In the coming decade religion will become an increasingly salient issue in European politics. This prediction runs counter to the conventional wisdom that Europeans are “post-Christian.” When comparing Europe to the United States, observers note that church pews are empty, that fewer people profess to believe in God, and that Europeans are moral relativists who shy away from principled positions against authoritarian countries. In the European view, modernization implies secularization, and by this standard Europeans are modern while Americans are, depending on who the observer is, either postmodern or irrational. Why then are we flooded with evidence of the “re-Christianization” of Europe?Jytte Klausen is associate professor of comparative politics at Brandeis University ([email protected]).

The Modern Self in the Labyrinth: Politics and the Entrapment Imagination. By Eyal Chowers. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004. 260p. $49.95.

This is an extremely rich and provocative work, wide in learning, filled with thoughtful interpretations of Max Weber, Sigmund Freud, and Michel Foucault, among others, and containing many insights into the ways that “modernity” and its consequences for the self have been conceived in the last century. It is also a disturbing work, pointing to what the author argues are apparently inescapable dilemmas for “us” posed by both “our institutions” and “our notions of identity” (p. 197). And it will be a very contested work, first, because of what I think are a number of questionable assertions the author makes about the views of those he discusses, particularly Nietzsche and Weber; second, because of the completely unhistorical and uncontextual methodology the author employs to throw light on these thinkers so close to us in time, yet immersed in such different social and cultural milieus; and third, because of the larger thesis and framework of the interpretation, which convey great depth of concern and sincerity, but which, I think, are very problematical as an interpretation of these thinkers. To deal with the book adequately would require much more extended treatment than a short review can give it here.

A Democracy of Distinction: Aristotle and the Work of Politics. By Jill Frank. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005. 208p. $49.00 cloth, $19.00 paper.

Jill Frank's book seeks to make Aristotle's political philosophy “available for democratic political practice” (p. 8). Her use of Aristotle in this regard resembles most closely that of Hannah Arendt, to whom she refers in her opening paragraph and whose treatment of work, action, and the vita activa would appear to have influenced Frank's discussion of the “work” of politics referred to in her subtitle. But in bringing out the Aristotle who “harbors democratic possibilities,” the author also draws support, as well as distinguishes herself, from scholars such as Martha Nussbaum, Stephen Salkever, Fred Miller, Arlene Saxonhouse, Mary Nichols, and Alastair MacIntyre, who have, in very different ways, sought the aid of Aristotle to inform contemporary political life. A Democracy of Distinction thus engages a student of the ancient Academy in a serious conversation with the modern Academy. As Frank rightly says in closing, “Aristotle's ethical and political lessons are no less timely for us than they were for fourth century Athens” (p. 180). By her own admission, the lessons she draws may not represent the view of the “definitive Aristotle,” but they do represent, she suggests, his effort both to reform fourth-century Athens and to lay the ground for a timeless possibility: a “democracy of distinction” that she sincerely and earnestly seeks to promote (pp. 8, 139–42).

Modern Peoplehood. By John Lie. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004. 394p. $49.95.

This book is a valuable addition to the literature on social identity and modern politics. In the manner of historical sociologists, John Lie synthesizes a vast body of scholarly literature—the book has a 100-page bibliography—in order “to illuminate and sublate the categories of modern peoplehood” (p. ix).

Margins of Disorder: New Liberalism and the Crisis of European Consciousness. By Gal Gerson. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2004. 239p. $45.00.

This is a book whose title does not adequately convey its content. On the one hand, it is admirably broad in its scope relating issues in the philosophy of mind, psychology, sociology and of evolutionary biology to politics and ideology. On the other, the anticipation of relating the new liberalism in England (nothing is said of Scotland and Wales) to European liberalism is not fulfilled. Instead, the crisis of European consciousness relates to quite different considerations. The period between 1870 and 1930, it is claimed, saw an unprecedented questioning of the cohesion between reason and enlightenment, especially in three fields of knowledge that provide the focus for Margins of Disorder, social psychology, biology, and classical studies. The revolt against the enlightenment was manifest in the proliferation of fields of knowledge developing their own vocabularies and procedural rules, rendering them incommensurable with one another. Encyclopedic reason was undermined by self-interrogation and increasing specialization. In social studies, for example, there were doubts about the existence, or alternatively the apprehension, of a universal set of standards for social good. Max Weber saw rationality as relational and historical, and Emile Durkheim, Gaetano Mosca, and Vilfredo Pareto formulated issue-specific terminologies allowing systems of social behavior to be analyzed without reference to their truth values or moral functions. Such arguments, Gal Gerson contends, justified the exercise of power by elites for its own sake (p. 17).

