 23-year “odyssey” on behalf of their own vision of teledemocracy—complete with “true blue allies” and powerful enemies “who opposed our ideology and had the means to halt our experiments” (p. xi)—framed by a futurist manifesto that unfortunately diminishes the contribution made by the chronicle of the authors' crusade.
Political Culture in Post-Communist Russia: Formlessness and Recreation in a Traumatic Transition. By James Alexander. New York: St. Martin's Press, 2000. 267p. $65.00
Authors: Richard
Published: May 2008

Of all the “traumatic transitions” in the postcommunist world, the Russian one ranks as one of the most tortuous and painful. Why is this? Does the problem lie in the institutional structure created in the early postcommunist years, or do the roots lie deeper, in Russia's innate authoritarianism and cult of strong leadership? Employing the concept of political culture, this is the question that Alexander seeks to answer. He approaches the idea in an unusual way, however, by focusing rather more broadly on the concept of “culture” and its potential for change rather than any narrowly defined notion of “political” culture. He insists that a nation's political culture cannot be
reduced to one or two simple and measurable parameters but is a complex web of malleable relations and contradictions; and he seeks to understand them by using what he insists are nonstandard approaches.
Justice and Reconciliation: After the Violence. By Andrew Rigby. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 2001. 207p. $49.95 cloth, $19.95 paper.
Authors: Bass Gary J.
Published: May 2008

Much of the growing literature on human rights issues focuses on the post-1989 democratizations and the ethnic conflicts of the 1990s. It reaches across many disciplines, including work not just by political scientists but also by legal scholars, historians, sociologists, anthropologists, journalists, and practitioners. Much of the literature confronts the tension between the pursuit of justice and the pursuit of stability. Andrew Rigby, who teaches on forgiveness and reconciliation, contributes an eclectic and good-hearted meditation on the dilemma of political reconciliation after mass atrocities.
Biology and Political Science. By Robert H. Blank and Samuel M. Hines, Jr. New York: Routledge, 2001. 183p. $80.00.
Authors: Strate John
Published: May 2008

What is biopolitics? The authors are well-published scholars in this field, and their answer to this question supplied in this book should give hope to those who are disappointed with the direction and progress of political science. Many of the questions about politics that biopolitics addresses were first asked by ancient political philosophers, such as Aristotle. The field of biopolitics, however, is only 30 or 40 years old. Over that time the field has strengthened its institutional base. Of equal importance, it has produced a growing body of scholarship in such fields as political theory, comparative politics and international relations, methodology, political behavior and decision making, and public administration and public policy. Unfortunately, largely because the field is interdisciplinary, only a small portion of this scholarship has been published in the major political science journals, so that most political scientists and other social scientists are largely unaware of what this field is and what it has to offer.
Legislative Learning: The 104th Republican Freshmen in the House By Timothy J. Barnett. New York: Garland, 1998. 333p. $60.00
Authors: Thorson Gregory R.
Published: May 2008

The 1994 elections were watershed elections in several respects. Perhaps most significantly, the Republicans gained control of both chambers of Congress for the first time since 1953. In the process, the 1994 elections also swept into office a large, relatively homogeneous group of 73 House Republican freshmen determined to change the political system. With size comes an opportunity for power in Congress, and the 73 Republican freshmen elected in 1994 were determined to exert considerable influence over the legislative process. Not since the 1974 elections produced the 76 freshmen Democrats (i.e., the Watergate Babies) have political scientists focused so much attention on a single class of legislators. Timothy Barnett's Legislative Learning is a nice complement to similar books already written about this interesting group of legislators, including Richard Fenno and Michael Armacost's Learning to Govern: An Institutional View of the 104th Congress (1997) and Nicol Rae's Conservative Reformers: The Republican Freshmen and the Lessons of the 104th Congress (1998).
Natural Law Modernized. By David Braybrooke. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2001. 351p. $70.00.
Authors: Carr Craig L.
Published: May 2008

Natural law theorizing, it seems, will not die, even in this so-called postmodern era. For some, apparently including David Braybrooke, this is reason to think that there is something true about natural law doctrine, and in Natural Law Modernized, he sets about to convince us of this very point. He thinks that natural law theory, once it is suitably modernized and refurbished in the fashion he recommends, has strengths that may make it preferable to alternative ethical theories, particularly utilitarianism and contractarianism.
Talking Feminist Politics: Conversations on Law, Science, and the Postmodern. By Eloise A. Buker. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 1999. 240p. $60.00 cloth, $24.95 paper. The Future of Differences: Truth and Method in Feminist Theory. By Susan J. Hekman. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 1999. 173p. $66.95 cloth, $29.95 paper.
Authors: Tanesini Alessandra
Published: May 2008

