Scoring Points: Politicians, Activists, and the Lower Federal Court Appointment Process. By Nancy Scherer. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2005. 288p. $65.00 cloth, $24.95 paper.

The last several decades have witnessed increasing politicization of the selection and confirmation process for judges of the lower federal courts. Nancy Scherer argues that this phenomenon results from politicians engaging in “elite mobilization strategies” designed to placate, and motivate, elite party activists. Republican presidents tend to make ideologically driven appointments. Democratic presidents embrace affirmative action in selecting judicial nominees, both to signal powerful groups and also—insofar as Scherer's empirical analysis confirms that female and minority Democratic judicial appointees tend to be more liberal than other Democratic appointees—on ideological grounds. Senators on both sides of the aisle employ obstructionist tactics, and both parties have made judicial selection and confirmation a campaign issue.

Diversity in Democracy: Minority Representation in the United States. Edited by Gary M. Segura and Shaun Bowler. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2005. 316p. $45.00.

Freedom Is Not Enough: Black Voters, Black Candidates, and American Presidential Politics. By Ronald W. Walters. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2005. 239p. $27.95.

Diversity in Democracy is an ambitious book—even more ambitious than its subtitle suggests. Together with an impressive team of contributors, Gary Segura and Shaun Bowler set out to examine how minority Americans—blacks and Latinos, in particular—engage with the democratic political process, from how they align themselves within the existing party system to how they use the tools of democratic citizenship (namely, the vote) to advance their interests. In many ways Segura, Bowler, and their colleagues succeed and, in the process, reveal a number of important empirical phenomena and relationships, such as the value of descriptive representation in promoting both political trust and participation. Because of its contribution to basic knowledge about minority political behavior, this book would certainly be a valuable addition to any minority politics syllabus. However, its ambition is both a source of strength and a weakness.

Democracy Derailed in Russia: The Failure of Open Politics. By M. Steven Fish. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005. 313p. $29.99.

In recent years, it has been become abundantly clear that the democratic project in Russia has stalled. In 2004, Freedom House even moved Russia from the “partly free” to “not free” list of states. Russia's democratic shortcomings are legion and well known: corruption, human rights abuses, electoral manipulation, use of the courts to silence regime opponents, and state control over the media. However, there has been little systemic attempt to explain why democracy has not been established in Russia.

Revolutionary Passage: From Soviet Union to Post-Soviet Russia, 1985–2000. By Marc Garcelon. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2005. 313p. $23.95.

How Russia Is Not Ruled: Reflections on Russian Political Development. By Allen C. Lynch. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005. 276p. $70 cloth, $24.99 paper.

Even a casual reader of the literature on postcommunist Russia will quickly realize that scholars who study that country face two main challenges. The first is doing research in a place where the course of events is hard to reconstruct, information is distorted or concealed, and relations of power are opaque. The second is to resist the temptation to make evidence from Russia fit preexisting intellectual agendas. Of these two challenges, the latter seems more formidable—even scholarly projects that enrich our factual knowledge may be led astray by the ambition to cast one's findings as a confirmation of pet grand theories. Lamentably, Marc Garcelon's book brings this quandary into sharp relief; reassuringly, Allen C. Lynch's book proves that it may be avoided.

The Third Wave of Democratization in Latin America: Advances and Setbacks. Edited by Frances Hagopian and Scott Mainwaring. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005. 432p. $28.99.

Representative democracies refuse to collapse in Latin America. They endure even in the face of challenges that, in the region's past, have spelled democratic ruin. These include financial and economic crises, coup attempts, and persistent political and/or criminal violence. But if democracies stand, presidents fail with noticeable frequency. In the last 18 years, chief executives have resigned or been removed from office—without suspension of democratic rule—in Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia, Ecuador, Guatemala, Peru, and Venezuela. Interrupted presidencies, to borrow Arturo Valenzuela's apposite description, may well become one of three interlinked regional democratic markers. The second potential marker is the ascendance of political outsiders and the return of outcasts: Obscure, improbable, and discredited candidates (re)emerge as viable, even formidable, electoral contenders. The third, though seemingly at odds with the other two, is in fact closely related: citizenries that waver between disenchantment and bitterness, apathy and mobilization.

The System Made Me Do It: Corruption in Post-Communist Societies. By Rasma Karklins. Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 2005. 219p. $69.95 cloth, $25.95 paper.

