Politics from Anarchy to Democracy: Rational Choice in Political Science. Edited by Irwin L. Morris, Joe A. Oppenheimer, and Karol Edward Soltan. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2004. 256p. $55.00 cloth, $21.95 paper.

This is a collection of papers from a lecture series sponsored by the Collective Choice Center at the University of Maryland's Department of Government and Politics. What makes the book different from the usual volume of papers is that the editors have sought to turn the papers into a kind of text for an introductory courses on rational choice political theory, and it seems to me with a good deal of success. The papers are organized under three headings dealing with origins of the state, design of institutions, and conditions for democracy. But before the lecture-based papers, two of the editors provide an extensive Introduction surveying the field (Irwin Morris and Joe Oppenheimer). The editors then also provide separate introductions to the three groups of papers, which comment on the papers in the wider context of comment on related work by authors not directly represented. The volume concludes with a survey discussion by the third editor (Karol Soltan), commenting on recent debates over the defining characteristics of rational choice theory and indeed over the very idea of rational choice political theory. The technical level is modest (some simple algebra and geometry), which is entirely right for the occasion: not too demanding and not too trivial. But the individual papers often reference work and employ terms and notions that go well beyond what is explicitly developed in the introductory materials. An instructor using the volume needs a confident command of the literature.