There are differences between human beings, and some of these differences are, for many, a matter of identity. Some people are men, and some are white. Some people are poor, others are wealthy. These identity-constituting differences are deeply connected with different kinds of injustices. Susan Hekman's main contention in The Future of Differences is that a new epistemology is required if we are to acknowledge all these differences (p. 27) and, consequently, address these injustices.
A Politics of the Ordinary. By Thomas L. Dumm. New York: New York University Press, 1999. 240p. $55.00 cloth, $18.50 paper.
Authors: Frohock Fred M.
Published: May 2008

Exploring the ordinary is a reasonable and fun way to get through the day. Thomas Dumm takes the exploration along a cart path toward democratic politics, dramatizing the intersections and reciprocal influences of everyday life and political events and the forces of conformity and normalcy that shackle the ordinary. The working technique is juxtaposition, the kind of display that one finds in the store windows of, well, ordinary life in towns and cities. The pantheon of familiar figures and texts includes Emerson, Thoreau, Nixon, Disney, alien depictions, Lowi, Wolin, Cavell, the King's Two Bodies, Baudrillard, and many more, all offered as showcase for the book's main claim that the ordinary is the primary source of the democratic imagination.
What Do We Know About War?. Edited by John A. Vasquez. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2000. 420p. $75.00 cloth, $29.95 paper.
Authors: Goemans H. E.
Published: May 2008

The new collection of essays edited by John A. Vasquez in What Do We Know About War? provides a useful overview of the quantitative literature on war. This book makes no claims to move the field forward significantly but, instead, offers seniors and first-year graduate students a good basic understanding of how statistical analyses have been used to explain the variation between war and peace. The book has significant strengths and weaknesses. Its strengths are the wide array of questions addressed and the attempt to provide a systematic discussion of the current state of the quantitative knowledge on war; its weaknesses are the paucity of attention paid to new insights from the rational choice literature and their implications for the quantitative study of conflict.
Cultural Pluralism and Dilemmas of Justice. By Monique Deveaux. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2000. 205p. $35.00. Becoming Free: Autonomy and Diversity in the Liberal Polity. By Emily R. Gill. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2001. 292p. $45.00 cloth, $19.95 paper.
Authors: Mendus Susan
Published: May 2008

What does liberalism imply about our duties to minority cultures, and what do the claims of such cultures imply about the nature of liberalism? These may seem like different ways of asking roughly the same question and, in a sense, so they are. Both formulations invite us to consider the relationship between liberalism and diversity, and both do so in the specific context of group, as distinct from individual, identity. However, and as these two books demonstrate, it makes a difference which question we take as our starting point. Emily Gill begins with a question about the fundamental commitments of liberalisn, and having answered that question, she then goes on to investigate the implications for cultural membership. By contrast, Monique Deveaux begins by asking what justice requires for cultural minorities, and having answered that question, she then goes on to investigate the implications for our understanding of liberal democratic theory and practice.
The Power of the American Presidency, 1789–2000. By Michael A. Genovese. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000. 273p. $19.95. Presidential Power: Forging the Presidency for the Twenty-First Century Edited. by Robert Y. Shapiro, Martha Joynt Kumar, and Lawrence R. Jacobs. New York: Columbia University Press, 2000. 525p. $49.50
Authors: Conley Richard S.
Published: May 2008

It has been more than forty years since the publication of Richard Neustadt's Presidential Power and the Modern Presidents (1960). In that seminal work Neustadt rebuffed systemic, legal, and constitutional approaches to emphasize the personal basis of presidential power and the centrality of presidents' reputation and persuasive skills. Michael Genovese's book and the collection assembled by Shapiro, Kumar, and Jacobs are timely and useful additions to the reevaluation of the individual and institutional bases of presidential power, influence, and leadership across time. If scholarship on the presidency is at a crossroads, these works invite us to journey in different analytical directions.
Not Whether But When: The U.S. Decision to Enlarge NATO. By James M. Goldgeier. Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press, 1999. 218p. $42.95 cloth, $18.95 paper.
Authors: Cross Sharyl
Published: May 2008

James M. Goldgeier makes a major contribution to the contemporary case study literature concerning American foreign policy formation. Based on extensive interviews with more than 75 key participants (William Perry, Richard Holbrooke, John Shalikashvili, Leon Panetta, Anthony Lake, Strobe Talbott, and so forth), Goldgeier reconstructs a richly detailed account of the policy process that culminated in the decision to expand the NATO alliance eastward. The study illuminates the complex interplay of political considerations, bureaucratic interests, and individual preferences and skills (even chutzpah) that led to the admission of the first tier of new NATO member nations in Eastern/Central Europe.
Retrieving Experience: Subjectivity and Recognition in Feminist Politics. By Sonia Kruks. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2001. 200p. $35.00 cloth, $16.95 paper.
Authors: Green Karen
Published: May 2008

