Conflict and Compliance: State Responses to International Human Rights Pressure. By Sonia Cardenas. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007. 188p. $65.00 cloth.

Norms protecting human beings from rights violations are growing, and international human rights pressures, like laws and sanctions, more and more escort them. But states are also subject to competing domestic pressures that make human rights violations attractive to some, and these countervailing forces make the business of compliance a tricky one. What happens when states face global norms to protect human rights but domestic opposition to implementing them? Sonia Cardenas, in her new book, provides an answer worth hearing.