Paths to Democracy: Revolution and Totalitarianism. By Rosemary H. T. O'Kane. New York: Routledge, 2004. 288p. $110.00 cloth, $33.95 paper.

In this book, Rosemary O'Kane seeks to restore a political dimension to the comparative historical analysis of paths to democracy. Reacting against the focus upon social structure that has been so prominent in the analysis of democratic and nondemocratic regime trajectories, she attempts to provide an explanation of the paths to the contemporary situations of three countries, France, Germany, and Russia. She argues that these cases contrast with one another in ways that help to illuminate a range of hypotheses generally accepted about the relationship between democracy, on the one hand, and such variables as economic crisis, economic growth, industrialization, and urbanization, on the other. In broad terms, she sees the cases contrasting in the following ways: Russia contrasts with France and Germany in respect to democracy, Germany with France and Russia in respect to revolution, and France with Germany and the Soviet Union in respect to totalitarianism.