Just over 50 years ago, Simone de Beauvoir published The Second Sex, an essay on the situation of women written from the point of view of an existentialist ethic. Her essay had an enormous impact and spawned influential descendants, most of which rode roughshod over the essay's existentialist and phenomenological background. De Beauvoir's great success in The Second Sex was to have described the experience of becoming a woman in such a way as to allow many women to theorize their situation, and she spurred a generation to attempt to change it. Effectively, however, her insights became absorbed into the liberal feminist tradition, and with the rise of poststructuralism, have been criticized for their abstract individualism, commitment to a discredited Enlightenment notion of the subject, and participation in a logocentric philosophy of the Same. Sonia Kruks attempts, in this series of linked essays, to defend de Beauvoir and the tradition to which she belonged from being so quickly dismissed. She sets out the perspective of existential phenomenology and argues for its superiority to the poststructuralist philosophy that has become influential during the last 30 years.
Cambodia Confounds the Peacemakers, 1979–1998. By Macalister Brown and Joseph J. Zasloff. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1998. 272p. $39.95.
Authors: Roberts David W.
Published: May 2008

This book takes the reader through the complexities of the search for peace in the first chapters and through the provision of the UNTAC operation up to 1993. It concludes with an overview of the 1998 elections, and in between there is a section dedicated to the period between the two polls. The first section is reasonable, but the text is repetitive and it repeats what several others have already written (Trevor Findlay, Cambodia: The Legacy and Lessons of UNTAC, 1995, and various works by David P. Chandler, Ben Kiernan, and Michael Vickery). The analysis reflects that by several of the recognized Khmer scholars, and is useful to read, but while the analysis is insightful regarding Western peacemaking processes and the Khmer resistance at various points, it does not question assumptions regarding the overwriting of Western peace paradigms onto Khmer political culture. This has a distinctly different historical evolution and an equally dissimilar set of contemporary values regarding the notions of opposition, power sharing, and social harmony. The limits of this type of analysis are present throughout the work and are probably best illustrated by the statement that the violence of July 1997 “transformed UNTAC's enterprise from what may have been termed a [limited success' to a failed rescue of a failed state” (p. 265).
Flag Burning and Free Speech: The Case of Texas v. Johnson. By Robert Justin Goldstein. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2000. 269p. $35.00 cloth, $14.95 paper.
Authors: Guenter Scot
Published: May 2008

This is another in the Landmark Law Cases and American Society series from Kansas, joining such topics as the Salem witchcraft trials, Marbury v. Madison, the Pullman case, and Bakke. The series editors have chosen wisely in making this selection, both in topic and author. Goldstein is the nation's leading expert on legislation and judicial review related to flag desecration. He brings to this project considerable knowledge, prolific publications in this area, and a clarity of voice and focus. There are no provocative and startling new approaches or theories, but that is not the purpose. I highly recommend this book as assigned coursework for college seminars on civil religion, the separation of powers doctrine, First Amendment rights, Supreme Court functioning, or the interplay between politics, the media, and the Constitution. It will work well in classes not only in political science but also in intellectual and cultural history, American studies, philosophy, and communication studies.
East Asian Democratization: Impact of Globalization, Culture, and Economy By Robert W. Compton, Jr. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 2000 224p. $68.00.
Authors: Clark Cal
Published: May 2008

Studies of Asian politics tend to follow one of two divergent analytic strategies. Area specialists emphasize the importance of Asian culture in shaping the politics and economics of those nations, whereas comparative theorists apply broader models of political behavior to the Asian context. Robert Compton seeks to integrate these two traditions, which generally speak past one another, by proposing a promising (albeit somewhat limited) model of the dynamics of democratization in East and Southeast Asia. The model explicitly incorporates the distinctive cultures of these nations as the central causal factor explaining the process of democratization and the characteristics of the democratic polities that have emerged in the region. Furthermore, in terms of normative questions, Compton uses this analysis to critique both sides in the current debate between advocates of democracy and critics who claim that democracy is incompatible with “Asian values.'' Thus, East Asian Democratization should be of interest to a wide variety of scholars concerned with Asian politics or with theories of democratization.
Sanctions as Economic Statecraft: Theory and Practice. Edited by
Steve Chan and A. Cooper Drury. New York: St Martin's, 2000. 258p. $75.00.
Authors: Nossal Kim Richard
Published: May 2008

