Negotiating Claims: The Emergence of Indigenous Land Claim Negotiation Policies in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the United States, Christa Scholtz, New York and London: Routledge, 2006, pp. viii, 259.

In this well-crafted study, Christa Scholtz sets herself a simple but important question: “Why do [settler-society] governments choose to negotiate [Aborignal] land claims rather than resolve claims through some other means?” (2). Through close analysis of the context and internal dynamics of executive decision making in Canada, New Zealand, Australia and the United States, she provides a convincing answer. And it is a good deal more than simply that landmark high court decisions—the 1973 Calder case in Canada being the archetypical example—forced governments' hands, though she demonstrates that such judicial decisions are crucial catalysts in the decision-making process.

Le fédéralisme canadien contemporain. Fondements, traditions, institutions., Alain-G. Gagnon (dir.), 2006, Montréal : Les Presses de l'Université de Montréal, 559 pages.

Dans Le fédéralisme canadien contemporain. Fondements, traditions, institutions, Alain-G. Gagnon, directeur de l'ouvrage, avait deux défis à relever : offrir d'abord un regard nouveau sur le fédéralisme canadien, car tant de choses ont été écrites sur le sujet au cours des trente dernières années; proposer ensuite un collectif qui représente davantage qu'une collection de textes portant sur un thème commun. Ces deux défis, Alain-G. Gagnon les a magnifiquement relevés.

The Peace of Illusions: American Grand Strategy from 1940 to the Present, Christopher Layne, Cornell Studies in Security Affairs; Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 2006, pp. 304, xi.

In The Peace of Illusions, Christopher Layne explores the issue of American grand strategy, past, present and future. Adopting a classical realist approach, which incorporates both domestic politics and external security concerns, Layne offers provocative conclusions about the nature of American foreign policy and the challenges facing the country in the years to come. This book contributes to a debate that began with the end of the Cold War. It was eclipsed by September 11, but has re-emerged as scholars have begun to contemplate the limits of US hegemony and the need for coherent strategy.

The Constitution of Law: Legality in a Time of Emergency, David Dyzenhaus, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006, pp. xv, 250.

This book, which began life as the 2004 J.C. Smuts lectures at the University of Cambridge, is contribution to the burgeoning debate about emergency powers in post-9/11 liberal democracies. States that pride themselves on their commitment to constitutionalism and the rule of law find themselves engaged in the difficult task of suspending or restricting the operation of civil liberties while simultaneously trumpeting their own commitment to the liberal values that they purport to be defending against threat. As Dyzenhaus usefully reminds us, the predicament is not a new one. Smuts himself not only survived being on the wrong side of a colonial insurrection but, before becoming prime-minister of South Africa and a leading architect of apartheid (a paradigm example of injustice carried on under colour of legality), played a walk-on role in legal opposition to the notorious DORA, the Defence of the Realm (Consolidation) Act that allowed detention without trial in the United Kingdom during the First World War. These are murky waters, indeed.

Coloniser, exterminer : sur la guerre et l'état colonial, Olivier Le Cour Grandmaison, 2005, Paris : Fayard, 365 pages.

Dans un livre bien documenté, précis, courageux et bien écrit, cet universitaire français décrit avec retenue la violence de ces minorités qui, dans son pays, depuis la prise d'Alger en 1830, se sont livrées à la colonisation et les maux provoqués par cette barbarie tant chez les victimes que chez les exécutants.

Dilemmas of Solidarity: Rethinking Redistribution in the Canadian Federation, Sujit Choudhury, Jean-François Gaudreault-Desbiens and Lorne Sossin, eds., Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2006, pp. 218.

Dilemmas of Solidarity: Rethinking Redistribution in the Canadian Federation, edited by Sujit Choudhury, Jean-François Gaudreault-Desbiens and Lorne Sossin, aims at broadening and deepening the Canadian debates about fiscal federalism and redistribution, which have often been framed in the narrow terms of “which order of government gets to raise/spend funds for what policies.” The 2002 report of the Séguin Commission (Quebec's Commission on Fiscal Imbalance, chaired by Yves Séguin) and, more specifically, its recommendation that steps be taken to address the vertical fiscal imbalance, or the “disjunction between revenue-raising capacity and expenditures involving different orders of government” (3) to ensure that provinces have the fiscal means commensurate with their policy jurisdictions is a case in point.

Misrecognized Materialists: Social Movements in Canadian Constitutional Politics, Matt James, Vancouver: UBC Press, 2006, pp. xii, 170.

