Tali Mendelberg's The Race Card offers a methodologically rich and convincing account of the impact of subtle race cues in contemporary American politics. Although her thesis is a controversial one, Mendelberg develops a careful and cogent argument that racial attitudes can have a substantial effect on candidate evaluations—provided that candidates craft a racial appeal that appears to be about something other than race. She argues that the success of implicit antiblack appeals, ones juxtaposing visual references to race with ostensibly nonracial verbal messages on issues such as crime or welfare, are due to four “A” factors: ambivalence about racial stereotypes, accessibility and priming, awareness of one's reliance on racial attitudes, and the ambiguity of the racial cue.

Eliz Sanasarian's book is a welcome addition to the growing number of books on Iran since the Islamic Republic replaced the monarchy in 1979. She deals with an important yet little-covered subject: how religious minorities fare under an Islamic government. Just as Sanasarian's first book, The Women's Rights Movement in Iran, broke new ground and added much to our knowledge about of the status of women under the monarchy and the first few years of the Islamic Republic, Religious Minorities in Iran also fills a gap in scholarship. Some books and articles have been published since the Islamic revolution on Iranian Jews and Bahais, but little has appeared on Iran's Zoroastrian and Armenian communities, and virtually nothing on Iran's Chaldeans and Assyrians. No one has treated all the religious minorities in one volume. (Sansarian is, of course, dealing with religious minorities, not ethnic communities such as the Arabs, Kurds, Baluchis, Turks, and others.)

Observations on Soviet Government. Over a year and a half has passed since soviet government was declared in Russia. That is not a long period of time in the history of a great revolutionary movement. Developments which loom large during these years and which impress even thoughtful men and women may prove to be of little consequence in the final determination of things, while the still small voices which are often unheard and usually unheeded by contemporaries swell into the chorus of decisive opinion which settles the course of affairs. It is a matter for trepidation, therefore, when one ventures to search mid the political and institutional debris for the foundation stones upon which a new democracy is to rest, or to attempt to appraise the undried, rough-hewn timbers hastily thrown into the erection of a temporary political superstructure. Only the hope that the tentative observations of one who was there may assist others to interpret this titanic movement justifies the present note.

In 1946, Congress passed the Administrative Procedure and Legislative Reorganization Act. In this legislation, Congress purposefully provided for itself a prominent role in the administration of the federal government. David Rosenbloom writes that the “… purpose of this book is to explain how and why Congress adopted that role, its underlying coherence, [and] its durability … for seemingly ever-increasing congressional involvement in federal administration …” (p. ix). The author maintains that Congress was uneasy about this endeavor but was forced by the “federal administrative state” to reposition itself. Some even believed that Congress' place in the constitutional scheme-of-things had been altered. For example, it was asserted that Congress was abandoning constitutional principle if it allowed unelected governmental administrators to make rules (i.e., administrative law). The 1946 legislation has resulted in a merger between Congress and the federal bureaucracy. The author contends that federal agencies became “extensions” of Congress' authority to make law. In addition, this legislation resulted in the view that the administration of the bureaucracy was no longer to be seen as the private preserve of the executive branch of government. The concept of “legislative-centered public administration” is used to describe the results of this legislation.

This elaborate study analyzes the Nigerian foreign policy decision-making structures and processes from 1960 (when Nigeria became an independent country) until 1999. Using Graham Allison's conceptual models of decision making (the rational-actor model, the organizational process model, and the bureaucratic politics model), Ufot Inamete examines how foreign policy decision making during the Balewa, Ironsi, Gowon, Muhammed/Obasanjo, Shagari, Buhari, Babangida, Shonekan, Abacha, Abubakar, and Obasanjo governments manifested both changes and continuities (p. 289). Importantly, theory from Allison's model is well integrated with the substantive and analytical portions of the book, and, thus, it goes beyond the theory of a strong-leader approach in Third World countries to demonstrate that developing countries do have organizational structures that deal with foreign policies.

The closing chapter in the history of the white primary in the South has seemed since 1944 to be in process of being written. In that year, the United States Supreme Court, by invalidating in Smith v. Allwright the white primary rule of the Texas state Democratic convention, dealt a stunning, if not immediately mortal, blow to this most significant political custom or practice of the Southern states. The refusal of this court on April 19, 1948, to review a federal circuit court decision invalidating the white primary arrangements of South Carolina, created in 1944 to circumvent the effect of the Allwright decision, seems to have administered the judicial coup de grâce. It would, however, be unsafe to predict when “finis” may be set down for all states, political areas, counties, and voting precincts where by one means or another the Negro has long been barred from participation in the all-important primaries of the Democratic party. The remaining suffrage requirements, registration restrictions, and election provisions, and the political and administrative methods of applying them which still are employed in some Southern states and in parts of others in order to render it difficult for Negroes to vote will not be immediately eliminated. Moreover, the effects of political action have not been fully tested by the Democratic leaders of the South. At the present moment, plans for united efforts on their part are under consideration; and these could have far-reaching results before the end of the current presidential election year. Whatever the abstract justice of the situation, traditional attitudes and customs cannot be uprooted easily and have a way of resisting judicial or legislative fiat, particularly when it is honestly felt by many that such fiat has been imposed from the outside and by people unaware of the difficulties and adjustments involved.