You, the People: American National Identity in Presidential Rhetoric. By Vanessa B. Beasley. College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2004. 256p. $39.95.

As leaders of a diverse democracy, how do U.S. presidents define American national identity in their rhetoric? Using an interpretive approach, Vanessa Beasley attempts to answer this question by examining inaugural and State of the Union addresses from 1885 to 2000. She concludes that presidents have adopted an ideational standard for American identity in their public discourse that is both inclusive and exclusive at the same time.

Public Reaction to Supreme Court Decisions.

The Financiers of Congressional Elections: Investors, Ideologues, and Intimates. By Peter L. Francia, John C. Green, Paul S. Herrnson, Lynda W. Powell, and Clyde Wilcox. New York: Columbia University Press, 2003. 205p. $59.50 cloth, $22.50 paper.

This book begins with a simple but important premise: “When political activists have distinctive views and special access to policymakers, representation and democracy may become distorted” (p. 18). Building on previous research showing that such representational “distortion” is particularly large in the case of campaign contributors, Peter Francia, John C. Green, Paul S. Herrnson, Lynda Powell, and Clyde Wilcox collect and analyze an ocean of new survey data on the characteristics, motives, participation, and activities of significant donors (those who contributed more than $200 to at least one congressional candidate in 1996). The authors reach the “troubling” conclusion that significant donors do, in fact, “have a greater voice both in elections and the policymaking process than do most other Americans…. The degree to which donors hold diverse views on policy and possess different motives for giving serves to mitigate but not eliminate this distortion” (p. 162).

Public Opinion and Democratic Accountability: How Citizens Learn about Politics.

A Voice for Nonprofits. By Jeffrey M. Berry with David F. Arons. Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press, 2003. 210p. $26.95.

The field of political science has long grappled with the standing of interest groups in the policymaking process. Debate persists about the leverage of lobbyists, public interest groups, political action committees, and other special interests, and whether such influence is effective or not, appropriate or not, representative or not. This literature largely ignores “mainstream” nonprofit organizations (those covered by section 501c3 of the federal tax code), however, though these organizations serve a substantial—and substantially disenfranchised—sector of society. With this book, Jeffrey Berry shines light on these organizations, illuminating their role not only as service providers but as advocates, and even activists. Berry's book is a welcome addition to a growing literature about nonprofit organizations that will be valuable to the managers working to run them and to academics interested in studying them.

Barbershops, Bibles, and BET: Everyday Talk and Black Political Thought. By Melissa Victoria Harris-Lacewell. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004. 336p. $35.00.

The central claims of this book are that the conversations ordinary black folk have with each other matter politically, and that there is a diverse range of ideological perspectives endorsed by African Americans. The author, Melissa Harris-Lacewell, supports these contentions by means of survey research, experimental studies, and ethnographic research. This comprehensive approach represents a significant accomplishment and, in combination with the theoretical contributions of the text, makes the book an invaluable addition to the African American politics canon.

Power Without Persuasion: The Politics of Direct Presidential Action.

Polling to Govern: Public Opinion and Presidential Leadership. By Diane J. Heith. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2003. 216p. $50.00 cloth, $19.95 paper.

Those who are troubled by the ubiquity of public opinion polls, particularly members of the press and public, often complain that polling has turned political leaders into followers, afraid to champion policies unless they are already broadly popular. Bill Clinton was often accused of conducting a poll-driven presidency, particularly after his party lost control of Congress. Similarly, George W. Bush's key political adviser, Karl Rove, is seen by many as the architect of a strategy in which nearly all of his boss's actions are taken with at least one eye on reelection.

Campaigning Online: The Internet in U.S. Elections. By Bruce Bimber and Richard Davis. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003. 240p. $49.95 cloth, $17.95 paper.

With the advent of graphic browsers for the World Wide Web, users have surged onto the Internet. Jupitermedia's network user address estimates show that the number of U.S. residents online jumped from fewer than 18 million in 1994 to more than 164 million in December 2000 (www.nua.com/surveys/how_many_online/n_america.html). Such rapid change makes the assessment of the Internet's impact on American elections a precarious undertaking.

Politics, Policy, and Organization: Frontiers in the Scientific Study of Bureaucracy. Edited by George A. Krause and Kenneth J. Meier. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2003. 352p. $65.

This text consists of papers originally presented at the Fifth Public Management Conference meeting at Texas A&M University in December, 1999. The editors in the introductory chapter aptly define the challenges facing contributors: “We know little about how bureaucratic (a) agencies make decisions … (b) structures affect responsiveness and performance … (c) agencies resolve goal conflict on a day-to-day basis, (d) external performance criteria affect bureaucracies and (e) organizations socialize their members” (p. 15).

Why Budgets Matter: Budget Policy and American Politics.

Television: The Limits of Deregulation. By Lori A. Brainard. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2003. 198p. $49.95.

In many respects, Lori Brainard's case study of the “incremental, incomplete, and highly ambiguous” deregulation of television from the midseventies through the midnineties suffers from false advertising. Rather than a mere case study in a field highly populated by such analyses, it is an ambitious attempt to critically assess competing midlevel theories of regulatory change and macrolevel determinants of policy change. As Alexander George has observed, case studies are extremely valuable, not because they test theories but because they clarify, offer critical insight into, and generate hypotheses for future research on those theories. Viewed from this perspective, Brainard's book provides a strong basis for deeper examinations of change in the regulatory and the broader policy process.

Patriots, Settlers, and the Origins of American Social Policy.

The Front-Loading Problem in Presidential Nominations. By William G. Mayer and Andrew E. Busch. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 2004. 226p. $49.95 cloth, $22.95 paper.

The authors are right, but … Front-loading has skewed the nomination process. It has given states holding early caucuses and primaries an advantage. They have more influence on the final outcome, more attention from the candidates and the news media, more economic benefit from the spending of the campaigns and the organizations that cover them, and more citizen involvement and higher voting turnout.

Amici Curiae and Strategic Behavior in State Supreme Courts. By Scott A. Comparato. Westport, CT: Praeger, 2003. 192p. $64.95.

There is a plethora of studies examining whether or not judges engage in strategic behavior, yet many important questions remain about the motivations that encourage judges to behave strategically and how institutional rules shape these motivations. In his book, Scott A. Comparato asks whether institutional rules encourage strategic behavior by state supreme courts, litigants, and amici participants. His work is motivated by the idea that information provided by interest groups in amicus briefs is an important reference point for state supreme court justices.