Comedian Flip Wilson headlined his first nationwide television special in September 1969. Risking his tentative hold on a new (white) audience, Wilson joked about a minister's wife who justified her latest shopping spree by claiming, “The Devil made me buy this dress.” This declaration of self-indulgence later developed into “the Devil made me do it” and became a staple for one of the show's most popular recurring characters, Geraldine Jones. A comic genius, Flip Wilson understood the importance of a tag line that would resonate with his audience. Few fantasies can be more widespread than abdicating personal responsibility in the pursuit of a good time.

The Presidentialization of Politics: A Comparative Study of Modern Democracies. Edited by Thomas Poguntke and Paul Webb. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005. 361p. $95.00.

This book, consisting of an introductory and concluding chapter by the editors and 13 case studies by country specialists, subjects the fashionable thesis of the growing presidentialization of the chief executive office to systematic comparative review. The countries studied are mainly in Western Europe but also include Israel, Canada, and the United States. Authors address a common set of questions within the context of each country, shaped by an initial conceptual examination of what constitutes presidentialization. This is distinguished from the simple existence of a presidential or semipresidential constitutional regime. While both favor presidentialism, in the sense of the power and autonomy of the head of government, this can fluctuate over time, as it can within the classic parliamentary systems. This distinction between presidentialization as a process and the constitutional provisions for a presidential or parliamentary system is a useful feature of the book. Given the potential confusion between these regime types and the dynamic process that is the book's focus, it is perhaps unfortunate that another name could not have been found for the processes favoring executive autonomy and power. However, given that popular and journalistic discussions have already found a name for them, it is perhaps inevitable that they should be termed presidentialization in spite of the potential ambiguities of the term.

Institutions and Ethnic Politics in Africa. By Daniel N. Posner. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005. 337p. $70.00 cloth, 26.99 paper.

In the popular mind, ethnic conflict in Africa invariably revolves around deep-seated tribal identities and rivalries. Unfortunately, this perspective ignores the fact that Africans, like people everywhere, have multiple group identities. Although Daniel Posner singles out tribal affiliations as an important source of ethnic cleavage in Africa, he sees ethnicity as also including group identities based on race, clan, region, language, and religion. While much of the book provides a meticulous examination of the evolution of ethnic cleavage structures and ethnic politics in one African country, Institutions and Ethnic Politics in Africa, as the title indicates, is far more than a detailed case study of Zambia, a former British colony known as Northern Rhodesia before independence. It is also a splendid primer as to how to systematically apply institutional analysis to explain political behavior.

White Backlash and the Politics of Multiculturalism. By Hewitt Roger. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005. 172p. $75.00 cloth, $29.99 paper.

Radical Islam Rising: Muslim Extremism in the West. By Quintan Wiktorowicz. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2005. 248p. $75.00 cloth, $26.95 paper.

A book on the white backlash to multicultural politics and another on recruitment to a radical Islamist group seem odd choices to examine together, but the resulting dialogue emphasizes the extraordinary value of comparative methods in general and ethnographic research in particular. In Radical Islam Rising, Quintan Wiktorowicz asks why rational individuals would join a high-risk organization such as al-Muhajiroun, a radical Islamist movement based in the UK. Joining entails high risk because members are “targets of stigma, harassment, retaliation, and even more extreme sanctions such as loss of a job, injury, or death” (p. 206; also pp. 45–77). Rational-actor models, he argues, cannot explain why thousands of individuals were attracted to the movement. (The group was formally disbanded in late 2004 but likely continues underground.) Wiktorowicz offers a five-stage model, and the chapters are organized accordingly.

Imagining Brazil. Edited by Jessé Souza and Walter Sinder. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2005. 318p. $95.00.

This book approaches the impact of globalization on peripheral societies by identifying the philosophical, cultural, and economic transformations that accompanied Brazil's modernization in the twentieth century. By emphasizing the foundations of national identity and searching for points of resonance between these foundations and the forces of globalization, the authors examine the conceptions of modernity and intersections of the global context with what it is—and what it means—to be Brazilian.

The Politics of Constitutional Review in Germany. By Georg Vanberg. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005. 208p. $70.00.

