The Rule of Law in Nascent Democracies: Judicial Politics in Argentina. By Rebecca Bill Chavez. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2004. 272p. $55.00.

This book is a welcome addition to a young but growing body of scholarly work on rule-of-law construction in new democracies from a political science perspective. Rebecca Bill Chavez develops a persuasive study of the conditions under which rule of law is more likely to emerge, through an analysis of judicial politics at the national level in Argentina and in two of its provinces, San Luis and Mendoza.

Seeking Justices: The Judging of Supreme Court Nominees. By Michael Comiskey. Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 2004. 287p. $40.00 cloth, $19.95 paper.

The Supreme Court nomination and confirmation process has come under increasing scrutiny in recent years. In particular, scholars and the public alike view it as broken because it has become too political, too ideological, and therefore overly contentious. While some conclude that these circumstances have led presidents to choose second-rate nominees, the more dangerous effect of this process is that it may seriously undermine the legitimacy of the nation's highest court of justice. A great deal of evidence has been wielded to support these claims. However, Michael Comiskey lays out a case that the conclusions drawn—from both the legalist and the political schools of thought—do not mean that the process is broken. Comiskey's book argues that the process actually works very well, not despite but because of its political, ideological, and contentious nature. It is a cogently argued book and merits attention from scholars who want to better understand the Supreme Court nomination and confirmation processes.

The Republican South: Democratization and Partisan Change. By David Lublin. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004. 272p. $35.00.

David Lublin's book attempts to describe and explain partisan change in the South. It examines the growth of Republicanism across the full range of elected offices, from president down to county officials, and investigates the role that issues, elites, and electoral arrangements have played in the political transformation of the South. This is an ambitious agenda for a book of fewer than 280 pages, but for the most part the author pulls it off. Lublin's success in covering such a broad topic is accomplished in part by relying on previously published work (some of which is his own). Thus, the book is partly a synthesis of existing work, but it also includes new data and analysis.

Leo Strauss and the Politics of American Empire. By Anne Norton. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004. 256p. $25.00 cloth, $16.00 paper.

Anne Norton's book combines analysis of texts, which can be checked, with oral history or gossip, which cannot. Norton also shares her opinions and judgments about U.S. foreign policy. The mixed nature of the book makes for a difficult academic review.

Just Marriage. By Mary Lyndon Shanley, with Commentators. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004. 116p. $45.00 cloth, $12.95 paper.

Should marriage as we know it be abolished? This is one proposed solution to the injustices of marriage today: unjust to those excluded from access to it, to those who might like it but cannot find a partner, and to those who choose other forms of relationships or even consider marriage oppressive. Or does marriage remain an institution so bound up with social needs, such as child raising and care for dependents, that the state cannot abdicate regulatory authority over it? Mary Lyndon Shanley argues the latter position.

Muted Voices: Latinos and the 2000 Elections. Edited by Rodolfo O. de la Garza and Louis DeSipio. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, 2005. 288p. $75.00 cloth, $29.95 paper.

The 2000 presidential race was one of the closest and most controversial elections in the nation's history. Throughout the election, both parties courted the Latino vote and sought to win the majority of its votes using extensive campaigning in Spanish. The central thesis of Muted Voices is that despite the expectation that Latino population growth would result in Latino voters having a pivotal role in national electoral influence, they remained marginalized as they had in previous elections.

The River Runs Black: The Environmental Challenge to China's Future. By Elizabeth C. Economy. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2004. 368p. $29.95.

Most people are aware of China's severe environmental problems. The country's cities are among the world's most polluted; one of the major rivers sometimes fails to run to the sea; the desert is now only a few hours' drive from Beijing. China's falling water tables, transnational ecological impacts, thirst for energy, and emissions of greenhouse gases and ozone-depleting substances have made its environmental problems an urgent concern not only for its own citizens and policymakers but also for the world. A book that attempts to analyze the causes and implications of this situation is welcome.

Politics, Persuasion, and Educational Testing. By Lorraine M. McDonnell. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004. 264p. $45.00.

People who are experts in policy areas, but attempt to write for a broader audience in their home discipline, often write primarily a policy tract, then add a little something from their home field. Although Lorraine McDonnell is one of the top experts in the country on education policy, especially large-scale educational reform, she has written this book truly from the perspective of political science. In her career, she has written many other articles and books concentrating on policy issues and evaluations, but Politics, Persuasion, and Educational Testing is set within the discourse of policy theory and focuses on the politics of educational standards, assessment, and testing.

Subnationalism in Africa: Ethnicity, Alliances, and Politics. By Joshua B. Forrest. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 2004. 279p. $55.00.

