In 1964, Brazil embarked on one of Latin America's longest experiments in modern military authoritarianism. Ollie Johnson's Brazilian Party Politics seeks to understand one of the important antecedents to the coup by looking at the political party system during the 1945–64 period. While the book does not succeed in demonstrating a strong causal connection between party politics and the coup, it does provide a very interesting new perspective on party politics and realignment, looking beyond the more immediate electoral indicators of the Brazilian party system.

This comprehensive volume analyzing Western European government coalitions from 1945 until 1999 is an impressive and meticulously researched work. Using a uniform, cross-national collection of data the authors examine both the governing institutions and the patterns of conflict resolution in the 13 Western European democracies that have experienced coalition government during the post-World War two years.

When we talk about the gender gap, students in my Women and Politics course are always surprised to learn that men used to be more likely than women to support the Democratic Party and that Republicans were the original supporters of the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA). Many people forget, or are not familiar with, the significant party transformations on these issues over the last 50 years. Christina Wolbrecht's new book provides important insights into this transformation and is a valuable contribution. The study of political parties has not, to date, accounted for this phenomenon, and gender studies too often ignore the crucial role of political parties in our system.

As its title indicates, this book explores the links between institutions and innovation—specifically, between electoral systems and parties' capacity to innovate. The latter, in turn, is considered a crucial determinant of democratic performance because it shapes parties' capacity in times of economic crisis to offer policy prescriptions sufficiently attractive to limit voter defection to nondemocratic alternatives.

In February of 1995, following the disastrous December 1994 devaluation of the Mexican peso, which sent incomes down temporarily by as much as 60% and threw more than a million laborers out of work, the nonagenarian labor leader Fidel Velasquez issued a curious statement. He declared that each Mexican worker (earning on average at that time about six dollars a day) should pledge one day's pay toward Mexico's external debt to show solidarity with Mexico's 24 ailing billionaires, some of whom were now merely several-hundred-millionaires. In a country where jokes are often the most telling form of popular political commentary, nobody knew whether to laugh or cry at doddering Velasquez's exhortation. After all, his long record as an advocate of painful wage caps and government downsizing suggested that he actually might be serious.

It is a pleasure to review this well-written book, which should be of enormous interest to every serious student of judicial politics and the presidency. Based upon a thorough mining of the presidential papers of seven presidents and numerous interviews with key participants in the selection process, along with other primary and secondary sources, Yalof gives us a presidency-by-presidency take on the recruitment of Supreme Court nominees.

One of the most vexing questions posed over time by political scientists is: Why do democratic polities develop in some countries, but not in others? In his seminal work Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy (1986), still read today by most students of comparative politics, Barrington Moore strove to answer that question by examining the historical process in which commercial agriculture emerged in Britain, France, Germany, Russia, and China. In his book, Fernando López-Alves takes the framework that Moore provided and applies it to three countries in Latin America whose trajectories in the nineteenth century led to different polities and experiences with democracy—Argentina, Colombia, and Uruguay (he also makes brief reference to Paraguay and Venezuela as so-called control cases). While conceding the need for “further testing” (p. 220), he arrives at conclusions that differ significantly from Moore's, even though he does not attempt to dismiss that earlier work.

This is an ambitious and innovative study of the processes of democratization evident in Greece after 1974. It has two major distinctions. Firstly, it is based on an extensive range of personal interviews with some of the protagonists involved, as well as on archival searches. Secondly, the empirical analysis is placed within relevant theoretical frames, and these are used to draw out relevant comparisons with other European states. The book serves, therefore, as both a general introduction to the turbulent history of the period and a useful source for comparative analysis of democratization processes. The book is highly accessible and readable. With these qualities, it is likely to become the definitive account of the transition to democracy in Greece. Many scholars and students will benefit from it.

