Notermans has written a bold and ambitious book in which he purports to explain the conditions under which social democratic policies, and therefore the social democratic project, have been successful in modern democracies. The book, which relies heavily but not exclusively on historical data, examines the ebb and flow of social democratic domi- nance in five countries-Germany, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, and Britain-since roughly the introduction of (male) universal suffrage after World War I.