Much has been made of the dramatic influx of immigrants to the United States since the mid-1960s. This “Fourth Wave” of migration is remarkable not just for its sheer numbers, but also for its ethnic diversity, with newcomers disproportionately arriving from Asia and Latin America. Much too has been made of the changes in how the state classifies and counts by race and ethnicity. Most recently, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) issued Directive No. 15 in 1977, requiring all federal agencies to collect data for at least five groups—American Indians and Alaska Natives, Asians and Pacific Islanders, non-Hispanic blacks, non-Hispanic whites, and Hispanics—then revised this directive in 1997 to include “mark one or more” responses that would allow for self-identification with multiple races/ethnicities. The face of America is changing before us.Taeku Lee is assistant professor of political science at the University of California at Berkeley ([email protected]).

The Green State: Rethinking Democracy and Sovereignty. By Robyn Eckersley. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2004. 344p. $62.00 cloth, $25.00 paper.

Some argue that market democracies do not engage in war with one another, and therefore that if one promotes markets, franchise, and elections, or democratic-capitalist states, this will lead to international peace and cooperation. This idea has informed both the theory of international law (e.g., a right to democratic governance) and the practice of American foreign policy (e.g., Bush Doctrine). A counterargument is built on the suspicion that institutional political/economic process is largely independent of the propensity of a state to cooperate in international relations, and that a focus on democracy and markets as a cure-all for international dispute settlement distracts both theorist and practitioner from the real problems that plague the international system. These skeptics call the focus on the creation of democratic states the “consoling myth.”

Hegel and the Freedom of the Moderns. By Domenico Losurdo. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2004. 400p. $89.95 cloth, $24.95 paper.

This is a sustained defense of G. W. F. Hegel against his critics, in particular the liberal and conservative critics of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. This defense focuses on issues in social and political thought, especially on the role of the political state in securing the rights of citizens, including interventions in the economic sphere to ameliorate the conditions of the disadvantaged and the poor. The controversy about Hegel, whether he was a liberal or a conservative, a radical or a reactionary, is long-standing, and Domenico Losurdo attempts to contribute to the debate by situating it historically and concretely in the social and political conditions of Hegel's time, in Europe and in England. Moreover, he argues that these political categories must be understood in terms of how thinkers identified themselves in relation to others, which often was motivated by specific political commitments in particular political environments, particularly in France, Germany, and England.

The year is 2015, and across Latin America and the Spanish Caribbean there are social movements demanding racial justice as political parties jockey to incorporate candidates of African and indigenous descent. Textbooks are being rewritten to highlight the contributions and unique experiences of indigenous and black Latin Americans and affirmative action programs are being debated and implemented. W. E. B. DuBois's famous line, “The problem of the twentieth century will be the problem of the color line,” applies to Latin America in the twenty-first century. What led us to this moment? And what tools does political science have to explain it?Mark Q. Sawyer ([email protected]) is associate professor of political science and African American studies at UCLA.

The Hand of Compassion: Portraits of Moral Choice During the Holocaust. By Kristin Renwick Monroe. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004. 392p. $29.95.

Kristin Monroe interviews several non-Jewish rescuers during the Holocaust to get at their moral psychology and motives in rescuing Jews imperiled by the Nazis. Her extensive notes and transcripts provide an intimate and powerful glance into how rescuers viewed their own actions and how they discerned their own motives. For most “it just seemed the right thing to do.” Monroe's Rousseauian argument is intriguing both in the presentation of the narratives and in her careful, systematic analysis of the moral psychology behind the rescuers' action. She moves in a very different direction than, say, Frantz Fanon's analysis in The Wretched of the Earth (1963) where he sees the emotions of rage and revenge as central to the resistance of the colonized. These two powerful emotions I found to be the primary dynamic behind rescue in the narratives of Jewish resistors and rescuers (Glass, Jewish Resistance During the Holocaust: Moral Uses of Violence and Will, 2004). The gentile rescuers Monroe interviewed rarely spoke of their anger or rage toward the Germans. Rather, the action of rescue arose through an empathic connection with the victims, for example, Margot: “You have either compassion with these people or you think ‘I couldn't care less when they drop dead’” (p. 20).

