Can presidency research do more than probe idiosyncratic cases? Our knowledge of the American presidency and the status of presidency studies in political science both hang on the answer to that question. Indeed, the current research agenda in this field exhibits a confidence that its findings are amenable to generalization and deserve the discipline's ap- probation.

In an age when commercials bombard us with plain folk (from central casting) ruminating about the latest proposal in Congress and when "astroturf" more often refers to syn- thetically manufactured grassroots activity than to stadium playing fields, evidence that groups frequently "go public" is easy to come by. Nevertheless, these efforts to reach and use the public have received little systematic attention from political scientists. Ken Kollman aims to fill this substantial gap in interest group scholarship. Outside Lobbying is an impressive effort, one that should invigorate further inquiry into this important aspect of interest group advocacy.

This work is touted as the only book-length examination of the sociological model of vote choice in American politics since David Knoke's The Social Bases of Political Parties (1976), and it is, indeed, a well-researched examination of the role that race, class, religion, and gender play in our under- standing of voter alignments in the United States. At the same time, I have concerns about some of the methodological decisions made by the authors and the effect of these choices on their conclusions.

In 1988 the American Civil Liberties Union filed a class action lawsuit against the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services (DCFS), on behalf of B. H., a 17-year- old youth in foster care, and nearly 20,000 other children forced to live outside their home because of abuse and neglect. Attorneys accused the DCFS, responsible for pro- tecting and placing such children, with violations of Illinois statutes and the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. B. H., for example, had been placed in ten different settings despite clear evidence that children require continuity of care for their emotional growth.

America's Congress is a deceptively simple work. At its most basic, it is an exploration of the public moves of members of Congress over the course of American history. With a newly built database of 2,304 observations of members' publicly noted moves stretching back to 1789, Mayhew offers an innovative portrait of how and when American legislators have made their mark on the public record, as recorded by eminent historians of the middle to late twentieth century. What makes this a deceptively simple work? Mayhew's aim and effect in writing America's Congress go far beyond his perceptive reading of the fascinating patterns uncovered. Instead, the book is really a call for a new way of studying Congress and legislative politics more generally. It is a commentary, Mayhew says, on political scientists' treatment of Congress, and it is an appeal to legislative scholars to rethink the dominant modes and methods by which they typically approach the task of explaining legislative behavior and outcomes. To understand how America's Congress makes this contribution, a more detailed exploration of Mayhew's mode and methods of inquiry is in order.

Max Neiman provides a concise, well-written, and compre- hensive critical analysis of "the conservative attack on the public sector, especially its explanation for and evaluation of the size and growth of the public sector in the United States" (p. viii). In doing so, however, he only partially fulfills what is promised in the subtitle, namely, explaining why big govern- ment works. Rather than explicitly assess the reasons for goal achievement in a variety of policy areas, as the title implied to me, Neiman focuses on why we have big government and on the various critiques of that size. To be sure, the book is appropriate for upper division and graduate courses in political science, public policy, or public administration.

That the amount and nature of the information reaching the president matters for the choices he makes is hardly disputed, but translating this insight into analysis has been slow work. This is true especially in comparison to other subfields (e.g., legislative studies), which in making use of the new institu- tionalism have stressed information by highlighting the roles institutions play in ameliorating the uncertainty rampant in political decision making. Daniel Ponder's new book, then, is particularly welcome. Good Advice asks some critical ques- tions: What did the president know, and how did he come to know it? Equally important, how did that matter?

Dividing Citizens is an important contribution both to the burgeoning literature on the historical development of the American state and citizenship and to the lively field of work on gender within that corpus. Like the best studies of this sort, Mettler's book ably demonstrates not only how the transforming institutions and practices affected women but also how gender norms and practices were built into the new structures, making gender a basic element of their architec- ture.

Recent calls for public sector reform advocate reinvention, deregulation, reengineering, outsourcing, and privatization to address deficiencies in the classic bureaucratic model and to improve government performance. Reform efforts that seek to capitalize on the advantages offered by the three sectors-public, private, and voluntary-include experiments in public-private policy partnerships. Experience with coop- erative undertakings between the state and for-profit or third-sector service providers spans the last three decades. This book examines the pros and cons of these public-private policy partnerships, isolates the determinants of success or failure across policy spheres, and identifies the circumstances under which cross-sector partnering should be promoted or avoided.

Policy entrepreneurs or issue advocates figure prominently in major theories of the policy process (e.g., Frank R. Baum- gartner and Bryan D. Jones, Agendas and Instability in American Politics, 1993; John W. Kingdon, Agendas, Alterna- tives, and Public Policies, 1995; Paul A. Sabatier and Hank Jenkins-Smith, Policy Change and Learning: An Advocacy Coalition Approach, 1993). This book explores in depth the phenomenon of policy entrepreneurs, the individuals who invest their time and resources in trying to bring an idea to fruition. The controversial issue of school choice is a partic- ularly apt example of a policy that has spread through the efforts of entrepreneurs laboring in a number of states. A good overview sets the scene in the first chapter and describes such variants as public school choice (within and across districts), charter schools, private voucher plans, and publicly funded vouchers. But the book emphasizes building and testing a theory of policy entrepreneurship. This carefully crafted study presents a number of significant arguments and findings that will be of interest for scholars (or graduate students) concerned with policy diffusion, policy change, and agenda setting as well as education policy.