Sub-Saharan Africa suffers from states that are too weak to deliver services or even basic order to their peoples. Things really are falling apart, and challenged by a wide variety of locally based resistance movements or popular indifference, control by the center cannot hold. Joshua Forrest, author of solid monographs on Guine-Bissao and Namibia, takes on the challenge of describing and explaining the whole “process of political mobilization by regionally-based forces” (p. 1) that defy central authority, and for which he coins the term “subnationalism.” By this he includes a wide panoply of movements seeking autonomy, redress for grievances, secession, revenge, or old-fashioned plunder, so long as they are based on a population or region that is a subset of the juridical nation.

Bait and Switch: Human Rights and U.S. Foreign Policy. By Julie A. Mertus. New York: Routledge, 2004. 320p. $75.00 cloth, $19.95 paper.

In her timely book, Julie Mertus argues that the United States is one of the world's leading architects and promoters of international human rights. However, the United States, much like an unscrupulous car dealer, “uses its wealth and influence to mislead other states about its commitment to the human rights framework, appearing as universalist when actually it is applying double-standards” (p. 210). In other words, the United States relies on one set of human rights standards for itself and another set of standards to judge other states. Mertus starts out her project hoping to discover that human rights norms have become “deeply embedded,” “institutionalized,” or “internalized” into the U.S. foreign policy framework. Instead, she finds that both the executive branch and the Defense Department routinely override human rights concerns in favor of instrumental foreign policy gains. This American exceptionalism or exemptionalism of excusing itself from institutions and norms that it establishes and purports to follow has prevented human rights norms from fully embedding themselves into U.S. foreign policy. Mertus points to an inherent ambivalence and structural inability of the United States to actually follow through on its very own human rights goals. She finds some evidence to suggest that it indeed does respect and value human rights, but there is strong counterevidence to suggest that it is not able to actually translate human rights aspirations to meaningful policies.

The Nature of Political Theory. By Andrew Vincent. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004. 354p. $65.00.

Survey texts exercise considerable violence upon the thinkers and works they assess. Andrew Vincent is no pacifist. Yet his book succeeds admirably in gaining breadth without unduly sacrificing depth and subtlety. Vincent's encyclopedic knowledge (with more than 500 titles in the bibliography) is coupled with a sharp critical eye and refreshingly blunt appraisals. The result is a thoughtful and wide-ranging interpretation of twentieth-century Western political thought.

The Political Economy of Expertise: Information and Efficiency in American National Politics. By Kevin M. Esterling. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2004. 304p. $65.00 cloth, $24.95 paper.

Congress's use of expertise represents a paradox. The legislative branch spends hundreds of millions of dollars every year acquiring policy-relevant knowledge. Standing committees hire scores of experts and regularly ask outside specialists to testify. Entire research agencies have been created to generate expert assessments on complex issues. Making specialized knowledge available to legislators is justified as a necessary expense if they are to produce laws that will do a good job in fulfilling the nation's goals.

Social Protest and Policy Change: Ecology, Antinuclear, and Peace Movements in Comparative Perspective. By Marco Giugni. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2004. 320p. $75.00 cloth, $32.95 paper.

The same things that provoke social movements also promote institutional pressures for change, shifts in public opinion, and policy change. As a result, disentangling the effects of protest on policy presents an ongoing analytical challenge. If we look, for example, at the volatile and diverse movement against the American war in Vietnam, it is virtually impossible to track clear lines of influence between the volume or disruptiveness of protests covered in the news and spending on the war or casualties produced in battle. At the same time, by reviewing memoirs, archives, and the broader outlines of policy, we know that the movement had longer-term effects, including (minimally), ending military conscription and establishing much stricter political and military tests for long-term commitments of American combat forces overseas. The latter set of constraints, codified as the Weinberger, then the Powell, doctrines, held sway over American military policy from the end of Vietnam until, finally, violated by the current American intervention in Iraq. At the same time, politicians of both parties vigorously try to reassure nervous youth, many of whom are children of the protest generation, that the draft is indeed gone for good. Clearly, the protests against the Vietnam war mattered, though perhaps not exactly in the ways that activists hoped or as much as they dreamed.

Politics from Anarchy to Democracy: Rational Choice in Political Science. Edited by Irwin L. Morris, Joe A. Oppenheimer, and Karol Edward Soltan. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2004. 256p. $55.00 cloth, $21.95 paper.

This is a collection of papers from a lecture series sponsored by the Collective Choice Center at the University of Maryland's Department of Government and Politics. What makes the book different from the usual volume of papers is that the editors have sought to turn the papers into a kind of text for an introductory courses on rational choice political theory, and it seems to me with a good deal of success. The papers are organized under three headings dealing with origins of the state, design of institutions, and conditions for democracy. But before the lecture-based papers, two of the editors provide an extensive Introduction surveying the field (Irwin Morris and Joe Oppenheimer). The editors then also provide separate introductions to the three groups of papers, which comment on the papers in the wider context of comment on related work by authors not directly represented. The volume concludes with a survey discussion by the third editor (Karol Soltan), commenting on recent debates over the defining characteristics of rational choice theory and indeed over the very idea of rational choice political theory. The technical level is modest (some simple algebra and geometry), which is entirely right for the occasion: not too demanding and not too trivial. But the individual papers often reference work and employ terms and notions that go well beyond what is explicitly developed in the introductory materials. An instructor using the volume needs a confident command of the literature.

