Congressional Preemption: Regulatory Federalism. By Joseph F. Zimmerman. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2006. 288p. $70.00 cloth, $24.95 paper.

The adoption by Congress of major statutes regulating the environment, workplace, and consumer transactions, beginning in the mid-1960s, has been seen by critics as granting too much authority to the federal government at the expense of the states. The critique of federal social regulation initiatives questions not only whether such policy interventions can be justified per se, but as importantly, whether congressional preemption itself is appropriate. Presidents Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan sought specific legislative and policy changes aimed at shifting formal authority away from Congress and back to the states—a “new federalism” to reverse the expansion of federal authority. At least rhetorically (though not necessarily substantively), President George W. Bush has taken a similar stance. But the perceived need to check federal authority is not the sole purview of conservatives; President Jimmy Carter supported a significant program of economic deregulation, and President Bill Clinton oversaw initiatives to devolve federal authority as part of a broader reform of federal public management practices.

A New Engagement? Political Participation, Civic Life, and the Changing American Citizen. By Cliff Zukin, Scott Keeter, Molly Andolina, Krista Jenkins, and Michael X. Delli Carpini. New York: Oxford University Press, 2006. 253p. $19.00.

Should we be really worried about declining public engagement? Or should we accept that it is merely changing shape? This book describes substantial alterations in the ways Americans are involved in public life, particularly younger citizens, and analyzes a wide range of empirical data with the goal of understanding the implications—both negative and positive—of these emerging patterns of participation.

Political Movements and Violence in Central America. By Charles D. Brockett. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005. 404p. $75.00 cloth, $29.99 paper.

From Movements to Parties in Latin America: The Evolution of Ethnic Politics. By Donna Lee Van Cott. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005. 300p. $75.00.

The two books here reviewed make remarkable contributions to our understanding of contemporary Latin American politics. Despite their distinct individual merits and methodological, analytical, and theoretical differences, they are worth reading together, for they both address the theme of political contention in Latin America, a topic of enduring importance.

The Politics of the Governed: Reflections on Popular Politics in Most of the World. By Partha Chatterjee. New York: Columbia University Press, 2004. 173p. $33.00 cloth, $20.00 paper.

Nostalgia for the Modern: State Secularism and Everyday Politics in Turkey. By Esra Özyürek. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2006. 227p. $74.95 cloth, $21.95 paper.

Few leaders have been as lionized by their people decades after their deaths or have influenced their nation's political development as much as Turkey's Mustafa Kemal Atatürk. In the wake of World War I and the fall of the Ottoman Empire, Atatürk (an honorary title meaning “father of the Turks”) led a war of national independence, established the Turkish Republic, and introduced a series of modernizing/westernizing reforms that included secularization of the state, relative emancipation of women, and westernization of the alphabet, dress, and the legal code.

Locked in Place: State Building and Late Industrialization in India. By Vivek Chibber. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003. 334p. $49.50 cloth, $22.95 paper.

Despite the newfound optimism about the turnaround in the Indian economy, this book's arguments about the failure of the postcolonial state to build a developmental state in the 1950s and 1960s are original, important, and relevant. Vivek Chibber's Locked in Place sets out to dispel important misconceptions about India's early state-building effort. His arguments are both theoretically innovative and empirically novel. Theoretically, he aims to bring back class in our understanding of comparative political economy and to insert India into conversations about the developmental state that have focused only on East Asia. He also aims to give us some sense of the “mechanisms that generate contrasting reactions” (p. 226) in the two cases that he studies: India and South Korea. This is a welcome modification to the state-centric debates about India's past failure where the state is the only target of attack or of pious hope. Empirically, the author uncovers some new archival material to argue that Indian business “defeated” the state's efforts to build a developmental state in the 1940s. The new evidence shows powerfully that Indian business had much greater power to shape economic policy in the 1940s and 1950s than we knew.

Becoming Party Politicians: East German State Legislatures and the Decade Following Democratization. By Louise Davidson-Schmich. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2006. 232p. $27.50.

The democratic transitions in Eastern Europe have inspired a host of research that utilizes these changes as a laboratory for examining the enduring question of how democracies can become or remain stable. In Becoming Party Politicians, Louise Davidson-Schmich provides a unique contribution to this work by examining the behavior of East German state legislatures since unification. Davidson-Schmich uses the unusual case of East Germany much to her advantage. Robert Rohrschneider and others have used the division of Germany after World War II as a means of examining how mass and elite public opinion was influenced by the experience of communism, but Davidson-Schmich wishes to know how legislators' political behavior is constrained when democratic institutions—specifically political parties—act at odds with their socialized opinions and preferences.

Elected Affinities: Democracy and Party Competition in Slovakia and the Czech Republic. By Kevin Deegan-Krause. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2006. 352p. $65.00.

Crucibles of Political Loyalty: Church Institutions and Electoral Continuity in Hungary. By Jason Wittenberg. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006. 314p. $80.00.

