Democratizing Global Politics: Discourse Norms, International Regimes, and Political Community. By Rodger A. Payne and Nayef H. Samhat. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2004. 194p. $45.00.

Since the September 11 attacks, depending on the month or even the day, one might or might not reply in the affirmative to the question of whether there is an emerging international or even global political order. President George W. Bush justified the United States March 2003 invasion of Iraq as the preservation and enhancing of that order and of the United Nations itself. A few months later, the UN secretary general suggested that the U.S. invasion was illegal. And even if one grants the emergence of a nascent global political order, its character is uncertain: Is it democratic, consensual, and egalitarian, or hierarchical and undemocratic?