Ten years from now, what kinds of issues of interest to politics will dominate the agenda of the United States Supreme Court? Will a dominant approach to constitutional interpretation emerge to guide the justices in their handling of these significant cases?Keith E. Whittington is professor of politics at Princeton University and visiting professor of law at the University of Texas, Austin ([email protected]).

The Perspectives editors handed me the following assignment: “Ten years from now, what will be the status of human development in sub-Saharan Africa? What will be the trajectory of the AIDS crisis; what actors—if any—can we expect to address problems of health, education, and poverty? What political changes can we anticipate, and how will these affect standards of living (and vice versa)?” The choice of language is significant. Most studies of development in Africa have focused on growth. However, here the interest is in the degree to which growth and other things, most especially the quality of government, translate into standards of living and aspects of “human development” or “capability,” typically measured by school completion rates, child malnutrition, under age-five mortality, and related indicators.Jennifer Widner is professor of politics and international affairs at Princeton University ([email protected]).

In “Writing the Arab-Israeli Conflict” (Perspectives on Politics 3:1), Jonathan B. Isacoff does a great service by bringing together the study of the Arab-Israeli conflict and the study of international relations (IR). All too often, political scientists shy away from the ongoing conflict and the heat such work could generate on campus. At the same time, Isacoff's application of his multiple-schools model reveals some limitations with respect to political scientists' use of history generally and the Arab-Israeli conflict in particular. In this essay, I note four areas where his argument merits further scrutiny.Jeremy Pressman is assistant professor of political science at the University of Connecticut ([email protected]). He is currently writing about how allies stop each other from going to war. His writings on the Arab-Israeli conflict include Point of No Return: The Deadly Struggle for Middle East Peace (with Geoffrey Kemp). The author thanks Michal Ben-Josef Hirsch, two anonymous reviewers, and the editorial staff ofPerspectives on Politics for helpful comments on earlier drafts.

The comparative study of women's movements is developing within the political science subfield of women and politics, largely by drawing on concepts and findings from several disciplines. From political science it borrows theories of the state, political development, democracy, and democratization. Sociology offers insights on social movements and the gendered nature of societies. Women's studies scholarship enables us to understand systematic gendered arrangements of power and privilege, including those fragmented or reinforced by class, race, sexuality, and ethnicity. The subfield of women and politics contributes both feminist theoretical insights and scholarship on elected women, female leaders, and women's policy preferences; these contributions inform comparative research on women's movements.Karen Beckwith is a professor of political science at the College of Wooster ([email protected]). She is coeditor, with Lee Ann Banaszak and Dieter Rucht, of Women's Movements Facing the Reconfigured State and author of American Women and Political Participation. Beckwith is the founding editor, with Lisa Baldez, of Politics & Gender, the journal of the Women and Politics Research Section of the American Political Science Association. The author thanks Jeff Lantis and Kent Kille for extensive comments on earlier versions of this article.

Mlada Bukovansky, Legitimacy and Power Politics: The American and French Revolutions in International Political Culture (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002).

Neta Crawford, Argument and Change in World Politics: Ethics, Decolonization, and Humanitarian Intervention (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002).

Martha Finnemore, The Purpose of Intervention: Changing Beliefs about the Use of Force (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2003).

Ted Hopf, Social Construction of International Politics: Identities and Foreign Policies; Moscow, 1955 and 1999 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2002).

The four books under review here offer insightful and penetrating analyses of the role of such factors as legitimacy, ideas, norms, culture, and identities in world politics. Martha Finnemore's The Purpose of Intervention demonstrates that great powers intervene in small states for reasons significantly different from those in the past. Neta Crawford's Argument and Change in World Politics chronicles arguments for and against Western imperialism over the past five centuries and contends that those arguments helped bring about the birth, long life, and death of Western formal empires. Mlada Bukovansky's Legitimacy and Power Politics examines the social, economic, and political forces at work in the American and French revolutions; she asserts that those events wrought changes in prevailing notions of what makes a state legitimate. Ted Hopf's Social Construction of International Politics analyzes discourses in Moscow in 1955 and 1999 and maintains that these discourses are an important cause of Soviet or Russian foreign policy attitudes in the two periods.David Dessler is an associate professor at the College of William & Mary ([email protected]). John Owen is an associate professor at the University of Virginia ([email protected]). The authors thank Jeffrey Legro, Jack Snyder, Michael Tierney, David Waldner, Joshua Yates, two anonymous reviewers, and Greg McAvoy for comments on previous versions of this article. John Owen presented an earlier version to the research seminar at the Centre for International Relations at the University of British Columbia, and the authors also thank those who participated in that seminar, especially Mikulas Fabry and Richard Price. All errors are the sole responsibilities of the authors.

Uncivil Society: The Perils of Pluralism and the Making of Modern Liberalism. By Richard Boyd. Lanham, MA: Rowman and Littlefield, 2004. 351p. $75.00 cloth, $25.00 paper.