Edited collections usually have relatively clear provenance. Most often they are brought to life by colleagues who are intrigued by an issue or a question; they then organize a conference (or a collection) around that theme and seek a publisher for the resulting collection. Such works are commonly marked by the putative expectations associated with an edited book: There is an attempt by the editors to present the unifying theme desired (if not demanded) by most university presses and the academic reviewers whose reports determine which way the thumbs go. Usually the editors attempt to herd the cats they have invited to participate—and ask that the contributors address unifying themes or take desired approaches. Even if the cats do no more than tip a ritual bow in the direction of the unifying theme, the editors normally use the introduction and conclusion to craft at least the appearance of unification.
Political Nature: Environmentalism and the Interpretation of Western Thought. By John M. Meyer. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2001. 210p. $55.00 cloth, $22.95 paper.
Authors: Dryzek John S.
Published: May 2008

Nature is political, John Meyer argues, because it constitutes people and so their politics; moreover, interpretations of nature can only be controversial and so contested. Meyer is an environmentalist who believes that contemporary theoretical thinking about politics and the environment is mostly mistaken. Environmental philosophy, in particular, is criticized as involving wasted effort because it emphasizes justifications for intrinsic value in nature. This emphasis implies that the political challenge is one of convincing enough people to adopt some ecologically benign worldview. But as Meyer rightly points out, most people already evidence a vague commitment to environmental values, and so the real question is how to activate such commitments.
Discordant Comrades: Identities and Loyalties on the South African Left By Allison Drew. Aldershot, Hampshire: Ashgate, 2000. 282p. $74.95
Authors: Jung Courtney
Published: May 2008

Drawing on a wealth of new information made available by the opening of the Comintern archives, Drew sheds the light of hindsight on the relationship between the Communist Party of South Africa (CPSA) and, in turn, the Soviet Comintern, the South African liberation movement, and the white and black trade union movements in the first half of the twentieth century. This rich book makes a unique contribution to our understanding of ties between the Comintern and its satellite parties as well as the early history of the South African antiapartheid movement. There are only two other major books on this period of party history, and both are memoirs of party members who try to establish a particular version of the record. Drew contests the teleology of their accounts of communist party history and instead weaves a contingent narrative that identifies major turning points that narrowed the possibility for a radical reorientation of the party (p. 281). It was not inevitable that the party would split and finally dissolve in the way it did—other outcomes were possible, almost until the end. That they were not taken was the layered result of personal and ideological rivalries and party alliances that made socialism, and socialists, perpetually weak and vulnerable in the context of South African politics.
Natural Law Theories in the Early Enlightenment. By T. J. Hochstrasser. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. 246p. $54.95.
Authors: Seidler Michael J.
Published: May 2008

This detailed historical study focuses on Protestant natural law theories in the early German Enlightenment (explicitly excluding the French and British sectors) and traces their influence, or fate, through Kant. Despite its title, it is more than a specialist tome devoted to an historically isolable development, and it is not merely a subsidiary, underlaborer's attempt to recount the prehistory of Kant's achievement. Rather, by tracing several important background currents through the period concerned, Hochstrasser illuminates the odd historical fact that German enlighteners at the end of this span knew or thought so little of those at its beginning. The central topics are eclecticism; the so-called “histories of morality” that were part of its self-conscious legitimation method; the rationalism-voluntarism split in early modern natural law; and the associated distinction among moral philosophy (ethics), natural (positive) law, and international law (ius gentium) that developed out of these debates.
Faithful and Fearless: Moving Feminist Protest Inside the Church and Military. By Mary Fainsod Katzenstein. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1998. 270p. $40.00 cloth, $18.95 paper.
Authors: Woliver Laura R.
Published: May 2008

The power of social movements to transform what we take for granted and what we contest is beautifully displayed in Faithful and Fearless. Mary Fainsod Katzenstein shows how some protest in American society has moved inside institutions. Particularly, she means, feminist protest: “Less lawbreaking than norm-breaking, these feminists have challenged, discomfited, and provoked, unleashing a wholesale disturbance of long-settled assumptions, rules, and practices…. Sometimes by their mere presence, but more often by claiming specific rights, and by demanding in certain facets the transformation of the institutions of which they are a part, feminists have reinvented the protests of the 1960s inside the institutional mainstream of the 1990s” (p. 7)
Environmental Injustice in the United States: Myths and Realities. By James P. Lester, David W. Allen, and Kelly M. Hill. Boulder, CO: Westview, 2000. 216p. $19.00.
Authors: Kraft Michael E.
Published: May 2008

