Mayors and Schools: Minority Voices and Democratic Tensions in Urban Education. By Stefanie Chambers. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2006. 240p. $64.50 cloth, $21.95 paper.

Schools In: Federalism and the National Education Agenda. By Paul Manna. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2006. 222p. $26.95.

Interest in the politics of American cities and states has been steadily increasing in recent years, as scholars have rediscovered the importance of studying issues of governance at subnational levels. Recent research has illustrated that the American federal system is both more interconnected than many Washington-centric accounts would lead one to believe and more complicated insofar as the politics of states and local governments do not perfectly reflect national political processes. These two books represent efforts by emerging scholars to leverage the advantages of studying state and local politics in order to address major questions about political institutions in the United States and to make the case for greater incorporation of state and local elements into mainstream accounts of political change.

After the Fall of the Wall: Life Courses in the Transformation of East Germany. Edited by Martin Diewald, Anne Goedicke, and Karl Ulrich Mayer. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2006. 408p. $65.00.

This volume is an empirical analysis of “life courses”—individual trajectories through major rights of passage—in the transition of the German Democratic Republic (GDR) into an enlarged Federal Republic (FRG) in the period from 1989 to 2003. The published study draws on survey and interview data collected in 1991–92 and again in 1996–97, from three birth cohorts (1939–41, 1951–53, and 1959–61) in the East German Life History Study (EGLHS). This remarkable data set allows areas of impact to be distinguished and separately evaluated, rather than making disaggregated claims about how individuals raised in socialism fared under rapid privatization and the liberalization of society. The study offers a differentiated picture of the way an abrupt—even “radical” (p. 46)—social transformation affects different cohorts in various life phases. The underlying data is comprehensive enough to allow these lives to be understood across a broad spectrum of institutionalizations—structures, moreover, that exhibit a greater range of formalization than those captured by census data or other aggregate statistics. Thus, the data allow finer distinctions between phases in labor market adjustment, job mobility, and the lateral or vertical shifts involved with such changes. It addresses the relationship between different social systems, including intimate and instrumental networks of family and acquaintances, class status, ideological conviction, familial status, and gender.

The Averaged America: Surveys, Citizens, and the Making of a Mass Public. By Sarah E. Igo. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007. 408p. $35.00.

If I told you that this book is about the history of survey research in America, would you read it? If I told you that much of the book deals with Alfred Kinsey's reports on human sexuality, would that pique your interest?

Routing the Opposition: Social Movements, Public Policy, and Democracy. Edited by David S. Meyer, Valerie Jenness, and Helen Ingram. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2005. 360p. $70.50 cloth, $23.50 paper.

Most social scientists cling to a progressive image of history, in which one group after another organizes for various rights and interests, pursues them in a number of arenas until—often after much struggle and bloodshed—they gain the legal recognitions and influence on policies they seek. The circle of rights and recognition slowly and inexorably expands outward. Scholars of social movements, in particular, are committed to the idea that the protestors they study have a broad impact and play a key role in history. Their faith in this idea often outpaces the evidence and makes the proposition difficult to test.

Global Feminism: Transnational Women's Activism, Organizing, and Human Rights. Edited by Myra Marx Ferree and Aili Mari Tripp. New York: New York University Press, 2006. 325p. $65.00 cloth, $23.00 paper.

At first glance, this book appears disjointed and unusually broad. A careful reading, however, reveals the vast nature of the subject the editors astutely attempt to cover: the transnational dynamics of a variety of issues impacting on women's rights and concurrently being impacted by women's activism.

After Brown: The Rise and Retreat of School Desegregation. By Charles T. Clotfelter. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006. 216p. $55.00 cloth, $17.95 paper.

Those who live or have lived in metropolitan areas that faced court-ordered desegregation of the schools in the latter part of the twentieth century have likely heard a common theory about the connection of those efforts to the state of the relevant city. It goes something like this: Once federal courts ordered city schools to desegregate, many white city dwellers either fled to the suburbs for protection or plucked their kids from city schools and enrolled them in private ones. Under the first scenario, the end of neighborhood schools negatively affected the city, as families in once-vital neighborhoods abandoned desegregating city schools they perceived as problematic for their children's education for virtually lily-white suburban schools thought to be of a higher quality. Under the second scenario, white parents remained in the city of their birth but undermined desegregation efforts by transferring their children to private schools (which were mostly Catholic in the Northeast and Midwest and mostly newly opened in the South). In the end, long-frustrated federal judges and civil rights leaders ultimately succeeded in increasing the levels of interaction between white and black children, but their efforts had significant side effects for those cities as well.