Compared to neighboring Latvia and Estonia, there has been little attention paid to nationality issues in Lithuania, a country with fewer ethnic minorities (making up approximately 20% of the population) and a more inclusive citizenship policy than her Baltic neighbors. Also, Lithuania's main problems have concerned relations with its Polish minority, whereas Latvia and Estonia have large numbers of “Russian speakers.” This means that Russia has been less critical and has not sought to draw international attention to minority issues in Lithuania. As a result, the international community has praised Lithuania's laws for meeting international standards and has given a “pass” to Lithuania when it comes to the treatment of its ethnic minorities. Vesna Popovski seeks to challenge this positive assessment and is motivated by a concern for the actual implementation of laws, as opposed to the mere letter of the law, and seeks to discover the perceptions that minorities have toward their state and its policies.

Over the past decade, while the United States effectively decided that liberalism could not accommodate quotas or affirmative action plans designed to alleviate gender and racial inequality, Europe decided that liberalism could accommodate a form of positive discrimination. As the U.S. Supreme Court systematically rolled back affirmative action plans and the state of California led the initiative to curtail government and educational affirmative action, countries like France, Germany, and Norway were implementing a variety of parity policies at both the constitutional and political levels. The parity movement that gained strength in Europe in the 1990s called for equal representation of both men and women in elected assemblies. Methods for achieving parity ranged from reserving parliamentary seats for female legislators by means of constitutional change to legal gender quotas in party lists and party rules. The editors of this volume point out that the Europeans have implemented these electoral reforms with “little public outcry” and “no manifestations of mass protests.”

John McGarry and a distinguished group of comparativists have produced a volume important not only for scholars interested in the study of Northern Ireland but also for those concerned with ethnic conflict and nationalism generally. Although its success is certainly not assured, the Good Friday Agreement of 1998, a consociational (power-sharing) settlement of the Northern Ireland conflict with international confederal dimensions, has sparked much interest by scholars and practitioners concerned with other ethnonational conflicts. The agreement was achieved with considerable pressure and support from international actors. The international community has played an increasingly important part in the resolution, management, and containment of ethnonational conflict, and the success or failure of the Good Friday Agreement may hold important lessons for international efforts elsewhere. From both a theoretical and practical perspective, this is a fine edited volume with internal coherence and useful contributions.

Of all the “traumatic transitions” in the postcommunist world, the Russian one ranks as one of the most tortuous and painful. Why is this? Does the problem lie in the institutional structure created in the early postcommunist years, or do the roots lie deeper, in Russia's innate authoritarianism and cult of strong leadership? Employing the concept of political culture, this is the question that Alexander seeks to answer. He approaches the idea in an unusual way, however, by focusing rather more broadly on the concept of “culture” and its potential for change rather than any narrowly defined notion of “political” culture. He insists that a nation's political culture cannot be reduced to one or two simple and measurable parameters but is a complex web of malleable relations and contradictions; and he seeks to understand them by using what he insists are nonstandard approaches.

In Rational Choice and British Politics, Iain McLean applies William Riker's concept of “heresthetics” to British political history. In contrast to rhetoric (the art of persuasion), heresthetics is “the art and science of political manipulation” (p. 10). Rather than trying to convince others of one's position, heresthetics is about transforming the question and altering political dimensions so as to change the rational calculus of key actors and manufacture a supportive coalition. McLean employs the device of “analytical narratives” (historical analysis informed by rational choice methodology) to explore critical junctures in British political development, including the repeal of the Corn Laws, the Second Reform Act, the signing of the Anglo-Irish Treaty in 1922, and the political and economic revolution of Margaret Thatcher. He also explores broader political movements, including the realignment of Victorian political parties and the attempts by Joseph Chamberlain and Enoch Powell to connect race and empire into winning coalitions.

Each of these books is, in its own way, a tour de force; each provides the best book-length account and analysis available to date on its subject. Michael McFaul's book offers a major contribution to thinking on regime change in general, as well as a fine account and analysis of Russia's transition from Sovietism. Thomas Remington's book, which investigates the nascence and internal operation of the Russian legislature, powerfully advances our understanding of the Russian parliament and the formation of political institutions more generally. Both books are scholarly and sophisticated, but each is also elegantly written, well organized, and accessible to the nonspecialist. Both authors were present at the creation of the new Russian political order, and each book is deeply informed by extensive interviews and first-hand observation.