Over the past decade the study of environmental justice has sparked considerable debate, with conflict often exacerbated by conceptual and definitional muddles, scarcity of pertinent data, and disagreement over which methods to employ. This book by the late James Lester and his colleagues is unlikely to diminish the controversy. Yet, as a comprehensive attempt to clear out the conceptual underbrush and bring hard data to bear on difficult empirical questions, the book merits attention by all those concerned with issues of environmental equity. The preliminary findings have been presented at conferences from 1994 on, and many are already familiar with this research. As the authors note, however, they began with a skeptical posture toward the strident assertions made regarding environmental justice. In the end, they reconsidered that position and found much evidence to support concern over environmental inequities in U.S. society.
Sex and Social Justice. By Martha C. Nussbaum. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999. 488p. $45.00 cloth, $17.95 paper. Women and Human Development: The Capabilities Approach. By Martha C. Nussbaum. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. 334p. $28.00 cloth, $20.00 paper.
Authors: Hirschmann Nancy J.
Published: May 2008

These two books by leading U.S. philosopher Martha Nussbaum take up the issue of women's inequality in a U.S. and international context. Both are hard-hitting, in Nussbaum's characteristic take-no-prisoners style, setting out a clear case that women endure ignominious oppression in the name of culture and religion, and that feminists and liberals alike should tolerate it no longer.
Gandhi, Freedom, and Self-Rule. Edited by Anthony J. Parel. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2000. 164p. $70.00 cloth, $23.95 paper.
Authors: Mehta Pratap B.
Published: May 2008

The life and thought of Mahatma Gandhi continues to be a reproach to ideologies and dispositions that produced the horrors of the twentieth century. But his complex legacy suffers from a paradox. His ideas appear to be both necessary and improbable at the same time. To many, Gandhi's thought becomes even more relevant in a context in which the vision of modernity that he critiqued so powerfully has triumphed, the violence that he stood against has become an ineliminable feature of political life, and the practice of freedom has come to be dissociated from the exercise of virtue. But the very same historical momentum that inspires the authors in this volume to turn to Gandhi also seems to make Gandhi an even more distant and unlikely figure for our times. This volume, a product of sincere and careful scholarship, is largely an effort to keep Gandhi's thought alive. It focuses on the central category of Gandhian thought, swaraj (self-rule). Anthony Parel's essay usefully distinguishes between four meanings of freedom for Gandhi: freedom as national independence, freedom as freedom from poverty, political freedom for the individual, and freedom as the capacity for self-rule or spiritual freedom. This typology will provide a helpful initial orientation to readers unfamiliar with Gandhi's thought.
The Art of Political Warfare. By John J. Pitney, Jr. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2000. 256p. $24.95.
Authors: Burton Michael John
Published: May 2008

For political scientists, the world of politics is often comprised of policy markets and aggregated data points. Regression models, actor preferences, and game structures are disciplinary norms. For political professionals, however, politics often has a strongly militaristic bent: It is war by other means. John Pitney analyzes political affairs in the way that political professionals commonly do, using armed conflict as a metaphor to understand complex political phenomena.
Bodies of Meaning: Studies on Language, Labor, and Liberation. By David McNally. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2000. 277p. $72.50 cloth, $23.95 paper.
Authors: Xenos Nicholas
Published: May 2008

David McNally styles this book as beginning in a polemic and ending in a “materialist approach to language” much indebted to the German critic Walter Benjamin. The charge is that “postmodernist theory, whether it calls itself poststructuralism, deconstruction or post-Marxism, is constituted by a radical attempt to banish the real human body—the sensate, biocultural, laboring body—from the sphere of language and social life” (p. 1). By treating language as an abstraction, McNally argues, postmodernism constitutes a form of idealism. More than that, it succumbs to and perpetuates the fetishism of commodities disclosed by Marx insofar as it treats the products of human laboring bodies as entities independently of them. Clearly irritated by the claims to radicalism made by those he labels postmodern, McNally thinks he has found their Achilles' heel: “The extra-discursive body, the body that exceeds language and discourse, is the ‘other’ of the new idealism, the entity it seeks to efface in order to bestow absolute sovereignty on language. To acknowledge the centrality of the sensate body to language and society is thus to threaten the whole edifice of postmodernist theory” (p. 2).
Socratic Citizenship. By Dana Villa. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001. 370p. $65.00 cloth, $17.95 paper.
Authors: Mara Gerald
Published: May 2008