The addition of Central and Eastern Europe to the laboratory of subjects for comparative politics is a welcome consequence of postcommunist transformation. Scholars of the region now draw more firmly on a repertoire of theory and methods from the discipline as a whole, as well as their historical insight and detailed understanding of particular countries within the region. These studies are exemplary in that regard. They pose clear questions arising from broad theoretical concerns, they answer them by mobilizing an array of qualitative approaches and sophisticated quantitative methods, and they structure their arguments by a series of building blocks with an explanatory focus.

Power from Experience: Urban Popular Movements in Late Twentieth Century Mexico. By Paul Lawrence Haber. University Park: Penn State Press. 2006. 320p. $55.00.

With social peace in Mexico unraveling just five years after the long-ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) was voted from power in 2000, it would seem an apt time for a new book-length study on urban popular movements in Mexico. This is ironic because by the end of the twenthieth century, most Mexicans were optimistic about the possibility that competitive, fair elections would settle questions of authority and law and that political parties would aggregate the interests of the electorate. However, half a decade later, disputes over federal elections generated mass demonstrations from primary to final balloting, urban protests repeatedly paralyzed downtown Mexico City, an ongoing war between drug cartels left thousands dead in the north and west of the country, riots in the village of Atenco near the capital turned deadly, human rights accusations marred police and military, and by the dawn of the new Calderon administration at the end of 2006, intractable plantones (occupations) and paramilitary violence were bringing federal troops into the sleepy colonial city of Oaxaca.

Informal Institutions and Democracy: Lessons from Latin America. Edited by Gretchen Helmke and Steven Levitsky. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006. 368p. $65.00 cloth, $25.00 paper.

It is not very often that an edited book has the potential to carve a new niche in the field. This may be one of those rare volumes. The collection of essays edited by Gretchen Helmke and Steven Levitsky lays out a promising research agenda, not only for Latin Americanists but for students of democratization in general.

Contested Citizenship: Immigration and Cultural Diversity in Europe. By Ruud Koopmans, Paul Statham, Marco Giugni, and Florence Passy. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2005. 376p. $75.00 cloth, $25.00 paper.

This is a well-written, rigorous, empirical contribution to scholarship on immigration and ethnic relations in post–World War II Europe. The study adds particular value through its grounded evaluation of basic assumptions concerning multiculturalism. Ruud Koopmans and colleagues coded political claims of migrant, extreme-right, and pro-migrant/anti-racist actors in France, Germany, the Netherlands, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom, as reported in a prominent newspaper in each country. These data inform the authors' assessment of whether migrant group makeup, national conceptions of citizenship, or supranational institutions drive the various actors' political behavior. The authors conclude that different national citizenship models best explain variations in political claims making. Postwar migration to Western Europe generates intense political conflict, according to the authors, because it raises questions about basic aspects of national sovereignty, including border control, citizenship attribution, and the principles of nationhood.

Dictating Development: How Europe Shaped the Global Periphery. By Jonathan Krieckhaus. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2006. 244p. $27.96.

The purpose of this book is lofty: to understand the causes of economic development of the entire world. To be more specific, the study examines 91 countries outside Europe shaped by the colonial experience of the past 500 years. Krieckhaus looks at political science theories of ideology, bureaucracy, class, and education, as well as at economic theories of property rights and central policies. One of his first conclusions is that the settler counties of North America, the Cone of South America, and Australasia are far wealthier than the others. He goes on to examine the varying effects of different colonial powers, such as Portugal, Spain, France, or Britain, and whether the end of colonialism came in the nineteenth century or more recently.

The Financing of Politics: Latin American and European Perspectives. Edited by Eduardo Posada-Carbó and Carlos Malamud. Washington, DC: The Brookings Institution Press, 2005. 266p. $65.00 cloth, $19.95 paper.

Edited books are never consistent across all chapters, but like this one, they can be fun. The book's organization is straightforward: a brief introduction, three increasingly specific theoretical chapters, and seven country case studies covering Latin Europe (Italy, Spain, and France), Britain, and South America (Colombia, Venezuela, Chile, and Uruguay).

Unarmed Insurrections: People Power Movements in Nondemocracies. By Kurt Schock. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2005. $67.50 cloth, $22.50 paper.

Citizen Power, Politics, and the Asian Miracle: Reassessing the Dynamics. By O. Fiona Yap. Boulder, CO: Lynne Reiner, 2005. $49.95.

These works exemplify the kind of broadly comparative study that many political scientists call for, yet few actually undertake. Kurt Schock studies six different popular movements against authoritarian rule, and O. Fiona Yap analyzes the interaction between citizens and government in four Asian newly industrialized countries (NICs). Together, they illuminate the dynamics of state-society relations in illiberal political contexts.

Faith in Moderation: Islamist Parties in Jordan and Yemen. By Jillian Schwedler. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006. 252p. $80.00.