Citizens Without Shelter: Homelessness, Democracy, and Political Exclusion. By Leonard C. Feldman. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 2004. 224p. $35.00.

American attitudes toward the homeless tend to shift back and forth between compassion and compassion fatigue, between supporting policies to provide resources to the homeless and supporting punitive policies to exclude them from public spaces. This ambivalence is often explained by invoking “economic functionality” and/or “a cultural logic” (p. 5), but neither of these approaches is adequate. Rather, Leonard Feldman argues, we should see the problem of homelessness as a “problem of sovereign state power” (p. 18). Citizenship, and political life generally, are defined in opposition to “bare life,” or “mere physical existence”: Citizenship as full membership is constituted as the exclusion of bare life” (p. 18). Feldman continues, “Home-dwelling citizen and homeless bare life are political statuses, not social statuses or elements of personal identity” (p. 20), and so an adequate response to homelessness must also be political. He calls for a move toward a “pluralized citizenship” (p. 21), in which we deconstruct “the rigid oppositions between … bare life and citizenship.” Acknowledging a plurality of ways of dwelling, we can then recognize “that those displaced from ‘house’ and ‘home’ must dwell … and that public policy should be oriented toward enabling dwelling, not criminalizing it or reducing it to the stripped down client relationship of the shelter” (p. 147). More specifically, rather than repressing the habitats and networks that the homeless have themselves created, we should recognize these communities, including, in particular, “politicized homeless encampments” (p. 107) as participants in the political processes through which we formulate policy.

Adoption Matters: Philosophical and Feminist Essays. Edited by Sally Haslanger and Charlotte Witt. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2004. 336p. $49.95 cloth, $22.95 paper.

This is a fruitful collection of essays focusing on adoption in order to explore “deeply held but often tacit assumptions about what in human life is natural and what is social” (p. 1). The editors rightly recognize that adoption is a social practice through which family and identity are explicitly shaped and regulated by social institutions. They explore this notion in contrast to the ideological view of family and identity as “natural,” “genetic,” and “biological.” They argue that “[w]e need to ask of families: how have the institutions shaped our understandings of family, and how might critical reflection on these understandings help us reshape the institutions to be more just?” (p. 8). The anthology is organized around three general areas of concern: “‘Natural’ and ‘Unnatural’ Families,” “Familial Relationships and Personal Identities,” and “Constructions of Race and Constructions of Family.” While some contributions are stronger than others, overall the anthology achieves the authors' goal of creating a “context for rethinking family and adoption, and the norms and rules that govern them, in a more humane and just fashion” (p. 15).

Machiavelli and Empire. By Mikael Hörnqvist. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004. 320p. $75.00.

This study of the formation of Machiavelli's republican imperialism concludes with great political questions: “Machiavelli had created a power destined to put an end to centuries of backwardness, obscurantism, and oppression. By tearing asunder veils of political and religious illusion, uprooting and devouring all that comes in its way or opposes its principles and interests, [Machiavelli's modernity] has transformed, and is in the process of transforming, the lives of millions of people. Is it a destructive or benevolent force? A new form of imperialism, disguised as democracy and globalization, while in reality relying on naked, shameless, and brutal exploitation? Or is it a liberator that will bring justice and benefit to mankind? Perhaps it is too early to say. What is beyond doubt, though, is that the aim of this power is to conquer the world, and to do so in the name of liberty” (p. 290).

Although International Organizations (IOs) have the ability to promote economic and political development throughout the world, political imperatives ensure that they will fail to meet their potential. This essay is a response to the editor's kind request to speculate as to the role of IOs over the next decade. Although my arguments apply broadly, here I consider development, and so I focus on organizations such as the World Bank and IMF. Over the coming decades these organizations will fail in their attempts to alleviate poverty. On a more positive note, political science is rapidly advancing our understanding of the pathologies of IOs. Unfortunately, the failure of IOs to alleviate poverty is, I believe, a politically stable circumstance: intellectual advances will not translate into better-performing IOs. I focus on a specific set of theoretical arguments as to why IOs fail to promote development, concluding that we should anticipate more of the same rather than the radical reforms that are necessary if IOs are to achieve their stated goals.Alastair Smith is professor of politics at New York University ([email protected]).