The publication of Dana Villa's Socratic Citizenship coincides accidentally with recent events that have shaken and solidified American society. Yet the issues his book addresses are directly relevant to how a democratic society confronts such challenges. Villa investigates various forms of democratic citizenship and argues for a kind of civic activity that has been dangerously obscured within modern debates about democracy. Particularly within periods of regime stress, liberalism's good citizen who votes, pays taxes, and plays by the rules seems underequipped to meet the commitments the times require. The framework of the communitarians or the civic republicans wherein one discovers the value of “a shared commitment to something bigger than one's self… [endorsing a] life of community or civic engagement” (p. x) seems more helpful. Villa's concern is that this view of citizenship too easily enlists the community's members in projects of collective affirmation, while ignoring the importance of a critical rationality that asks skeptical questions about the content and the moral consequences of a politics driven by a “newly rediscovered sense of political membership” (p. x). In response, he rediscovers the possibility of a form of citizenship that places “intellectual doubt at the heart of moral reflection,” demanding not commitment but conscientiousness (p. xii). It is this form of citizenship that seems most compatible with moral individualism, and thus with the basic premises of democracy. He plausibly finds the origin of this kind of citizenship in the practices of Socrates as they are portrayed within the early Platonic dialogues, Apology,Crito, and Gorgias.
Citizenship and National Identity. By David Miller. Cambridge, MA: Polity, 2000. 216p. $29.95.
Authors: Levy Jacob T.
Published: May 2008

From the title one might expect a sequel of sorts to the author's highly regarded On Nationality (1995). The volume is both less and more than that, although mostly more. David Miller has long been critical of the Anglo-American liberal approach to political theory and has advanced his criticism along a number of fronts. To oversimplify, Miller is not a liberal, he is a civic republican; he is not a universalist liberal, he is a nationalist; he is not a liberal democratic, he is a deliberative democrat; he is not an economic liberal, he is a social democrat.
Crowded Airwaves: Campaign Advertising in Elections. Edited. by James A. Thurber, Candice Nelson, and David A. Dulio. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution. 2000. 178p. $39.95 cloth, $16.95 paper.
Authors: Kedrowski Karen M.
Published: May 2008

The essays in this short volume address three themes: the characterization of political campaign television advertising, the need to measure its effects, and the role and implications of issue advertising. This is an ambitious agenda, but the book makes some important contributions to the literature on campaigns and on political ads specifically.
A Virtuous Circle: Political Communications in Postindustrial Societies By Pippa Norris. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. 398p. $59.95 cloth, $21.95 paper.
Authors: Larson Stephanie Greco
Published: May 2008

Scholars of media and public opinion in Western Europe and the United States will find plenty of useful information and much to argue about in A Virtuous Circle. The data are rich and broad, and the conclusions drawn are provocative and relevant to some of the major debates in the field. The central question addressed is whether the news media discourages political engagement.
Hannah Arendt and the Politics of Tragedy. By Robert C. Pirro. DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2000. 224p. $38.00.
Authors: Herzog Annabel
Published: May 2008

Hannah Arendt's so-called nostalgia for the Greek polis stands at the core of most readings of her work, especially in debates between proponents of her concept of action as agonistic and interpreters of this concept as associational or communicative. Many feminist theorists, participatory democrats, and liberals share an aversion to Arendt's philhellenism and criticize her machismo, her apparent neglect of Athenian injustice, and her “republicanism,” with its potential for endangering individual autonomy. Similarly, Arendt's emphasis on the political relevance of stories and her self-acknowledged storytelling have also given rise to extensive interpretations. Arendt scholars, in line with many contemporary political theorists, reject the totalizing and universalizing power of theory and argue that human plurality is better expressed in stories than in abstract homogeneous theory. According to them, by exemplifying or illuminating general intuitions and propositions, storytelling concretizes the understanding of politics. They suggest that stories allow the political thinker to be critical and situated. Moreover, stories take into account forgotten parts of history, or forgotten parts of the political sphere, often denied in theories that cannot accept difference and contingency.
The Courts of International Trade: Judicial Specialization, Expertise, and Bureaucratic Policymaking. By Isaac Unah. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1998. 233p. $47.50.
Authors: Lindquist Stefanie A.
Published: May 2008

In The Courts of International Trade: Judicial Specialization, Expertise, and Bureaucratic Policymaking, Isaac Unah has ventured into territory that has remained largely uncharted by scholars of judicial politics. With the prominent exception of Lawrence Baum's work on specialized courts, few researchers in political science have chosen to explore courts that fall outside the federal judiciary's core hierarchy. Yet as Unah points out, these specialized courts, including the U.S. Tax Court, Claims Court, Court of International Trade, Bankruptcy Courts, and the Federal Circuit, perform critical functions that have the potential to affect business interests and shape bureaucratic performance in highly complex regulatory and economic areas. In this book, and in his previous published research, Unah has initiated an important expedition into unfamiliar but promising terrain.
Reelection: William Jefferson Clinton as a Native-Son Presidential Candidate. By Hanes Walton, Jr. New York: Columbia University Press, 1999. 352p. $49.50 cloth, $22.00 paper.
Authors: Barth Jay
Published: May 2008