In his book, Richard Boyd offers a thoughtful reappraisal of the relation between the idea of civil society and the tradition of liberal political thought. He questions the view held by many contemporary political theorists that the development of civil society, understood as the realm of what Tocqueville called “voluntary associations” mediating between the individual and the state, is a necessary condition for the maintenance of liberal democracy. Against this position, Boyd argues that an earlier tradition of liberal thought was justifiably suspicious of the potential for subpolitical social groups—especially, but not limited to, intolerant religious sects—to undermine rather than support liberal institutions. In a series of well-argued chapters, he traces the trajectory of the connected ideas of civil society and social pluralism from initial suspicion to perhaps uncritical acceptance.

The Communitarian Constitution. By Beau Breslin. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004. 288p. $48.00.

Beau Breslin desires to make a breakthrough in the “communitarian-liberal debate” by moving it to the plane of constitutional discourse (pp. 18–19, 109). He describes his study as a work of constitutional theory, but of a generic sort; his constitutionalist standard owes more to John Rawls than to James Madison. “Constitutionalism” refers varyingly to an architectonic vision of political perfection (or “modeling”) and to the limits on political power. The communitarian constitution is caught in a dilemma that arises from these conflicting imperatives.

Challenging Diversity: Rethinking Equality and the Value of Difference. By Davina Cooper. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004. 246p. $75.00 cloth, $29.99 paper.

In the Encyclopedia (1751–65), the Chevalier de Jaucourt observed that while “natural equality” is the moral foundation of liberty, “absolute equality” in society is a “chimera” of fanatic minds. In the social state, he explained, distinctions and subordinations are necessary, including those attached to “differences of condition.” Later, as the old order yielded to democracy, Tocqueville discerned an inexorable tendency toward the leveling of those very differences. Would it end, he wondered, in a new Caesaristic despotism in which an atomized populace, deprived of the protection of intermediate powers, is enslaved by an all-powerful ruler? In modern societies considered free, the march toward equality of conditions has stopped well short of this dead end. But how does the modern conception of equality square with ways of living that challenge prevailing social norms? That is the subject of this inquiry, which, somewhat ironically, aims to restate from a leftist perspective the case put by the Chevalier de Jaucourt for accepting some such differences.

Justice and Democracy: Essays for Brian Barry. Edited by Keith Dowding, Robert E. Goodin, and Carole Pateman. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004. 242p. $70.00 cloth, $25.99 paper.

Getting academics to focus on a single topic can be a bit like herding cats. Present them with a theoretical problem and they tend to write about whatever they want, making only the merest nod in the direction of the problem specified. The result is that many edited volumes ostensibly devoted to a common theme wind up containing myriad papers that do little to speak to either the common theme or one another.

Feminist Interpretations of Niccolo Machiavelli. Edited by Maria J. Falco. University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2004. 422p. $95.00 cloth, $39.50 paper.

This volume of 14 essays makes a valuable contribution to three related academic fields: history of feminist thought, history of political thought in North America, and the general history of political thought. In her Introduction, editor Maria Falco has done an excellent job of bringing her readers up to date on the evolving state of the feminist critiques of Machiavelli.

Talking Democracy: Historical Perspectives on Rhetoric and Democracy. Edited by Benedetto Fontana, Cary J. Nederman, and Gary Remer. University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2004. 337p. $55.00.

This edited volume of eleven chapters draws from sources as diverse as Thucydides, Plato, Cicero, St. Augustine, John of Salisbury, Christine de Pizan, and John Stuart Mill. On the one hand, the volume is intended as a selective but wide-ranging study of the history of the theory and practice of rhetoric. As the editors Benedetto Fontana, Cary J. Nederman, and Gary Remer stress in the Introduction, the essays are “committed to a historical analysis of their subject matter” (p. 20). But the volume is much more than an exercise in historical analysis or an intellectual history of theoretical reflections on rhetoric. The essays are drawn together into a genuine whole by an argument that runs throughout the book.

Identity in Democracy. By Amy Gutmann. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003. 264p. $35.00 cloth, $ 17.95 paper.

What ought to be the role of identity groups in the politics of a just democratic society? In her book, Amy Gutmann sets out to explore this question. She does not offer a definitive answer to it; however, she does offer evaluative criteria by which we may decide, on a case-by-case basis, whether or not the political interventions of organized identity groups are beneficial to a democratic society such as she presumes the United States to be. When, Gutmann asks (p. 5), may the politics of organized identity groups contribute to a society structured on what she identifies as the three basic principles of democratic justice: civic equality (equal standing as a citizen), liberty, and opportunity? Conversely, when are they inimical to such principles?

Private Selves, Public Identities: Reconsidering Identity Politics. By Susan J. Hekman. University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2004. 159p. $35.00 cloth, $24.00 paper.