The judicial power to review the constitutionality of laws was a unique feature of American constitutionalism well into the twentieth century. The perceived success of this experiment in limited democracy prompted several nations, among them West Germany, to create courts of constitutional review in the aftermath of World War II. Now several decades later, as the author of this book writes, constitutional review “has emerged as an almost universal feature of western-style democracy” (p. 1). In most of the world's advanced liberal democracies, the power to review the constitutionality of laws has been lodged in specialized courts of constitutional review, meaning that only these courts are empowered to nullify laws on constitutional grounds. Germany's Federal Constitutional Court (FCC) is one of the most notable and powerful of these specialized tribunals. It is notable for the frequency with which it has invalidated national and local laws and also for the extensive reach of its jurisdiction. Owing to the German court's rejection of any political question doctrine, together with its authority to decide with finality abstract questions of constitutional law—that is, questions raised by legislators outside the normal framework of an actual law suit—its powers of review actually exceed those of the Supreme Court. Indeed, the FCC has begun to challenge the Supreme Court as the leading model of constitutional review around the world.

Federalism and the Market: Intergovernmental Conflict and Economic Reform in the Developing World. By Erik Wibbels. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005. 276p. $85.00.

In this book, Erik Wibbels explores the “federal collective action problem” (pp. 47, 62). Because in federal countries national and regional leaders answer to different constituencies, their electoral interests and preferences toward socially costly reforms might conflict. Market economic reforms constitute one type of such measures. As Wibbels argues, in crisis-ridden federations, “economic reforms takes [sic] on the quality of a public good requiring the individual regions to cooperate, whereas it is more rational for each career-oriented politician to avoid the costs associated with austerity” (p. 27). National leaders concerned with macroeconomic stability want market economic reforms implemented in the regions, but regional leaders have an incentive to free-ride and adopt fiscally expansionary policies. The book suggests that “many market reform policies are a function of a constant process of bargaining between national and regional leaders struggling for political survival” (p. 5). Moreover, it argues that “[t]he degree to which the two sets of actors [national and regional leaders] conflict depends on four crucial factors: the electoral interests that each brings to the game, a shared intergovernmental fiscal system, the manner in which regional interests are represented in national policy making, and the levers of partisan influence national leaders have over subnational politicians” (pp. 5–6). The author proposes that fiscally autonomous regions with competitive party systems are more likely to converge with the national government's interests on market economic reforms; and that national electoral coattails are a more effective means for disciplining regional leaders than partisan harmony through centrally dispensed carrots and sticks (pp. 38–39).

The Information Revolution and Developing Countries. By Ernest J. Wilson, III. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2004. 431p. $49.95.

This book provides a comprehensive theoretic framework explaining the “strategic restructuring” of government policies and institutions associated with policies promoting the adoption of new information and communications technologies (ICTs). It also provides detailed case study chapters on Brazil, Ghana, and China, concluding with two chapters placing ICTs in a global perspective. The Chinese case study should be of interest to many readers, given China's political and economic importance. Brazil has a long history of state-guided and supported development strategies in this sector, combining import substitution and partnerships with transnational corporations. Ghana occupies a more peripheral position in global political economy, lacking the size and industrialization of the other countries examined.

Contesting Citizenship in Latin America: The Rise of Indigenous Movements and the Postliberal Challenge. By Deborah J. Yashar. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005. 365p. $37.99.

This is an excellent book and a worthy addition to the series of volumes on collective violence and political movements in the Cambridge Studies in Contentious Politics. Building on Deborah Yashar's earlier work with indigenous groups in Mexico and Guatemala and the strategies they have devised in “a global fight for democracy and justice” (p. xiii), the book uncovers a powerful and common theme in the indigenous voices of the region: a demand for inclusion, equality, local autonomy, and authentic citizenship. In short, it is about identity and rights and how and why indigenous movements arise, develop, and succeed in this struggle to attain them.

The Market for Force: The Consequences of Privatizing Security. By Deborah D. Avant. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005. 310p. $75.00 cloth, $29.99 paper.

Next to the United States, which entity controls the largest number of personnel operating, mostly with arms, in Iraq? Great Britain? Think again. Following the 150,000 American troops in that conflict-plagued “liberated” country are about 20,000 employees of more than 60 private security companies (PSCs). They come from around the world: the United States, South Africa, Fiji, Chile, Israel, and Nepal, to mention just a few. Most are former military or police officials, now under contracts issued to PSCs by the United States, Great Britain, and even the United Nations.

The Marketing of Rebellion: Insurgents, Media and International Activism. By Clifford Bob. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005. 237p. $70.00 cloth, $24.99 paper.