For any Canadian political scientist it can be incredibly challenging to present new approaches to constitutional research and memorable, quotable lines capturing the results. Matt James contributes to the legacy of memorable Canadian constitutional research self-deprecating jokes with his opening line “constitutional politics is a Canadian synonym for futility” (1). James's contribution does not end with his subtle yet subversive observation of the Canadian constitutional story. Misrecognized Materialists: Social Movements in Canadian Constitutional Politics is an important addition to a number of Canadian political science fields. James not only presents a novel approach to Canada's constitutional evolution but also produces provocative and significant empirical and analytical material concerning Canadian social movements. In addition, while pursuing his empirical goals, James presents a fascinating historical discursive tale of parliamentary committees, tinged with off-colour comments from tradition-seeking senators (see Harry Hays, 84–85) and surprisingly ambitious positions from over-zealous witnesses (throughout the work). Selecting committee testimonies as the main form of primary research and empirical evidence appropriately fits James' theoretical challenges to Ronald Inglehart's New Politics theory and others' reliance on post-material explanatory tools in constructing social movements' role in constitutional politics.

Defending Rights in Russia: Lawyers, the State, and Legal Reform in the Post-Soviet Era, Pamela A. Jordan, Vancouver: UBC Press, 2005, 10, pp. 285.

In this carefully researched, richly documented and engagingly written volume, Pamela Jordan, a political scientist by training and a historian by choice, turns the theoretical lens towards advokatura, the Russian bar, in order to explain the role of lawyers (advocates) in building post-Soviet democracy. In doing so she fills an important gap in the growing literature on the post-Communist judiciary concerned primarily with the position of courts (most prominently, Supreme and Constitutional courts) and the independence of judges and prosecutors from the executive and legislative branches of government. She also considers the often tense relationship between Communist legacies and democratic judicial reform and between home-grown models and Western-inspired implants.

Humanité: John Humphrey's Alternative Account of Human Rights, Clinton Timothy Curle, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2007, pp. xi, 211.

Human rights are the predominant moral discourse of the modern world, but that does not mean that they are transparent, nor does that mean that there is universal agreement even among rights advocates regarding their grounding. Rights can find their firmament in the English tradition of contracts forged out of fear (Hobbes, Locke), in the German tradition of deontological rationality (Kant), and in an earlier, premodern conception of natural law (Aquinus). What any of these accounts profess, however, is a totalistic explanation of the terms of political engagement. All rights discourse tends toward globalization and homogeneity. We know, of course, that there is much resistance to this moral discourse of rights from political entities that want to hang on to their particular histories and cultures. Objections to the globalizing and homogenizing tendencies of rights have tended to come from the formerly colonized, the dispossessed and the marginal.

Les élus locaux en Europe. Un statut en mutation., Élodie Guérin-Lavignotte, Éric Kerrouche, 2006, Paris : La Documentation française, 158 pages.

Cet ouvrage porte sur les signes et les effets de la professionnalisation des élus locaux en Europe, un sujet dont la pertinence sociale et académique est sans équivoque. Les transformations du contexte et du contenu de l'action publique locale appellent une meilleure connaissance de ceux qui en sont responsables : les élus locaux. La démarche empruntée ici est ambitieuse puisqu'il s'agit de saisir de façon comparée les conditions d'accès et d'exercice des mandats électifs locaux dans l'Europe des 25. Pour ce faire, les auteurs travaillent la notion de statut – status – d'élu local et la confrontent à la diversité des réalités nationales. En cela, l'ouvrage diffère des travaux français portant sur un objet assez proche, le métier d'élu, généralement traité sous la forme monographique.

A World beyond Politics? A Defense of the Nation-State, Pierre Manent, Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press, 2006, pp. 216.

Pierre Manent begins his book with a quotation taken from Paul Claudel's Poetics, which poses the questions, “Where am I? What time is it?” and adds “these are the inexhaustible questions we ceaselessly ask the world” (1). In using the quotation, Manent sets the object of his book as an attempt to lay out the contemporary moment, to find our “bearings” as he states, in view of isolating the key elements that mark the internal and external developments of Western forms of representative democracy. Beyond drawing from the meaning taken from the quotation, one can only guess as to why Manent selected this particular passage to open his book. However, the choice is highly telling of the assessment that the book offers to its readers of the West's current political predicament.

Challenging Liberalism, Feminism as Political Critique, Lisa H. Schwartzman, University Park PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006, pp. 210.

Lisa Schwartzman's Challenging Liberalism begins with the observation that equality, autonomy and individual rights are the foundation of many feminists' political demands. In this way liberalism has facilitated women's struggle for equality, from the acquisition of the suffrage to abortion rights. At the same time, however, liberal principles are also sometimes used in ways that are troubling to feminists. Freedom of expression, for example, can be understood to protect an individual's right to engage in racist hate speech or produce violent pornography. Schwartzman's goal is to examine why, from a feminist perspective, liberal concepts function in such a contradictory way and to offer a feminist reconsideration of liberalism. She contends that such a reformulation would not only be more consistent with liberalism itself, but also that it would be a more effective way for women, and perhaps all individuals whose political demands group them as a “class of persons,” to address their political demands. Schwartzman's work is engaging, and her discussion of other theorists who have addressed these questions is thoughtful and detailed. The strength of these chapters is such that one wishes she had more fully developed her conclusions.

Imperialism and Internationalism in the Discipline of International Relations, David Long and Brian C. Schmidt, eds., SUNY series in Global Politics,; Albany NY; State University of New York Press, 2005, pp. x, 212.

