Nature's Revenge: Reclaiming Sustainability in an Age of Corporate Globalization, Josée Johnston, Michael Gismondi, and James Goodman, eds., Peterborough: Broadview Press and Garamond Press, 2006, pp. 330.

In the 20 years since the Bruntland Commission popularized the notion of “sustainable development,” many have questioned whether this ambitious idea has any serious potential for realization or if it stands as a rhetorical mask for a policy of meagre reform. Such concerns are understandable, given how the ongoing challenges of global ecological change and the continuing imperatives of development leave us no justifiable alternative. Nobody would propose “unsustainable” development, whatever the ecological and human effects. But sustainability remains difficult to foresee, as it represents a journey into an unknown, with little in the way of a map to guide those who seek this path.

Suicide Terrorism, Ami Pedahzur, Cambridge: Polity, 2005, pp. 264.

With the issue of terrorism continuing to dominate media reports, there are renewed calls for a better understanding of the most deadly weapon employed by these organizations: suicide bombing. Ami Pedahzur, in his book Suicide Terrorism, successfully meets this challenge head on. It has long been accepted by those who study this issue that suicide terrorism has been a potent tool both for making grandiose public statements and as a means of engaging militarily superior opponents or difficult targets. Pedahzur outlines various methods, including historical tracing and the analysis of case studies, to further the understanding of this issue as well as the academic debate which surrounds it.

Shaping the Future: Nietzsche's New Regime of the Soul and Its Ascetic Practices, Horst Hutter, Lanham MD: Lexington Books, 2006, pp. xvii, 222.

Everyone interested in Nietzsche should read this book. Long pondered and passionately argued, its devotion to Nietzsche and Nietzsche's texts results in a Nietzsche worthy of our closest attention yet ill-treated by standard academic approaches. Basic to Hutter's reading of Nietzsche is his recognition, against the grain today, that here is a philosopher, a human singularity, yes, a wise man, who commands our attention because he has achieved an understanding of the human past and present that enables him to take responsibility for the human future.

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.

Regional Economic Voting: Russia, Poland, Hungary, Slovakia and the Czech Republic, 1990–1999, Joshua A. Tucker, New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006, pp. xxii, 417.

Recognizing and predicting the patterns of voting behaviour is a formidable task even in the case of mature and stable democracies. Needless to say, the identification of such trends in the wake of a fundamental political and economic restructuring, when the basic rules of the game are still in flux, can be frustratingly elusive. In this ambitious and methodologically sophisticated study, Joshua Tucker takes on the challenge and suggests a fresh approach for cutting through the fog of post-communist institutional ambiguity. The book reports on several prominent regularities in the voting outcomes that span five countries, several distinct institutional designs, twenty national elections and ten years of transition. In contrast to the studies that rely on micro-level survey data or small-n cross-country comparisons, Tucker aggregates and analyzes the election results at the intermediate, regional level. Cross-regional comparison provides enough resolution for detecting systematic voting patterns shaped by local economic conditions. Explaining the observed connection between regional economy and regional vote is the central theme of Tucker's study.

Political Culture and Institutional Development in Costa Rica and Nicaragua: World-Making in the Tropics, Consuelo Cruz, New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005, pp. 281.

Political Culture and Institutional Development is a groundbreaking historical analysis that seeks to understand the role of political culture, rhetorical discourses and identity formation in explaining the divergent dynamics of democratic development in Costa Rica and Nicaragua. In the same critical vein through which Jeffery Paige, Edelberto Torres, Deborah Yashar, and Andres Perez-Baltodano—each from different theoretical perspectives—have sought to discern the contrasting dynamic of polities' formation in Central America, Cruz advances an integrative, in-depth study nurtured by “elements of rationalist, structural and cultural theories” (1).

Territory, Authority, Rights: From Medieval to Global Assemblages, Saskia Sassen, Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press, 2006, pp. xiv, 493.

How to make sense of globalization? Saskia Sassen's attempt, in Territory, Authority, Rights (TAR), is like globalization itself: vast, sweeping and forceful, but maddeningly hard to grasp. At best, we are dazzled and sure we're on to something important. At worst, it's difficult to say what exactly this is. At times, we fear we've been had.