Many attribute the failure of democratization in the Islamic world to the existence of antidemocratic Islamist movements. Why should democratization move forward when the main beneficiaries would allow for “one person, one vote, one time”? Jillian Schwedler in Faith in Moderation refutes this common argument head-on. Schwedler, however, is not merely content in presenting two Islamist parties as “moderate” to show how Islam is not monolithic. She has a more analytical project in which she urges us to unpack many of our assumptions about regime transitions in the Middle East and in general. Her argument targets the linkage between the inclusion of Islamist opposition groups in politics and the effects of their participation in moderating their ideology and behavior. Her treatment of this topic, based in social movement theory, deserves our attention.

Democracy in Latin America: Political Change in Comparative Perspective. By Peter H. Smith. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005. 380p. $74.00 cloth, $28.95 paper.

Peter Smith set out to write a textbook and ended up compiling an original database of Latin American democracy from 1900 to 2000. Analyzing a century of democratic change, Smith has written an impressive book that is accessible to undergraduates, a great literature review for graduate students, instructive for policymakers, and a significant contribution to scholarly understanding of a complex phenomenon. All of this is done with a lively and jargon-free writing style.

Fairness in Adaptation to Climate Change. Edited by W. Neil Adger, Jouni Paavola, Saleemul Huq, and M. J. Mace. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2006. 319p. $62.00 cloth, $25.00 paper.

Fairness in Adaptation to Climate Change moves away from the scientific debate on the environmental impacts of climate change and mitigation strategies to an acceptance of the fact that countries and even localities within countries will have to adapt to changes in their climate. The authors also acknowledge that there will be both winners and losers, again, sometimes within countries as well as across international borders. They also note that there are relative winners and losers, and that losses of life, health, and species must be treated differently from economic losses. Although equity has been an important part of the international debate on climate change policy, previous texts have focused on the question of mitigation and whether developing nations should be allowed to continue emitting greenhouse gasses in order to improve their economic conditions, while developed nations are required to reduce emissions.

Globalization and Egalitarian Redistribution. Edited by Pranab Bardhan, Samuel Bowles, and Michael Wallerstein. Princeton: Russell Sage, 2006. 329p. $35.00

Despite their divergent overall verdicts, critics and supporters of economic globalization each typically affirm that a defensible global economic order would be one under which the living standards of less advantaged persons throughout the world were significantly higher than they currently are. The goal of Globalization and Egalitarian Redistribution is to provide detailed empirical assessment of the ways that economic globalization—understood as “the reduced impediments to the movement of goods, people, information, and finance across national boundaries” (p. 2)—can both enable and thwart the efforts of states to adopt “egalitarian” policies and institutional arrangements that aim to enhance the living standards of less advantaged persons, whether by redistributing income to them or by insuring them in various ways against economic risks.

Innocent Women and Children: Gender, Norms and the Protection of Civilians. By R. Charli Carpenter. Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2006. 230p. $89.95 cloth.

On the occasion of Remembrance Day in grade six and as my classmates and I cut small poppies out of red construction paper, we learned about the brave young Canadian men who died fighting for our freedom and were laid to rest in Flanders Field. A striking memory of this history lesson was that I secretly congratulated myself for being a girl. If I ever found myself in the midst of a war, it was the boys who would have to fight. A narrow escape from a dreadful fate!

Mediating Globalization: Domestic Institutions and Industrial Policies in the United States and Britain. By Andrew P. Cortell. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2006. 243p. $70.00 cloth, $22.95 paper.

Economic Interdependence and Conflict in World Politics. By Mark J. C. Crescenzi. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2005. 173p. $65.00 cloth, $24.95 paper.

Given the context of globalization, these two books generate and answer substantive puzzles in security, trade, and industrial policy. Building on the Kantian hypothesis, Mark Crescenzi asks: “Does economic interdependence lead to peace or conflict?” Taking off from the neoliberal convergence hypothesis, Andrew Cortell asks if globalization entails the end of state-led industrial policies or economic intervention. The “it depends” answers that may be expected come down to “it depends on the domestic bargains and opportunity costs for states,” therefore providing us with a common conceptual anchor for adjudicating together the quality of these works. For Crescenzi, interdependence poses exit costs in terms of the relative scope, ranking, and importance of the trading relationship for the two countries.

The Political Economy of Terrorism. By Walter Enders and Todd Sandler. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006. 292p. $65.00 cloth, $23.99 paper.

The study of terrorism has come a long way since the pioneering research in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The events of 9/11 have greatly accelerated the proliferation of books and articles on a topic that is now of major academic and policy concern. Throughout the development of research, there has been a growing attempt to apply empirical and methodological approaches to understanding the causes, dynamics, and outcomes of terrorism. Walter Enders and Todd Sandler have been at the forefront of this work, and their book, The Political Economy of Terrorism, is a fine illustration of their continuing research agenda.