Paths to a Green World: The Political Economy of the Global Environment. By Jennifer Clapp and Peter Dauvergne. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2005. 327p. $62.00 cloth, $25.00 paper.

This book is a welcome addition to the literature on global environmental politics. Research on global environmental politics is well established, and within this branch of political science a number of excellent overview texts have been written on the politics of the global environment. However, students of the global political economy of the environment have lacked a comprehensive and accessible text until the publication of this book. Furthermore, many chapters on this subject in textbooks have narrowed the field to discussion of regime formation and the salience of institutional structures. While Jennifer Clapp and Peter Dauvergne recognize the importance of institutional arrangements, their focus is on the intersection between economic process and environmental problems. The book consists essentially of three main sections. The first section provides the theoretical framework, the second investigates the relationship between globalization and the environment, and the final section provides a number of case studies of the political economy of environmental change.

Legitimacy in International Society. By Ian Clark. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005. 288p. $55.00.

Ian Clark's book offers the most comprehensive analysis of legitimacy in international relations available today, in the process breathing new life into the concept of international society. Organized into two main sections—a historical review of major peace settlements and an analysis of contemporary international society—the book develops a framework designed to disentangle the complex threads of discourse that make up both scholarly and public discussions of international legitimacy. The author refines and brings the tradition of the English School into direct dialogue with mainstream U.S. international relations discourse, to productive effect.

The Cuban Embargo: The Domestic Politics of an American Foreign Policy. By Patrick J. Haney and Walt Vanderbush. Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2005. 240p. $24.95.

There are two commonly held beliefs among Cuba specialists about the United States embargo on Cuba. The first is that the embargo is a frozen relic of the Cold War that has hardly changed over the years. The second is that the strongest lobbying group among Cuban Americans, the Cuban American National Foundation (CANF), is responsible for the endurance of this relic. This book's mission is to dispel these beliefs, and for the most part, it succeeds.

Environmental Policymaking: Assessing the Use of Alternative Policy Instruments. Edited by Michael T. Hatch. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2005. 265p. $85.00 cloth, $25.95 paper.

There is by now a sizable collection of books that compare the environmental politics and policies of different countries. Some approach environmental policymaking as an exercise in political theory and examine how local political and economic considerations drive local and international environmental regulations (The Political Economy of Environmental Protection: Analysis and Evidence, R. D. Congleton, 1995). Others examine the determinants of such policies or address international questions of negotiation, regulation, and compliance (Globalization and the Environment, Schulze and Ursprung, 2001; The Political Economy of Environmental Regulation, Stavins, 2004). This book focuses on contemporary policies and policy tools themselves, broadly interpreted. What kinds of policies do we see adopted? How were those policies justified, and how well have they succeeded in advancing environmental ends?

The Remains of War: Bodies, Politics, and the Search for American Soldiers Unaccounted for in Southeast Asia. By Thomas M. Hawley. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2005. 282p. $22.95.

The central thesis of this book is that the unresolved issue fueling the continued divisiveness of the Vietnam War is the key legacy of the unaccounted-for remains of America's missing in action (MIAs) in Indochina. It is a thesis that Thomas Hawley propounds at several levels. His argument is empirical in its depiction of the investigative processes and results of the actual searches for these men. It is semiotic in its focus on the symbol of their bodies as “signing” for the larger issues still surrounding the war. It is an investigation into the impact on the American popular and political culture of these bodies—those of the visible veterans and of the invisible, fragmented missing soldiers—in terms of how they are depicted in the arts (Hollywood mostly) and in memorials. Finally, it aspires to a more profound philosophical level in assessing the moral and political implications of this thesis for our larger understanding of the Vietnam War itself. Although this book is well worth reading, its success at all these levels is only intermittent.

American Power in the 21st Century. Edited by David Held and Mathias Koenig-Archibugi. Cambridge, UK, and Malden, MA: Polity Press, 2004. 299p. $64.95 cloth, $26.95 paper.

American primacy is destined to be one of the defining features of international politics for years to come. David Held and Mathias Koenig-Archibugi have assembled essays on the topic by a high-powered stable of scholars. Michael Cox, one of the most prolific and penetrating analysts of American power today, kicks off the volume with a learned tour d'horizon of scholarly debates on whether empire is a useful concept to apply today, whether the United States is one, and whether its primacy will endure. Michael Mann and Mary Kaldor present skeptical views on the latter issue. Mann briskly makes his case that as strong as it is militarily, the United States lacks the other wellsprings of power any self-respecting empire needs. And Kaldor goes on to disparage the real utility of the one kind of power that everyone in the book agrees the United States possesses in abundance. High-technology military force, she argues, “rarely confers a decisive advantage in conflicts between armed opponents” (p. 187).