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.

Bienvenue dans le désert du réel,, Slavoj Žižek,, Édition Flammarion, 2005.

Le statut de Slavoj Žižek dans les universités américaines est ambigu. D'une part, sa popularité ne cesse de grandir – comme le démontrent le succès de ses livres et l'affluence à ses conférences – d'autre part, rarement pris au sérieux par ses pairs, il est relégué à l'univers des cultural studies. Élève de Jacques-Alain Miller, Žižek offre une vision originale de la politique où il mélange psychanalyse, commentaires philosophiques de haute voltige, anecdotes tirées de l'actualité, interprétations et réinterprétations de sujets divers allant du cinéma à la critique d'art, souvent avec un humour peu caractéristique des milieux universitaires. Après son Plaidoyer en faveur de l'intolérance (Éditions Climats, 2004) qui critiquait la fausse tolérance pratiquée par la société libérale et multiculturelle, son essai Bienvenue dans le désert du réel, traduit récemment en français, a été écrit dans l'urgence après les attentats du 11 septembre, au lendemain de l'invasion américaine de l'Afghanistan. Žižek présente dans ce livre la suite de certaines thèses qu'il avait déjà évoquées. Il remet non seulement en question le caractère “ d'événement ” attribué au 11 septembre – pour lui, rien n'aurait vraiment changé – mais il revisite l'opposition que les théoriciens politiques décrivent (et imposent) entre l'Occident et son Autre islamique : ces deux entités ne sont pas antagonistes, elles appartiennent au contraire à la même dynamique capitaliste mondiale et font le jeu de l'immobilisme. L'alternative doit être pensée en dehors des oppositions. Ce que cherche donc à faire Žižek, c'est moins d'offrir une thèse en remplacement de celles qui existent déjà que de réfuter celles-ci, en montrant l'identité intrinsèque d'opinions qu'on prétend être différentes.

Mémoires d'empire, de Romain Bertrand

La petite maison des Éditions du Croquant, située au cœur du massif des Bauges avec sa reine, la Dent de l'Arclusaz, publie ici le troisième livre de Romain Bertrand, politologue spécialiste de l'Asie du Sud-Est et de l'histoire politique de la colonisation. Mémoires d'empire analyse la controverse qui entoure la Loi (française) du 23 février 2005 portant sur le rôle positif de la colonisation française.

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.

Construire le politique. Contingence, causalité et connaissance dans la science politique contemporaine, Laurent McFalls (avec la collaboration de Nicolas Liorzou, Julie Perreault et Anca Mot), Presses de l'Université Laval, 2006, 319 pages.

Il y aura toujours un risque à encourir dans la préparation d'un manuel dont l'ambition est de présenter l'unité d'une discipline dont la convergence n'est souvent qu'artificielle ou institutionnelle. Très au fait de ce risque, Laurent McFalls précise d'emblée que, la plupart du temps, les manuels proposent “ un tour d'horizon plus ou moins superficiel et aléatoire ” (p. xiv) ou versent dans le dogme brutal du “ il y a ” (il y a des idéologies, il y a des problèmes politiques, il y a des théories des relations internationales) sans égard à la construction épistémologique de cette “ réalité ”. Dans Construire le politique. Contingence, causalité et connaissance dans la science politique contemporaine, McFalls et son équipe relèvent le défi imposé par une synthèse désireuse d'éviter ce pragmatisme qui dissimule davantage qu'il ne révèle, pour inviter le lecteur à une réflexion épistémologique et philosophique sur les présupposés d'une discipline dont le pluralisme engendre certainement une science saine, à défaut d'un gai savoir.

Clan Politics and Regime Transition in Central Asia, Kathleen Collins, New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006, pp. 376.