Clifford Bob seeks to understand why some rebels receive more attention and support from the international community than others. Rather than arguing that some groups are inherently more deserving, Bob takes a novel and very insightful perspective on the international relations of contention by applying the dynamics of marketing. “Despite its promise, today's ‘global civil society’ is for many a Darwinian arena in which the successful prosper but the weak wither” (p. 8). His answer focuses on how well groups market themselves in a competitive realm where large numbers of movements are seeking support from nongovernmental organizations with limited resources. He focuses on this key inequality—that the rebels around the world need help from the NGOs far more than any NGO needs to support any one group of dissidents—insisting that it is a buyer's market.

Producing Security: Multinational Corporations, Globalization, and the Changing Calculus of Conflict. By Stephen G. Brooks. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005. 316p. $35.00.

If commerce among nations truly undermines their proclivity to settle differences by resort to arms—as philosophers like Montesquieu and Kant believed so ardently—then globalization should portend a new era of world peace. More than a few overly optimistic liberals like Thomas Friedman in The Lexus and the Olive Tree (2000) have made just such a claim. But the world is hardly such a simple place, as we learn in Stephen Brooks's carefully crafted book. Brooks begins by unpacking the multifaceted nature of economic globalization itself, and through the main body of the book he closely examines how individual threads of this phenomenon may pull some nations toward more pacific relations while tugging others in more dangerous directions. A great deal of case-based and anecdotal evidence is marshaled along the way, and some of his arguments are made more convincingly than others. But in the end, he has given us a clear, comprehensive, and forward-looking treatment of a question that has heretofore been dismissed with oversimplified answers.

The United States and the Great Powers: World Politics in the Twenty-First Century. By Barry Buzan. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 2004. 222p. $69.95.

American Foreign Policy in a New Era. By Robert Jervis. New York: Routledge, 2005. 184p. $22.95.

While Barry Buzan and Robert Jervis share similar starting points but take us down different paths in their respective analyses, they reach a largely similar conclusion. The common point of departure is the present standing of the United States as the sole remaining superpower and the absence of Great Power challengers. Both authors note that this condition is significant because war among the Great Powers has been the driving force in world politics. Their common end point is the expectation that this condition may well endure and general agreement on the appropriate response strategies that should be followed by the Great Powers.

Contingent States: Greater China and Transnational Relations. By William A. Callahan. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2004. 297p. $68.95 cloth, $22.95 paper.

International relations scholarship has moved beyond debates between realists and liberals, yet much of the literature on the growth of Chinese power, or on China's regional and global interests, reflects theories of balance of power or peace through trade and engagement. Many of the most popular and well-known works on China (for example, Richard Bernstein and Ross H. Munro's 1998 book The Coming Conflict with China) view the economic success and modernization of China as a threat to U.S. interests and to the larger international order. William Callahan's Contingent States not only avoids this standard refrain but actively rejects and criticizes it. Callahan accomplishes two important goals in his book. First, he shows how conventional international relations paradigms can mislead us about the “true” aims of Chinese foreign policy; and secondly, he uses “Greater China” as a theoretical framework to examine four issues in Asia: the South China Sea dispute, Sino-Korean relations, the return of Hong Kong, and cross-straits relations between China and Taiwan. In addition to an introduction, theoretical chapter, and conclusion, one chapter is devoted to each of these issues.

Power, Postcolonialism and International Relations: Reading Race, Gender and Class. Edited by Geeta Chowdhry and Sheila Nair. London: Routledge, 2004. 324p. $125.00 cloth, $34.95 paper.

What do a French-educated Algerian revolutionary, a Lakota traditionalist, Kim Dae Jung, a Romanian sex worker in Cyprus, a Guyanese cricket star of South Asian origin and his Afro-Guyanese fans, a Muslim living in Europe, a Tibetan nationalist, a child rug maker in India, and Aung San Suu Kyi have in common? Mainstream theorists of international relations would say: nothing. According to Geeta Chowdhry and Sheila Nair, however, the members of this unlikely crowd expose the incapacity of IR to explain or usefully contribute to some of the most important debates taking place within and between countries and regions. The stories they compile also reveal the complicity of IR in the justification and reproduction of the class, race, and gender inequalities constitutive of European and U.S. domination from the fifteenth century to today. Power, Postcolonialism and International Relations argues that although the last decade has seen much criticism of the ahistorical gender- and race-neutral rational actor model that dominates IR scholarship, its critics have neither adequately explained why this model persists nor analyzed its effects on both the participants in and the objects of international conflicts.