In the introduction, Valerie Sperling notes that "Russia's transition from communism toward capitalism and a more democratic political arrangement has been both good and bad for women, presenting both obstacles and opportunities for organizing" (p. 7). She goes on to produce an engaging and thought-provoking analysis aimed at broadening the scope and explanatory power of social movement theory, which, she argues, has been developed by scholars who focus primarily on social movements in the "contemporary core democracies" (pp. 52-3). In contrast Sperling develops "a cross-cultural model of social movement organizing and development that explores five interrelated opportunity structures: socio-cultural or attitudinal, political, economic, political-historical, and international" (p. 53). In each subse- quent chapter she tackles one of these opportunity structures and offers a number of fascinating insights into the world of post-Soviet social movements, based on the experience of her sample of women's organizations.

With women holding 18% of the seats in parliament and a woman serving as a vice-president, the status of women at the apex of Uganda's political system is impressive compared to most other countries, including the United States. In noting this surprising fact and in chronicling how it came about, Aili Mari Tripp has written a thought-provoking book that raises serious questions about what it means. She draws on empir- ical research in the realms of both "high" politics (i.e., the halls of parliament) and "deep" politics (urban working-class neighborhoods and rural villages) and provides a rich account of Ugandan women's associational life and political mobili- zation.

This ambitious new book is a valuable contribution to a growing literature that assumes political democracy cannot be fully achieved in Latin America without recognizing and acting on the region's ethnic and cultural diversity. Van Cott explores the link between ethnic politics, particularly the demands of indigenous peoples, and the constitutional re- forms that have occurred in various countries in Latin America over the past decade. Relying primarily on compre- hensive analyses of constitutional reforms in Colombia (1991) and Bolivia (1994), she develops the case for what she terms a new "multicultural" model for the region.

When the Soviet Union disappeared, so did much of aca- demic political science's interest in nuclear arms control. This is unfortunate. First, the risk of nuclear war has not gone away and may be increasing because of nuclear proliferation. Second, U.S.-Soviet cooperation on arms control was in many ways unexpected, and it remains a useful laboratory for testing international relations theory.

This book seeks to explain why participation rates in elections to the European Parliament (EP) are low and declining. Turnout has fallen from 66% in 1979 to 59% in 1994-20- 40% below levels in national elections. This is a critical issue, the authors insist, because low turnout confirms pervasive doubts that the European Union (EU) is "democratically legitimate." Behind this lies the central question of this era in modern European history, namely, whether a transnational policy with a common discourse and shared institutions can form.

This new book by one of the most distinguished senior contributors to scholarship on the international political economy (IPE) of money is a fascinating and ambitious effort to remap our understandings of the geography of money. Cohen argues convincingly that the prevailing mental map based on one nation/one money is outmoded. Monies are primarily differentiated today not by territory but by their function in a hierarchical pyramid-like arrangement; the few currencies at the top are used widely internationally, whereas those at the bottom have been displaced even within their home borders and may now serve only trivial administrative functions. The great number of theoretical and empirical insights into an important process of global restructuring, and the engaging and straightforward style, should make this book of interest well beyond those who specialize in the sometimes dauntingly technical literature on global money and finance.

Studies of the relationship between the distribution of power and prospects for conflict or cooperation have a distinguished history in the field of international politics. Several competing theories have been offered to explain variation in foreign policy behavior as a function of power distributions. Moreover, a wealth of empirical evidence suggests the crucial role that power plays in international bargaining. The Origins of Major War is a deeply penetrat- ing, extraordinarily wide-ranging, and judicious treatment of the onset of major conflict, and it offers an explanation and some evidence for the relationship between power differentials and major power conflict. Copeland provides a dynamic theory of major power war, building upon classic realism. In my view, his diagnosis and combination of prescription are substantially correct.

In two provocative new books, Elizabeth DeSombre and Matthew Paterson attack two issues that call into question common assumptions about international environmental pol- itics (IEP). Paterson asks: Does our global environmental predicament reflect unfortunate, but essentially unrelated, secular trends or the influence of deeper, structural forces? DeSombre asks: Does resolution of environmental problems, whatever their sources, require broad support among many countries, or can solutions arise from unilateral action by a single powerful state? Paterson's answer involves a refreshing critique of the IEP literature that shows how traditional realist and liberal approaches systematically ignore the un- derlying causes of global environmental change. DeSombre provides a trenchant analysis of when, how, and why a country will attempt, and succeed at, internalization of its own domestic environmental regulations. Both books make significant contributions to the growing IEP literature, ex- tending it to important new areas of research.

When the intellectual history of international relations in- quiry is written for our time, War and Peace in International Rivalry may very well be seen as a seminal book. Along with Frank Wayman, Diehl and Goertz have been at the forefront of a major conceptual breakthrough in the way peace and war are studied. This book is their major statement of the subject and presents their most important findings.

As toxic pollutants and hazardous production emerged across the twentieth century, first-world states came to play a guardian role, imposing constraints on capital to safeguard their workers, communities, and environments. As we enter the new century, vigorous protest and debate over the character and conditions of neoliberal globalization center on whether or how to reaffirm or extend such protections in an era of free trade, capital mobility, privatization, and deregu- lation. From Rio to Seattle, Kyoto to Prague, controversy arises over where the locus of authority for codes of corpo- rate conduct might rest. Can states be redeemed as guardians and still avert a destructive "race to the bottom"? Can existing supranational bodies or regimes be charged with design and enforcement of global standards, or are new international institutions imperative? Dare we trust multina- tional corporations (MNCs) to police themselves? What is the proper role of advocacy networks and civic organiza- tions?