The long isolation of Central Asia finally ended with the collapse of the Soviet Union. Five new independent states emerged from the ashes of the Soviet Union, the very first time in history that the peoples of Central Asia gained their own independent states modelled on the modern state. This development caught the world, including Central Asians themselves, by surprise. It changed the geopolitics of the entire Eurasia. In the ensuing years, the Central Asian republics have undergone simultaneous multiple transformations: state building; political regime transformation; and transition from Soviet communism. Thus the new states in Central Asia have provided scholars with new cases of multiple economic and political transitions to study and compare. In recent years, there has been a significant proliferation of English-language publications on Central Asia. Kathleen Collin's book, a comparative historical study of political development in Central Asia, is a major contribution. While its focus is on Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, it often provides examples from the other two Central Asian republics, namely Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan. It is thoroughly researched and rich in information and details. It also makes a significant contribution to the political science literature on democratization, regime transition and consolidation.

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.

Radical Right Parties: Voters and Parties in the Electoral Market, Pippa Norris, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005, pp. 349.

Voting Radical Right in Western Europe, Terri E. Givens, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005, pp. 178

The growing importance of immigration politics in Western Europe during the past two decades and the connected rise of radical right parties have justifiably received much scholarly attention. While a first generation of scholars treating this phenomenon were mostly concerned with the social bases for the growing political influence of such parties, recent studies have begun to emphasize the importance of purely political factors, such as institutional frameworks and strategic party competition. The books on this topic by Norris and Givens are two of the most prominent accounts in this second generation of studies.

From Movements to Parties in Latin America: The Evolution of Ethnic Politics, Donna Lee Van Cott, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004,pp. 300.

During the 1980s and 90s the English literature on Latin American politics in the Anglo North American and Anglo European academic worlds roughly evolved from works centrally concerned—and discursively interconnected—with various models of transitions to democracy to the necessary processes that the new electoral democracies had to undergo and the policies they needed to implement to advance in the process of consolidation of democracy. For scholars who essentially viewed these processes either as largely completed in institutional terms or on their way to institutional maturity and stability, the focus of scholarly attention then shifted to more subtle questions of democratic quality. Donna Lee Van Cott's From Movements to Parties in Latin America: The Evolution of Ethnic Politics is a work that not only fits into the category of works fundamentally concerned with the issues and challenges associated with either the consolidation of democracy literature or the quality of democracy literature, but it is also a work that helps to develop the literature by highlighting a central variable of Latin American culture and politics, namely, indigenous ethnic movements and politics.

Governance in Contemporary Germany: The Semisovereign State Revisited, Simon Green and William E. Paterson, eds., Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005, pp. 338.

Nearly twenty years after Katzenstein's diagnosis of the German polity as “semisovereign state,” this volume re-evaluates unified Germany in the light of the original study. It starts with a concise introduction by the editors to the original argument and to the challenges of unification to semisovereign governance. Then, eleven contributions cover Katzenstein's “policy nodes” (political parties, federalism, and parapublic institutions), developments in previously covered policy areas (economic and social policy, industrial relations, immigration, administrative reform) and two additional ones: the environment and EU integration. The volume is concluded by Katzenstein himself, arguing that despite many political and socio-economic changes, semisovereignty still reigns in Germany.

Retribution and Reparation in the Transition to Democracy, Jon Elster, ed., New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006, pp. 341.

Retribution and Reparation in the Transition to Democracy is a useful addition to the burgeoning scholastic field of transitional justice. The essays in the book are authored by several well-known and other lesser-known scholars, including Luc Huyse, Claus Offe and Alex Boraine. Collectively, the essays tackle two of the major themes of transitional justice: retribution and reparation.

Women and Politics in Chile, Susan Franceschet, Boulder CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2005, pp. x, 203.

The Pinochet dictatorship in Chile (1973–1990) was marked by a high degree of women's activism focusing on human rights, economic survival and feminism. Many women expected that their active role during the dictatorship would lead to a new way of doing politics and greater inclusion of women in the political process once democracy was restored. But despite the recent election of Michelle Bachelet as president of Chile, Chilean women continue to be vastly underrepresented in political party leadership and elected office. In this clearly written and cogently argued book, Susan Franceschet addresses the important question of the marginalization of women from Chilean politics under democracy.

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.