Scholars from both sides of the Atlantic with similar academic interests have produced a trailblazing book on international relations (IR). Each author represented in this edited book voices his or her dissent to the standard interpretation that IR came about through the so-called realist-idealist debate in the interwar period. They aim to provide a revisionist account of the emergence of IR by challenging the foundational myth that the realist paradigm of the struggle for power among nations eclipsed the preceding idealists' benign vision of a peaceful world order. The writings of such luminaries as E.H. Carr and Hans Morgenthau helped to propagate and cement a rather inaccurate picture, derived from the Anglo-Saxon experience and applied to other parts of the world. The challenging revisionists doubt that the debate ever took place in the way conventional IR scholars suppose. They reckon that the corps of IR academicians, mostly liberal in their outlook, was too heterogeneous for any paradigm-shifting to be recognized at any point.

Histoire des relations internationales du Québec, Stéphane Paquin (dir.), 2006, Montréal : VLB Éditeur, 357 pages.

Les relations internationales désignent généralement les rapports entre pays indépendants sur la scène internationale. Or, Histoire des relations internationales du Québec illustre le fait que les relations internationales ne sont pas exclusivement du domaine fédéral. L'ouvrage admet d'emblée qu'elles sont aussi animées par des États provinciaux. Dans le cas présent, ce sont les relations internationales du Québec qui intéressent les 20 auteurs de ce collectif.

Policy Horizons and Parliamentary Government, Paul V. Warwick, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006, pp. x, 256.

In Autumn 1978, the governing Swedish Centre Party came into conflict with its two coalition partners over the use of nuclear reactors for electric power and ultimately instigated the fall of the coalition government by proposing a referendum on the issue. The party's behaviour in this episode makes little sense when viewed from a policy-seeking or office-seeking perspective. By leaving the governing coalition, the party lost influence over government policy, lost office benefits and even lost votes in ensuing elections. We are consequently left to wonder what motivated the party leadership to embark on a seemingly self-destructive course of action.

Inside Rebellion: The Politics of Insurgent Violence, Jeremy M. Weinstein, Cambridge UK: Cambridge University Press, 2007, pp. 429.

Inside Rebellion combines clear and sharp theoretical insights with multiple and well-designed methods to address an important issue and moves the debate substantially forward. How can we explain variations in violence in civil wars, particularly the targeting of civilians? Weinstein argues that the structure of opportunities at the outset of rebel mobilization dominate the movement's destiny.

Party Movements in the United States and Canada: Strategies of Persistence, Mildred A. Schwartz, Lanham MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2006, pp. xi, 229.

This is an unusual book. Its subject is neither parties nor social movements, but party movements—organizations which combine the moral indignation of social movements with parties' goals of influencing elections. Students of American and Canadian parties know them as third or minor parties, given short shrift in the American literature and greater attention in Canada. Schwartz argues that party movements are underestimated. Successful or not, most persist, if not in the same organizational form, then through symbols or ideas they have generated, or in successor organizations

La politique étrangère de la Croatie, de son indépendance à nos jours, 1991–2006, Renéo Lukic (dir.), 2006, Sainte-Foy : Les Presses de l'Université Laval, 316 pages.

Dans le contexte troublé de l'éclatement de l'ex-Yougoslavie, la Croatie a déclaré son indépendance en juin 1991. En décembre, l'Allemagne est la première à reconnaître ce nouvel État de l'Europe du Sud. La France et la Communauté économique européenne (CEE) lui emboîtent le pas quelques semaines plus tard; les États-Unis font de même en avril 1992. Malgré la reconnaissance diplomatique de son indépendance, la guerre avec la République fédérale de Yougoslavie, l'implication de la Croatie dans le conflit en Bosnie-Herzégovine ainsi que la dérive autoritaire du président nationaliste Franjo Tuđman conduisent à un isolement relatif de la Croatie sur la scène internationale. L'élection en février 2000 de Stjepan Mesić, un opposant à Tuđman, représente un tournant aussi bien en politique intérieure qu'en politique étrangère. L'ouvrage collectif La politique étrangère de la Croatie, publié sous la direction de Renéo Lukic, professeur au département d'histoire de l'Université Laval, retrace l'histoire des relations internationales de cet État entre 1991 et 2006. Il offre un panorama détaillé des relations que le nouvel État a développées avec l'Allemagne, la France, les États-Unis, la CEE, puis l'Union Européenne (UE) et les États successeurs de la Yougoslavie. L'ouvrage se présente sous la forme de chapitres, que nous rassemblons en deux parties par égard à la concision.

Territoriality and Conflict in an Era of Globalization, Miles Kahler and Barbara F. Walter, eds., Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006, pp. xii, 340.

Not that long ago, amidst exuberance about the ability of globalization to erase borders, conflicts over territory seemed ready to fade into history. Now, with daily reminders from Iraq and elsewhere, it is evident that such predictions were far too optimistic. So how should we best understand the relationship between territorial conflict and globalization? This is the question that this book seeks to address.