At the end of the Clinton era, it is appropriate for political scientists to undertake analyses of this two-term president's effect on any number of political and public policy phenomena. Clinton's most obvious talent showed itself in the electoral arena, where (even in a television era) he formed deeply personal relationships with voters, and many of these analyses rightfully focus on the foundations of Clinton's public support. Continuing this line of research, Hanes Walton examines a potential explanation for Clinton's relative strength in one region of the country—the turf on which his political career began—through an in-depth analysis of Clinton's electoral base across time in Arkansas and the South. The book examines a well-justified question, about the ongoing vitality of a “native son” phenomenon but numerous problems with the method by which Walton attempts to answer that question weaken this work. Numerous factual errors and muddled writing make it even more problematic.
Disaffected Democracies: What's Troubling the Trilateral Countries Edited by Susan J. Pharr and Robert D. Putnam. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000. 348p. $65.00 cloth, $19.95 paper.
Authors: Crepaz Markus M. L.
Published: May 2008

A specter is haunting the Trilateral Democracies—this specter is called civic malaise. It has visited these countries before; rearing its head for the first time a quarter-century ago, proclaiming the demise of democracy due to the inability of governments to respond to the onslaught of waves of new forms of participatory democracy and political action. (Michel Crozier, Samuel P. Huntington, and Joji Watanuki, The Crisis of Democracy: Report on the Governability of Democracies to the Trilateral Commission, 1975). Too much democracy, as it were, may be too much of a good thing. Fortunately many of these dire predictions have not materialized, perhaps partly because they were highlighted a quarter-century ago. The sequel, Disaffected Democracies, celebrates the silver anniversary of the original Crisis of Democracy. This successor volume is similarly concerned with the fate of democracy in rich countries. These democracies are “troubled” (p. 7), so the argument goes, because their public institutions are undermined by declining confidence in government and sagging interpersonal social trust. The authors of this edited volume situate the sources of these “disturbing” (p.13) developments squarely in the political sphere. In other words, the origins of the decline in confidence in political institutions is not explained by a frail social fabric but, rather, by failures of government and politics themselves. Despite a tight focus on the temporal (the last 25 years) and spatial (the Trilateral countries) parameters of this edited volume, it is refreshing to see so many diverse and innovative diagnoses as to what is ailing the rich democracies.
Cinematic Political Thought: Narrating Race, Nation, and Gender. By Michael J. Shapiro. New York: New York University Press, 1999. 176p. $55.00 cloth, $18.50 paper.
Authors: Seery John
Published: May 2008

Writing on the outskirts of Hollywood, where my college campus episodically turns into a set location for the filming of West Wing or, most recently, Pearl Harbor, I have picked up a few pointers about the biz just by keeping my ears perked. “Talk to me, babe! Luv ya. My agent will get back to you on that. What's my motivation?” And so on. Clichés and formulas do matter, however, in such a large-scale collaborative enterprise because often they provide the underlying rules of the game. The first rule of screenwriting, any insider knows, is that you must hook your reader on page one. If you do not grab your audience right from the start, even before the opening credits roll, the rest of the spec script will surely get tossed, and the movie will never get made.
The Politics of Women's Rights: Parties, Positions, and Change. By Christina Wolbrecht. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000. 266p. $55.00 cloth, $17.95 paper.
Authors: Dolan Kathleen
Published: May 2008

When we talk about the gender gap, students in my Women and Politics course are always surprised to learn that men used to be more likely than women to support the Democratic Party and that Republicans were the original supporters of the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA). Many people forget, or are not familiar with, the significant party transformations on these issues over the last 50 years. Christina Wolbrecht's new book provides important insights into this transformation and is a valuable contribution. The study of political parties has not, to date, accounted for this phenomenon, and gender studies too often ignore the crucial role of political parties in our system.
Governance and Performance: New Perspectives. Edited by Carolyn J. Heinrich and Laurence E. Lynn, Jr. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2000. 349p. $65.00 cloth, $23.95 paper. Improving Governance: A New Logic for Empirical Research. Laurence E. Lynn, Jr., Carolyn J. Heinrich, and Carolyn J. Hill. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2001. 212p. $60.00.
Authors: Long Dianne N.
Published: May 2008