Rights, Democracy, and Fulfillment in the Era of Identity Politics: Principled Compromises in a Compromised World. By David Ingram. New York: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, 2004. 280p. $70.00 cloth, $27.95 paper.

David Ingram situates his work within the tradition of critical social theory and traces its normative impulse to the young Marx's aspiration for human fulfillment. However, in order to avoid the trap of utopianism, he adopts a pragmatic attitude and highlights the importance of compromises. At the same time, by remaining cognizant of the price paid for normative compromises, he is able to maintain his pragmatic attitude without losing sight of the aspiration for human fulfillment and perfectibility that inspires his work.

The Greek Tradition in Republican Thought. By Eric Nelson. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004. 320p. $65.00.

In the United States today, the top 20% of families receive approximately 50% of the nation's aggregate income; the bottom 40% of families receive less than 14%. Nearly 36 million Americans—12.5% of the population—live in poverty. These facts are well known. But what do they mean for politics? Do inequalities of wealth distort the political process? Do they contribute to—or constitute—injustice? Is the pursuit of wealth itself corrupting? Does greed distort the soul and damage the polity? Eric Nelson explores affirmative answers to these questions in this impressive first book.

Desolation and Enlightenment: Political Knowledge After Total War, Totalitarianism, and the Holocaust. By Ira Katznelson. New York: Columbia University Press, 2003. 208p. $29.00 cloth, $17.50 paper.

This eloquent volume, which originated as Columbia University's Leonard Hastings Schoff Memorial Lectures in 1997–98, has a dual mission. The first is personal. It is a “critical homage” to the post–World War II scholars who were Ira Katznelson's teachers. Practicing their craft “in the midst of a moment stamped by the greatest shocks and stresses the Enlightenment tradition had ever faced,” these scholars produced a powerful revision of American Enlightenment liberalism that Katznelson believes could serve as a guidepost for today (p. 157). Confronting the “twentieth-century compound of total war, totalitarianism, and holocaust,” they would neither simply reaffirm the faith in reason and science as secular grounds of moral progress nor simply repudiate ideals of autonomy and freedom as “mere fantasy or, worse, the main source of radical evil” (pp. 33, 39). They “sought instead to renew and protect the Enlightenment's heritage by appropriating and transforming social science, history, and the study of public policy” so as to provide illumination in the face of desolation (p. xiii). Katznelson's principal aim is to show how the work of this group might make possible a subtle intervention into “today's fervent but thin controversies about social inquiry and the status of Enlightenment” (p. xv).

Democracy Growing Up: Authority, Autonomy, and Passion in Tocqueville's Democracy in America. By Laura Janara. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2002. 256p. $75.50 cloth, $25.95 paper.

A professor used to remark that “you can say that Hobbes is about dairy farming if you back it up.” Laura Janara writes that Tocqueville's Democracy in America is about embryology, the feminine and masculine, gestation, birth, and gender relations, and she backs it up.

Privacies: Philosophical Evaluations. Edited by Beate Rössler. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2004. 231p. $55.00 cloth, $22.95 paper.

This fine collection of essays on privacy crosses disciplinary and national boundaries, bringing together 13 scholars from law, philosophy, political theory, and film studies to consider “various aspects of the problematic of the private.” As the editor, Beate Rössler, explains this “problematic,” current debates about the value and limits of privacy—such as the reach of information technology or the private lives of public figures—pose afresh more fundamental philosophical questions about privacy: What is the normative grounding for a right to privacy? How does such a right relate to identity and integrity? What is the demarcation in persons' lives between the private and the public? And why should privacy be valued?

With the economic rise of India and China, a new question has entered the international public sphere: How will the polities of India and China be shaped by their continuing economic march over the next decade or so? More specifically, will politics get in the way of their steady economic rise, or will political liberalization continue as the market forces are embraced ever more vigorously? Will economic liberalization, in short, promote further political liberalization? This question is more relevant to China than to India, where economic liberalization has been pursued within the framework of a long-established democracy.Ashutosh Varshney ([email protected]) is professor of political science at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. The author thanks Mary Gallagher and Anna Grzymala-Busse for their comments on a draft of this essay.