International meetings about health-care issues—conferences, symposia, cyber-gatherings—have become something of an epidemic in the past decade. There is a brisk trade in the latest panaceas offered for the various real and imagined ills of modern medical care systems. When policy fixes fail in their country of origin, they are regularly offered to unsuspecting audiences elsewhere. Moreover, what travels as comparative analysis is often simply a collection of parallel descriptions of national health arrangements. So when there is a flurry of systematic comparative studies of health care by political scientists, a development illustrated by the four books under review, one ought to pay attention.

The department where I did my graduate training in the early 1970s was bitterly split between advocates of case-study and statistical approaches. At the time, both sides thought the other would fade away—statistical analysis was a fad; case studies, a relic from a prescientific past. But 30 years later, both methods persist, and the debate has recently intensified in response to King, Keohane, and Verba's (1994) assertion in Designing Social Inquiry that the methodology of case studies could be subsumed under that used in statistical research. The polite names for the two positions have changed—“case study” versus “large N” is more common now than the “traditional” versus “scientific” monikers of the 1960s and 1970s; the epithets—“slow journalism” versus “mindless number crunching”—remain much the same.

Max Azicri writes with acumen on the Cuban revolution in the very different decades of the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s, and he offers an insightful assessment of the changes and challenges of the 1990s. His objective is to answer the puzzle of what he calls the “Cuban miracle”: the island's surprising survival in the face of the deep economic crisis associated with the collapse of the socialist bloc and the ongoing “punitive” policies of the United States. Azicri is not the only scholar to attempt an interpretation of Cuba in the 1990s. Susan Eckstein (Back from the Future: Cuba Under Castro, 1994), Ken Cole (Cuba: From Revoution to Development, 1998), Julia Jatar-Hausman (The Cuban Way: Capitalism, Communism, and Confrontation, 1999), and Robin Blackburn, (“Putting the Hammer Down on Cuba,” New Left Review, July-August 2000 (4): 5–36) are among those who have examined the nexus of Cuba's past and future in the post–Cold War context. An explosion of travel writing also demonstrates the intrigue of contemporary Cuba, as does the list of new detective thrillers—some of them bestsellers—with a Cuba setting. Azicri's book has a distinctive place in this literary landscape.

Nowadays, it is easy to forget just how pessimistic observers were in 1990 about the possibility of simultaneously introducing capitalism and competitive politics to the ex-socialist states of Eastern Europe. Often, debates seemed to hinge simply on which would subvert which, that is, whether the economic shocks of reform would destabilize democratic governments or whether populist appeals to the losers of economic adjustment would derail economic reform. That popularly elected government and systemic economic change could mutually reinforce each other seemed, at the time, to describe a fool's paradise. Yet now that the dust has begun to settle, this appears to have been exactly what happened.

Studies of local politics have often narrowly focused on elites, the role of competing interest groups, or the influence of the business community in making key decisions. Nelson's comparative study raises the level of discourse by drawing our attention to the often overlooked role of blacks in municipal politics. In comparing Boston and Liverpool the study expands our understanding of the similarities between racial politics in the United States and in Great Britain.

With his systematic study of the effects of timber windfall booms on the institutions of four Southeast Asian states, Michael Ross informs the often emotional debate about the relative costs and benefits of “openness” to international trade. Ross investigates the effects of such windfall booms in the Philippines, Indonesia, and the Malaysian states of Sabah and Sarawak on state institutions and finds that their openness to international trade has rendered these states institutionally vulnerable. In so doing, he makes an important extension to the contributions of Peter Gourevitch and Peter Katzenstein, who have focused on the effects that different state institutions have had on national responses to exogenous—usually unpleasant—shocks in European countries (e.g., see Peter A. Gourevitch, Politics in Hard Times, 1986, and Peter J. Katzenstein, Small States in World Markets, 1978). Contrary to expectations, Ross finds that positive shocks (revenue windfalls) have generally corrosive effects not only on the economy (the “Dutch disease” syndrome) but also—and this is the heart of Ross's contribution—on the very institutions of the state. How this institutional corrosion sets in, why it does so, and why the effects prove to be so debilitating are the principal foci of this book.