Law Without Nations? Why Constitutional Government Requires Sovereign States. By Jeremy A. Rabkin. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005. 350p. $29.95.

Many people complain that American foreign policy is self-interested, unilateralist, and brutish, and wish that the United States would participate more enthusiastically in multilateral institutions, such as the United Nations, the International Criminal Court, and the Kyoto Treaty. Defenders of American foreign policy argue that these institutions just do not serve America's interest. Jeremy Rabkin offers an alternative version of this argument: He says that yielding sovereignty to global institutions violates America's constitutional traditions, and the attractive mixture of freedom and security that these traditions support. Global governance is bureaucratic, insensitive to democratic pressures, and indifferent to local variation in values and interests. Further, liberty requires the rule of law, and the rule of law can prevail only in a sovereign state. Global governance undermines sovereignty and thus undermines the rule of law and freedom as well.

Partisan Interventions: European Party Politics and Peace Enforcement in the Balkans. By Brian Rathbun. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 2004. 242p. $39.95.

Brian Rathbun's book is an important contribution at the interface of international relations and comparative politics, providing a fascinating, well-researched analysis of the impact of domestic politics on the formulation of foreign and defense policy in three major European states: Great Britain, Germany, and France. Rathbun makes two key claims: Parties articulate and implement different policies in the area of peace enforcement and European defense cooperation due to their different ideologies. Second, contrary to the view that parties formulate policies to win elections, he argues that, in general, parties win elections to formulate policies. In an empirically rich account of the effects of partisan politics, Rathbun analyses the views of—and disagreements among—the main parties in the UK, France, and Germany regarding peace enforcement in Bosnia and Kosovo, and regarding the establishment of an European Union capacity for carrying out peace enforcement operations.

War and Human Nature. By Stephen Peter Rosen. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005. 211p. $29.95.

Darwin and International Relations: On the Evolutionary Origins of War and Ethnic Conflict. By Bradley A. Thayer. Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky, 2004. 425p. $40.00.

Any general theory of politics assumes a theory of human nature. A small but growing number of political scientists have been applying a Darwinian theory of human biological nature to various topics in political science. The final aim of such work would be to turn political science into a biopolitical science. These two books contribute to that end by showing how research in human biology and Darwinian theory can illuminate the study of international relations.

The Europeanization of Central and Eastern Europe. Edited by Frank Schimmelfennig and Ulrich Sedelmeier. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2005. 256p. $22.50.

The postcommunist transformations in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) have generated a rich body of literature over the past 15 years. Most works on CEE transitions have drawn from the comparative politics literature and treated international factors, at best, as secondary. Yet with the recent eastern expansion of the Council of Europe, NATO, and the European Union, there has been a growing scholarly interest in the impact of international institutions on domestic changes in this region.

Political Parties and Terrorist Groups. By Leonard Weinberg and Ami Pedahzur. New York and London: Routledge, 2003. 179p. $125.

Religious Fundamentalism and Political Extremism. Edited by Leonard Weinberg and Ami Pedahzur. London and Portland, OR: Frank Cass, 2004. 178p. $115 cloth, $37.79 paper.

Two decades ago, Christopher Hitchens denounced the use of the label “terrorist” as a Medusa's head, which unveiled would “turn all discussion into stone…. Whisk, whisk … and there goes history, there goes inquiry, there goes proportion” (“Wanton Acts of Usage,” Harper's, September 1986, p. 68). Perhaps most social concepts, embedded as they are in wider communities of shared meaning beyond the arena of scholarly discourse, prove susceptible to rhetorical corruption as they become weapons of political denigration. The degradation of the concept of terrorism, however, seems especially severe. Add religious fundamentalism into the discourse, and our expectations sink even further.

Selling Intervention and War: The Presidency, the Media, and the American Public. By Jon Western. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005. 320p. $48.00 cloth, $18.95 paper.

Jon Western's book joins an expanding list of studies on the sociopolitical context that shapes U.S. decisions to resort to force abroad. Most such studies reflect an appreciation that, core assumptions of realpolitik aside, these decisions are the resultant of various vectors of domestic power and preference, vectors that often point in different directions. Some of these studies directly address the incentives and constraints that public opinion places in the path of democratic leadership. Others analyze the manner in which actors within the higher echelons of the power structure interact to produce national policies. Western's study encompasses both levels of analysis, examining how the interaction of elites and public affect the likelihood that the United States would intervene militarily in other nations.