Executing the Constitution: Putting the President Back into the Constitution. Edited by Christopher S. Kelley. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2006. 256p. $75.00 cloth, $24.95 paper.

Presidents in Culture: The Meaning of Presidential Communication. By David Michael Ryfe. New York: Peter Lang, 2005. 249p. $29.95.

Executive Orders and the Modern Presidency: Legislating From the Oval Office. By Adam L. Warber. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 2006. 175p. $49.95.

These three books on the presidency appear at first glance to form an odd trio. Two (Adam Warber and Christopher Kelley) deal with the formal legitimacy of presidential action and claims of explicit authority. The third (David Michael Ryfe) is about the rhetoric of presidential communication. The research approaches differ as well: One is mostly quantitative (Warber), one uses a public law approach (Kelley), and one is from a different discipline altogether, communications (Ryfe). Taken together, though, the books offer a lesson in the importance of methodological pluralism and demonstrate a range of approaches. If there is one theme that ties them together, it is the recognition that presidents use the language of formal authority to justify their actions and mobilize public support.

Ivory Towers and Nationalist Minds: Universities, Leadership, and the Development of the American State. By Mark R. Nemec. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2006. 312p. $70.00 cloth, $24.95 paper.

The end of the Civil War ushered a new era in American state-building as the government sought to reshape the structure and identity of politics, group formation, and individual identity. During this period, nongovernmental agencies became central to disseminating and legitimating state authority. Although universities have been recognized as influential agencies, Mark R. Nemec argues that prior works overlooked the process by which they gained this influence. In Ivory Towers and Nationalist Minds, Nemec illuminates the rise of American universities as active partners and independent agents of state building from 1862 to 1920. Universities provided services to national development through promoting democratic ideals, industrial competitiveness, and intellectual vanguardism. Primarily through the “institutional entrepreneurship” of university presidents, American universities rapidly expanded their role and influence in society. Rather than the government, it was the university leaders who took the leading role to define what their universities would become.

Charitable Choice at Work: Evaluating Faith-Based Job Programs in the States. By Sheila Seuss Kennedy and Wolfgang Bielefeld. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2006. 248p. $44.95 cloth, $26.95 paper.

Faith, Hope, and Jobs: Welfare-to-Work in Los Angeles. By Stephen V. Monsma and J. Christopher Soper. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2006. 240p. $44.95 cloth, $26.95 paper.

In 1996, the Republican-controlled Congress passed the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act, a law designed to reform the prevailing welfare system. Although Section 104, known as the Charitable Choice Provision, allowed religious and faith-based organizations to compete for federal funding for social services, little was done to create the specific means by which this could be implemented. No surprise, then, that one of the first actions of the new President, George W. Bush, was to sign two Executive Orders in 2001 that established such a mechanism: the Faith-Based Initiative.

The Foreign Policy Disconnect: What Americans Want from Our Leaders but Don't Get. By Benjamin I. Page with Marshall M. Bouton. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006. 336p. $50.00 cloth, $20.00 paper.

In the November 2006 midterm elections, voters swept Republicans out of power in what was widely interpreted as a rebuke of the Bush administration's Iraq policies. In subsequent polls, nearly two-thirds of the public opposed President George W. Bush's postelection proposal for a “surge” in the U.S. troop presence in Iraq. Undeterred, the president declared on January 14, 2007, “I've made my decision and we're going forward,” and his press secretary, Tony Snow, said on January 9, “The president will not shape policy according to public opinion.” How can a U.S. president sustain a deeply unpopular foreign policy, seemingly uninfluenced by electoral setbacks or popular disapproval? Should the president be more responsive to public preferences? In an important and ambitious new book, Benjamin Page and Marshall Bouton bring to bear an impressive array of survey data in order to answer these and other questions central to the study of public opinion and U.S. foreign policy.

To the Flag: The Unlikely History of the Pledge of Allegiance. By Richard J. Ellis. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2005. 312p. $29.95 cloth, $15.95 paper.