Hein Goemans develops and tests a rationalist model of war termination that incorporates domestic politics, focusing on leader tenure and survival in expected postwar political environments. The book is one of a growing number of works that look beyond the initiation of conflict to its conclusion, examine the dynamics of conflict over time, and incorporate domestic political factors through a multimethod analysis.

The salience of supranational structures of governance in- creased dramatically during the last decade. The World Trade Organization (WTO) and North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), for example, not only establish de- tailed norms, rules, and decision-making procedures but also endow supranational governing boards with sweeping powers of enforcement. The European Monetary Union (EMU) greatly constrains national sovereignty by eliminating na- tional currencies and allowing the European Central Bank to play a key role in national economic policymaking. In his study of NAFTA and the European Monetary System (EMS), Lloyd Gruber contends that international relations scholars have had difficulty coming to grips with the trend toward global governance because the dominant theoretical approaches-neoliberalism and neorealism-tend to assume incorrectly that international cooperation produces mutual benefits for all contracting parties.

The 1990s were characterized by a substantial increase in the number of ethnic conflicts within states. The international community, especially the United Nations, responded by intervening to prevent or resolve violence but frequently failed to do so. Mary Kaldor attempts to explain why identity-based violence has increased and why the interna- tional community's actions have so often failed.

In the past ten years there has been a burst of theoretical and empirical research on the topic of learning in international relations. Russell J. Leng's new book is the latest addition to this body of scholarship, and it builds on his past research on learning and crisis bargaining. Leng examines the role of learning in crisis bargaining strategies within ongoing, inter- national rivalries. He asks a series of questions, including: Do patterns of crisis behavior repeat from one crisis to the next?

This book has an admirable goal: to present policy-relevant results of past academic research to "a wide audience of students, practitioners, policy makers and researchers who want a modern treatment of NATO" (p. xii). To direct fruitfully the results of scholarly work to less academic audiences is a difficult task, because many theoretical as- sumptions and methodological issues must be skimmed over and criticisms of the work summarized or ignored. Nonethe- less, the goal is a good one, and the authors are well positioned to accomplish their purpose, which they do to a large extent. For more than two decades Todd Sandler has been the primary proponent of the "joint product" model of alliances. This model is possibly the most prominent chal- lenge to (or modification of) the public-goods approach to the study of alliances that was pioneered by Mancur Olson and Richard Zeckhauser. Keith Hartley, director of the Centre for Defence Economics at the University of York, has written extensively on defense procurement, disarmament, and conversion.

This thoughtful book builds on Schmitter's earlier work on European integration and, more recently, his interest in democratization in Latin America and southern Europe. Schmitter joins the ever expanding ranks of scholars and practitioners from a variety of backgrounds who have tackled the devilish issue of European Union (EU) democracy and legitimacy. This attempt is more hands-on than others. As the title suggests, Schmitter offers a do-it-yourself checklist of reforms to improve the EU's democratic credentials. His larger self-assigned task is to "provoke as wide-ranging a debate as possible on an issue that has just begun to receive the attention it deserves" (p. viii).

Now that more than a decade and two American presidencies have come and gone since the end of the Cold War, the United States has articulated no new grand strategy to address the novel security demands of the new age. There is nothing remotely comparable to the Truman Doctrine and the Marshall Plan that so radically reoriented U.S. strategic policy at the start of the era now ended. No doubt, the reasons for that absence have something to do with the "if-it-ain't-broke" dictum. Confrontation and deterrence ev- idently worked to win the Cold War and, by this logic, should continue to serve the nation's security into the murky future.

It is evident to any serious observer that the practice of governance in Western democracies is increasingly divergent from traditional theoretical and conceptual models. In West- ern Europe, traditional models of parliamentary democracy no longer accurately describe reality. The neocorporatist literature of the 1970s and 1980s pointed out the key role of organized interests and their (often formally recognized) privileged relationship with the state, creating arrangements that bypassed or subverted usual parliamentary processes.

In the Stephen Skowronek tradition of leadership studies (The Politics Presidents Make, 1993), Patricia Lee Sykes makes an important substantive and methodological contri- bution with her cross-national comparison of conviction politicians in the United States and the United Kingdom. She begins with a topology that dichotomizes two basic leadership styles: conviction and consensus. She carefully defines these on the basis of their goals and strategies and the external conditions that facilitate them.

After a highly successful series of revisions of his original Gorbachev in Power (1990), which ultimately became After Gorbachev (1993 and 1994), Stephen White has written an entirely new book that takes stock of contemporary Russian politics after nearly a decade of postcommunist experience. He draws upon a mass of new and newly available data, including archival materials, survey data, memoirs and peri- odical literature, interviews with political principals, and a series of Russian elections at the national, regional, and local level. White has written a very solid companion to any course on the structure, dynamics, and economic and social conse- quences of Russian and, to a certain extent, postcommunist politics.