The Politics of Identity: Liberal Political Theory and the Dilemmas of Difference. By Michael Kenny. Cambridge: Polity Press, 2004. 212p. $59.95 cloth, $27.95 paper.

The debate about multiculturalism takes many forms, and can focus on cultural domination, legal recognition of difference, and particular policy construction. But in these two volumes it pertains to liberal political theory and identity politics. Both are concerned with the challenges evident in the inability of some conceptions of liberalism to respond to the claims of the political relevance of categories of identity. Both are well grounded in current literature exploring the limitations and possibilities of liberalism. Both focus more on the political theory than on the political reality. But in the end, they champion different sides—Susan J. Hekman reconceptualizes and rehabilitates identity politics, and Michael Kenny reframes and reinvigorates liberalism. Although their conclusions are not incompatible, they are aimed at different audiences. Were the authors sharing a stage, they might largely talk past each other.

The Liberty of Strangers: Making the American Nation. By Desmond King. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004. 229p. $29.95.

A half century ago, Louis Hartz articulated how extensively U.S. political culture was steeped in Lockian individualism, a contention subsequently echoed, in a more critical vein, by the seminal studies of Robert Bellah and Robert Putnam. However, in terms of nation building, Desmond King challenges the conventional wisdom that discrimination against individuals due to some group identity has been overcome so as to realize a nation that first and foremost celebrates “a formal equality of individual rights” (pp. 6–7). Instead, he contends that “group-based distinctions” (p. 7) have always characterized U.S. nationalism and will continue to do so despite political and theoretical rhetoric to the contrary.

The People Themselves: Popular Constitutionalism and Judicial Review. By Larry D. Kramer. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004. 363p. $29.95.

The provocative premise of this book is that “the people themselves,” in James Madison's phrase, are the enforcers of constitutional boundaries and limits. In Larry Kramer's able hands, popular sovereignty is not an abstraction, where the people quickly fade from view and the Constitution they ratified is given life by courts and lawyers. On the contrary, Kramer seeks to document how the people themselves are not just active participants in the constitutional enterprise but the fundamental bearers of constitutionalism.

Leo Strauss and the Politics of American Empire. By Anne Norton. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004. 256p. $25.00 cloth, $16.00 paper.

Anne Norton's book combines analysis of texts, which can be checked, with oral history or gossip, which cannot. Norton also shares her opinions and judgments about U.S. foreign policy. The mixed nature of the book makes for a difficult academic review.

Just Marriage. By Mary Lyndon Shanley, with Commentators. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004. 116p. $45.00 cloth, $12.95 paper.

Should marriage as we know it be abolished? This is one proposed solution to the injustices of marriage today: unjust to those excluded from access to it, to those who might like it but cannot find a partner, and to those who choose other forms of relationships or even consider marriage oppressive. Or does marriage remain an institution so bound up with social needs, such as child raising and care for dependents, that the state cannot abdicate regulatory authority over it? Mary Lyndon Shanley argues the latter position.

The Nature of Political Theory. By Andrew Vincent. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004. 354p. $65.00.

Survey texts exercise considerable violence upon the thinkers and works they assess. Andrew Vincent is no pacifist. Yet his book succeeds admirably in gaining breadth without unduly sacrificing depth and subtlety. Vincent's encyclopedic knowledge (with more than 500 titles in the bibliography) is coupled with a sharp critical eye and refreshingly blunt appraisals. The result is a thoughtful and wide-ranging interpretation of twentieth-century Western political thought.

Politics and Passion: Toward a More Egalitarian Liberalism. By Michael Walzer. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004. 208p. $25.00.

With characteristic elegance, clarity, and nuance, Michael Walzer here refines and extends the thesis he first ventured 15 years ago that the fragmentary effects of liberalism require periodic communitarian correction. Nearly all of the chapters are revised from previous articles or book chapters composed in the years intervening, and so their relation is more thematic than structural. But their collective force is considerable.

Governing NOW: Grassroots Activism in the National Organization for Women. By Maryann Barakso. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2004. 192p. $49.95 cloth, $18.95 paper.

This is a case study of the National Organization for Women that explains how NOW's governance structure shaped the organization's strategy from 1966 to 2003. “Strategy” is defined as NOW's “goals and tactics it uses to pursue them” (p. 2). The author contends that current conceptual approaches to explaining organizational behavior, such as the availability of resources, or political opportunities, or “collective belief systems,” can fall short in their predictive powers. There are times, for example, when organizations appear to be irrational and self-destructive as they ignore “obvious political opportunities” or invest “resources inefficiently” (p. 6). Analyzing organizational behavior from the perspective of its “governance structure” or “political system,” however, “resolves many of these apparent inconsistencies” (p. 6). Governance structure is “simply a political system described by a group's guiding principles (its goals and values) on the one hand and its formal decision-making process on the other” (p. 1).