This is an intelligent book about the strange story of American patriotism. Strange because America is much more of an “imagined community,” to use Benedict Anderson's evocative concept, than most Western European states. Also strange because, as Richard Ellis points out, it has been so contested over the years.

Democracy in Senegal: Tocquevillian Analytics in Africa. By Sheldon Gellar. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005. 256p. $79.95 cloth, $26.95 paper.

What can Alexis de Tocqueville's analysis of democracy in America and France contribute to our understanding of African democratic transitions? For Sheldon Gellar, the answer is “much.” In this book, Gellar uses Tocqueville's methods of inquiry to analyze Senegal's democratic experience. To do this, he emphasizes the historic, cultural, institutional, and environmental factors that have shaped Senegal's political path from the precolonial period to the present. He concludes that Senegal's foundations for democracy have gradually been strengthened and that the “prospects for democracy there look reasonably good” (p. 172).

The Racial Logic of Politics: Asian Americans and Party Competition. By Thomas P. Kim. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. 2007. 208p. $69.50 cloth, $22.95 paper.

This is a welcome effort to extend the study of race to American political institutions. A major contribution is the exploration of the way that Asian American political prospects vary across institutions. Thomas Kim argues that the party system serves Asian Americans poorly but that their prospects are better in Congress. Given the systemic barriers in party politics, Asian Americans would be better served by building their own political base and agenda, but that goal is undermined by the misguided efforts of Asian American political elites, he believes.

Disability Rights and the American Social Safety Net. By Jennifer L. Erkulwater. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2006. 272p. $42.50.

Political scientists who study the American welfare state tend to focus on a small number of social programs. Social Security and “welfare” (now called Temporary Assistance for Needy Families) are probably the best known. Typically, the goal is to show how much one or two factors—for example, public opinion, institutional design, policy elites, race, gender—influence these programs. This book is different. It focuses on two programs for the disabled, Disability Insurance (DI) and Supplemental Security Income (SSI), which are studied less often. And it tries to account for a wide range of influences on their development. The book is a genuine addition to our understanding of U.S. social policy and a fine example of how to create a rich explanation of policy change.

Afro-Caribbean Immigrants and the Politics of Incorporation: Ethnicity, Exception, or Exit. By Reuel R. Rogers. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006. 318p. $70.00 cloth, $24.99 paper.

How is the process of political incorporation of immigrants and minorities in the United States changing amid the arrival in recent decades of unprecedented numbers of nonwhite new immigrants from Asia, Latin America, and the Caribbean? In this probing case study of Afro-Caribbean immigrants in New York City, Reuel R. Rogers draws on extensive field interviews with elites and immigrants, study of census data and voting statistics, and analysis of historical episodes, and he argues that contemporary immigrant political incorporation resembles neither a pluralist model based on earlier European-origin ethnic experience nor a minority model based on earlier African American migrant experience. Rather, race continues to shape the process as Afro-Caribbean newcomers confront issues of discrimination and exclusion in America. Because Afro-Caribbeans are rooted in a cognitive frame shaped by their status as immigrants and by their ethnic ties and home country attachments, they navigate politics differently from African Americans.

Transformation and Trouble: Crime, Justice, and Participation in Democratic South Africa. By Diana Gordon. Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 2006. 400p. $78.00 cloth, $28.95 paper.

When the African National Congress (ANC) took power in South Africa after the first open elections in 1994, the goals of its leaders were ambitious: In addition to securing liberal rights and institutions, the party sought to address the socioeconomic needs of an impoverished population and deepen mass participation in the public sphere. In its own words, it pursued transformation: not just the transition to democracy, but the deepening and enriching of democracy that comes with true consolidation. Diana Gordon's magisterial book tracks the country's progress in one aspect of transformation: the reform of the criminal justice system. As Gordon suggests, the criminal justice system was an obvious institution to tackle: The police and courts had been the frontline enforcers of apartheid's laws. Furthermore, geared around defending the racial hierarchy instead of crime control, the existing system struggled mightily to deal with epic levels of violent crime besieging the new democracy. Only through the complete reform of these institutions could the country achieve democratic consolidation and secure the peace. In assessing South Africa's successes and failures in pursuing justice-system reform, the author makes important contributions to various literatures, including the study of criminal justice, deliberative democracy, democratization, and South African politics.