The Politics of Air Pollution: Urban Growth, Ecological Modernization, and Symbolic Inclusion. By George A. Gonzalez. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2005. 144p. $55.00.

The question of how public policy is and should be made is among the most important questions political scientists research. From David Easton's systems theory to the competing pluralist schools (Robert Dahl and Charles Lindblom, 1953; Dahl, 1956, 1961) to elite (G. William Domhoff, 1974), feminist (Amy Mazur, 2002; Nancy Fraser, 1997; Deborah Stone, 1997), postpositivist (Pushkala Prasad, 2005; Dvora Yanow, 2000), policy learning (Sabatier, 1987, 1999), and other theories of public policy, political scientists continue to wrestle with the causes and consequences of public policy.

Politics and Passion: Toward a More Egalitarian Liberalism. By Michael Walzer. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004. 208p. $25.00.

With characteristic elegance, clarity, and nuance, Michael Walzer here refines and extends the thesis he first ventured 15 years ago that the fragmentary effects of liberalism require periodic communitarian correction. Nearly all of the chapters are revised from previous articles or book chapters composed in the years intervening, and so their relation is more thematic than structural. But their collective force is considerable.

China's New Nationalism: Pride, Politics, and Diplomacy. By Peter Hays Gries. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004. 224p. $24.95.

Arguments in the West over the existence of a “China threat” frequently atomize and even demonize China, as the author of the book points out at the beginning. Is Chinese nationalism benign or malign? The rise of Chinese nationalism in recent times has become an issue of great interest and importance to the world because of concerns over China's intentions as economic growth propels the country's ascendance onto the world stage. This timely account analyzes the sources and dimensions of the new nationalism, from what Peter Hays Gries calls the “rarely told Chinese side of the story” (p. 4). It is premised on a refreshing perspective that “to understand Chinese nationalism, we must listen to the Chinese” (p. 4). Gries's attempt to introduce Western scholars to the views of these new nationalists is an important contribution in itself, as so often mainstream views of Chinese nationalism in the West construe it as a tool to legitimize Communist Party rule. This book gets it right by taking Chinese nationalism seriously and treats it as a matter of genuine popular base and emotional content.

Constitutional Deliberation in Congress: The Impact of Judicial Review in a Separated System. By J. Mitchell Pickerill. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2004. 208p. $74.95 cloth, $21.95 paper.

J. Mitchell Pickerill's richly layered book shows the possibilities and limits of “constitutional deliberation” in Congress, defined as “reflection and debate over the scope of federal powers under the Constitution in the context of legislation” (p. 11). Pickerill says that such institutional introspection is rare until Congress is confronted with activist majorities on the Supreme Court, as witnessed in the beginning and end of the twentieth century. But even when using constitutional deliberation to rescue stricken laws and protect future ones, Congress incorporates, rather than “overrides,” the latest judicial doctrine on the proper balance of power between the federal government and the states. He compares the use and specter of judicial review to a presidential veto and concludes that such Congress–Court dynamics show bargaining and compromise. However, interpretive equality is not necessary in this view of a healthy separation-of-powers system.

Governing NOW: Grassroots Activism in the National Organization for Women. By Maryann Barakso. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2004. 192p. $49.95 cloth, $18.95 paper.

This is a case study of the National Organization for Women that explains how NOW's governance structure shaped the organization's strategy from 1966 to 2003. “Strategy” is defined as NOW's “goals and tactics it uses to pursue them” (p. 2). The author contends that current conceptual approaches to explaining organizational behavior, such as the availability of resources, or political opportunities, or “collective belief systems,” can fall short in their predictive powers. There are times, for example, when organizations appear to be irrational and self-destructive as they ignore “obvious political opportunities” or invest “resources inefficiently” (p. 6). Analyzing organizational behavior from the perspective of its “governance structure” or “political system,” however, “resolves many of these apparent inconsistencies” (p. 6). Governance structure is “simply a political system described by a group's guiding principles (its goals and values) on the one hand and its formal decision-making process on the other” (p. 1).

Presidential Candidate Images. Edited by Kenneth L. Hacker. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2004. 288p. $80.00 cloth, $32.95 paper.

In an era of personalistic politics and saturation media coverage, candidate image is an especially important topic. Presidential contenders go to great lengths to generate particular images of themselves. They devote a substantial portion of their budget to campaign advertising, and use public opinion surveys and focus groups to figure how best to position themselves for electoral advantage.