Carolyn Heinrich, Laurence Lynn, and Carolyn Hill are public management and policy scholars who puzzle over the workings of government. Their efforts aim not only to add to our understanding of these workings but also to provide a template for future study. The first volume by Heinrich and Lynn is designed around a set of working papers originally introduced at a conference of government and policy scholars in May 1999 at the University of Arizona, and are oft referred to as “the Arizona papers.” The publication is the result of a research project funded by the Pew Charitable Trusts to study best practices in government management. The second volume authored by Lynn, Heinrich, and Hill argues for a theoretical framework to guide future research.
Inclusion and Democracy. By Iris Marion Young. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000. 304p. $29.95.
Authors: Cruikshank Barbara
Published: May 2008

Engaging her contemporaries in debates over democratic ideals and processes, Iris M. Young offers a collection of seven essays that mitigate arguments on either side of those debates (participation vs. representation, localism vs. state, segregation vs. integration, identity vs. difference) by applying the critical ideal of inclusion. She argues that the normative legitimacy of democratic decisions rests upon the extent to which those affected by decisions are included in or have the opportunity to enter the decision making process. One might think that inclusion solves only one problem, the problem of exclusion, for democracy. However, Young extends the ideal of inclusion across manifold debates in democratic theory and speaks broadly to the less than ideal conditions under which we now practice democracy.
Continuities in Poland's Permanent Transition By Harald Wydra. New York: St. Martin's Press, 2000. 257p. $65.00.
Authors: Cirtautas Arista Maria
Published: May 2008

In studying and analyzing the postcommunist “transition” countries, it is becoming ever more apparent that what calls for explanation is not only change, as expressed in the trajectory of liberal capitalist reforms, but also continuity. Even in the face of profound institutional transformation, mentalities and behaviors associated with the past are not readily giving way to new modalities of thought and action. Accordingly, one way of approaching the problem of explaining the variability of regime outcomes in the former Soviet bloc is to focus on the particular institutional and discursive forms that the interplay of change and continuity has produced in each country. In his work on Poland, Harald Wydra encourages us to analyze this interplay from a particular point of view—one that is rooted in the lived experiences of the populations involved, as opposed to how countries measure up with respect to progress toward liberal capitalist outcomes. Consequently, he argues that even as discontinuity and change have characterized the “first reality” of post-1989 institution-building, important continuities mark the “second reality of images, myths and mentalities” (p. 26). In turn, this “second reality” provides “fundamental reference points in post-1989 Poland and Eastern Europe” (p. 25) that infuse the new institutional realities with unique, culturally determined, content and meaning.
Judicial Review in State Supreme Courts: A Comparative Study. By Laura Langer. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2002. 192p. $62.50 cloth, $20.95 paper.
Authors: Songer Donald R.
Published: May 2008

Interest in strategic approaches to an understanding of judicial decision making, including the implications of the separation of powers (SOP), has grown dramatically in recent years. Unfortunately, almost all the research on these SOP interactions has been limited to those involving the U.S. Supreme Court. Laura Langer's book provides a refreshing alternative to the exclusive Supreme Court focus by examining the significance of separation of powers concerns for the exercise of judicial review by state supreme courts.
With the Stroke of a Pen: Executive Orders and Presidential Power. By Kenneth R. Mayer. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001. 298p. $39.95.
Authors: Krause George A.
Published: May 2008

Given the recent events in the realm of presidential policymaking over the past decade, Kenneth R. Mayer has produced a timely book chronicling the use of executive orders that will be of considerable interest to political scientists, historians, legal scholars, and journalists alike. Existing research on the topic of executive orders has been largely addressed by constitutional legal scholars who possess little interest in emphasizing a generalizable understanding of this tool of executive authority. In recent years, a small yet growing-body of political science research has tried to obtain a social scientific–motivated portrait regarding the institutional and behavioral dimensions of executive order issuance by presidents. Mayer makes a strong case for using new institutional economics (NIE) as a “way of making sense of the wide range of executive orders issued over the years” (p. 28). The NIE theoretical approach that Mayer applies to presidential leadership takes a long-term view, compared to other works on presidential leadership, by positing “that presidents can achieve substantive (policy) results not simply by giving commands, but by creating and altering institutional structures and processes” (p. 29).
Constituting Workers, Protecting Women: Gender, Law, and Labor in the Progressive and New Deal Years. By Julie Novkov. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2001. 336p. $44.50.
Authors: Nackenoff Carol
Published: May 2008

Trained in both law and political science, Julie Novkov has made a major contribution to an understanding of the transitions from the Progressive Era to the New Deal that will be especially important for new institutionalist scholars of the Supreme Court, for students of American political development, and for scholars of gender and politics, women's history, and labor history. It also instructs those activists both inside and outside the legal community who turn to the courts.