Business and Environmental Policy: Corporate Interests in the American Political System. Edited by Michael E. Kraft and Sheldon Kamieniecki. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2007. 372p. $62.00 cloth, $25.00 paper.

Perhaps nowhere has more rhetorical heat been generated amid less empirical light than on debates over the influence of business on public policy. Moreover, researchers tackling this important question systematically reach dissimilar conclusions. No one doubts that business influences public policy. At issue is the extent of its influence relative to other actors. In the tradition of Charles Lindblom's classic Politics and Markets (1977), some recent scholarship has found that business holds a privileged position in policy debates because of its unparalleled resources and centrality to the nation's economic prosperity (e.g., see Kay Schlozman and John Tierney, Organized Interests and American Democracy, 1986; David Vogel, Kindred Strangers, 1996; Richard Lehne, Government and Business, 2001). Others tread more in the tradition of Raymond Bauer, Lewis Dexter, and Ithiel de Sola Pool's 1963 classic, American Business and Public Policy, finding that business is constrained and increasingly on the defensive amid an explosion of politically and media-savvy interest groups (e.g., see Mark Smith, American Business and Political Power, 2002; Jeffrey Berry, Interest Group Liberalism, 1999; Frank Baumgartner and Beth Leach, Basic Interests, 1998).

The Race to 270: The Electoral College and the Campaign Strategies of 2000 and 2004. By Daron R. Shaw. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006. 216p. $50.00 cloth, $20.00 paper.

Part political memoir, part political science, this is a valuable book on presidential elections that should be read by consultants and academics alike. Drawing on his experience as a Bush strategist and a political science professor at the University of Texas, Daron Shaw argues that these two audiences could learn a great deal about what interests them by paying more careful attention to each other. This theme is woven throughout Shaw's consideration of Electoral College strategies, execution of those strategies, and their effect on American electorates. Though he has clear political predilections that may make Democratic readers occasionally bristle, his rigorous examination of the best data on presidential campaigns available to date keeps him squarely in the realm of political science. The end result is a book that provides irreplaceable insight on how campaigns might better function, on the subjects that political scientists could do a better job of exploring, and on the potential future of elections research.

Activism Inc.: How the Outsourcing of Grassroots Campaigns Is Strangling Progressive Politics in America. By Dana R. Fisher. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2006. 168p. $24.95 cloth.

The Art of Protest: Culture and Activism from the Civil Rights Movement to the Streets of Seattle. By T. V. Reed. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2005. 362p. $74.95 cloth, $24.95 paper.

These two new books bring welcome perspectives to the study of social movements in America. Reed considers the art of collective action: in terms of both the creative repertoire of activists responding to evolving social and political contexts and the cultural arts that are invoked by and associated with social movements. Fisher's book, meanwhile, sheds light on a second dimension of collective action: the nationwide grassroots canvassing organizations that collect donations and [ostensibly] inform concerned citizens about progressive issues. At first glance, the two books seem to be speaking to aspects of mobilization that are worlds apart. However, their differences help to bring a fuller understanding of the operational field in which social movements are sustained or wither.

Unexpected Power: Conflict and Change among Transnational Activists. By Shareen Hertel. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2006. 159p. $45.00 cloth, $17.95 paper.

Shareen Hertel's book focuses on the evolution of human rights norms and strategic choices within transnational campaigns. She wants to explain “why and how actors on the receiving end of campaigns put forward alternative understandings of human rights norms” (p. 3). Building on Margaret Keck and Kathryn Sikkink's groundbreaking modeling of the “boomerang effect” of transnational campaigns (see Activists Beyond Borders: Transnational Advocacy Networks in International Politics, 1998), Hertel identifies two new patterns of campaign emergence, which she calls the “outside-in” pattern and the “dual-target” pattern. Outside-in patterns are at work when campaigns are framed outside of the targeted area, generally in the global North, and then introduced to change conditions in targeted countries. Dual-target patterns, by contrast, evolve around collaborations and shared interests of outside and inside actors to change human rights conditions in both the sender and receiver countries (p. 25). Both of these patterns, argues the author, reflect more accurately than previous formulations the contentious frame negotiations that go on in such campaigns.