Foreign policy difficulties usually produce extensive scholarship. Vietnam led to numerous appraisals and reappraisals, many of which paralleled the protests in being heartfelt and radical. Perhaps because of the lack of a draft, Iraq's protests have been cooler and more muted, and the scholarship has tended to be more analytical and mainstream. James Lebovic's excellent study looks at both cases to drive home the argument that was part of the Vietnam critique: Even if the United States is the most powerful state in the international system, there are sharp limits to what it can accomplish, and its very power creates some of those limits (see William J. Fulbright, The Arrogance of Power, 1966)

This symposium examines an emergent orientation within the American feminist movement called “choice feminism.” Choice feminists are primarily concerned with increasing the number of choices open to women and with decreasing judgments about the choices that individual women make. Choice feminists are best known for their argument that a woman who leaves the remunerated labor market to care for her children is a feminist in good standing; she makes a feminist decision. While media coverage of choice feminism has been extensive, political scientists have been comparatively quiet. In this symposium, four political scientists analyze and evaluate choice feminism, revealing their disagreement about the validity of the choice feminist position and about the meaning of choice feminism for movement politics, political judgment, and liberal political theory.

Whether as a solution to problems of political legitimacy or social mistrust, as a way of involving civil society, or as a method of crafting more effective “third way” policies, collaborative governance has been a topic of renewed interest for political scientists and policy intellectuals. Carmen Sirianni's Investing in Democracy: Engaging Citizens in Collaborative Governance (Brookings, 2009) is an important new book that raises many of these issues. Perspectives on Politics is a forum for raising questions of interest to a broad range of political scientists. In this symposium, we have asked a number of prominent political scientists and policy analysts to assess the book and to address two broader questions: in what ways does the book draw from and add to political science scholarship, and in what ways does political science scholarship help to shed light on the book's core themes?

I am grateful to Robert Jervis for his insights, which allow me to briefly clarify and extend my arguments by drawing upon two central themes of my book.

Whether as a solution to problems of political legitimacy or social mistrust, as a way of involving civil society, or as a method of crafting more effective “third way” policies, collaborative governance has been a topic of renewed interest for political scientists and policy intellectuals. Carmen Sirianni's Investing in Democracy: Engaging Citizens in Collaborative Governance (Brookings, 2009) is an important new book that raises many of these issues. Perspectives on Politics is a forum for raising questions of interest to a broad range of political scientists. In this symposium, we have asked a number of prominent political scientists and policy analysts to assess the book and to address two broader questions: in what ways does the book draw from and add to political science scholarship, and in what ways does political science scholarship help to shed light on the book's core themes?

Choice feminism is motivated by a fear of politics. It arises in response to three common criticisms of feminism: that feminism is too radical, too exclusionary, and too judgmental. In response, choice feminism offers a worldview that does not challenge the status quo, that promises to include all women regardless of their choices, and that abstains from judgment altogether. Moreover, it enables feminists to sidestep the difficulties of making the personal political: making judgments and demanding change of friends, family, and lovers. Yet judgment, exclusion, and calls for change are unavoidable parts of politics. If feminists are not to withdraw from political life altogether, we have to acknowledge the difficulty of engaging in politics. Political claims are partial; we will inevitably exclude, offend, or alienate some of those whom we should wish to have as allies. The political concerns and dilemmas to which choice feminism responds are very real. However, we can take seriously the political motivations behind choice feminism without withdrawing from politics. Instead, we need to complement an acknowledgment of the political dilemmas facing feminists with a celebration of the pleasures of engaging in politics with those who differ from and disagree with us.

I first came upon Daniel Jordan Smith's remarkable book as I was close to finishing my own book on corruption (Corruption, Inequality, and the Rule of Law, 2008). I had decided that I needed to include an analysis of Africa and especially Nigeria. At the publisher's booth at one or another political science convention, I was able to secure page proofs of his book and realized that I had come upon a kindred spirit. Smith's argument on Nigeria was remarkably similar to my general framework for analyzing corruption, despite our coming from different disciplines and using very different methodologies.

How should feminist theorists respond when women who claim to be feminists make “choices” that seemingly prop up patriarchy, like posing for Playboy, eroticizing male dominance, or advocating wifely submission? This article argues that the conflict between the quest for gender equality and the desire for sexual pleasure has long been a challenge for feminism. In fact, the second-wave of the American feminist movement split over issues related to sexuality. Feminists found themselves on opposite sides of a series of contentious debates about issues such as pornography, sex work, and heterosexuality, with one side seeing evidence of gender oppression and the other opportunities for sexual pleasure and empowerment. Since the mid-1990s, however, a third wave of feminism has developed that seeks to reunite the ideals of gender equality and sexual freedom. Inclusive, pluralistic, and non-judgmental, third-wave feminism respects the right of women to decide for themselves how to negotiate the often contradictory desires for both gender equality and sexual pleasure. While this approach is sometimes caricatured as uncritically endorsing whatever a woman chooses to do as feminist, this essay argues that third-wave feminism actually exhibits not a thoughtless endorsement of “choice,” but rather a deep respect for pluralism and self-determination.

Whether as a solution to problems of political legitimacy or social mistrust, as a way of involving civil society, or as a method of crafting more effective “third way” policies, collaborative governance has been a topic of renewed interest for political scientists and policy intellectuals. Carmen Sirianni's Investing in Democracy: Engaging Citizens in Collaborative Governance (Brookings, 2009) is an important new book that raises many of these issues. Perspectives on Politics is a forum for raising questions of interest to a broad range of political scientists. In this symposium, we have asked a number of prominent political scientists and policy analysts to assess the book and to address two broader questions: in what ways does the book draw from and add to political science scholarship, and in what ways does political science scholarship help to shed light on the book's core themes?

The State of Working America, 2008/2009. By Lawrence Mishel, Jared Bernstein, and Heidi Shierholz. An Economic Policy Institute Book. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2009. 461 p. $59.95 cloth, $24.95 paper.

One attraction of “choice” feminism has been its refusal to judge the diverse desires of women. Yet for feminism to retain its political vision as a quest for social justice, we must continue difficult conversations concerning how acting on our individual desires impacts the lives of others. In this essay, I argue that feminists can acknowledge women's diverse desires while forging a meaningful feminist community. I make this argument by considering feminism's relationship to time, and particularly how women's diverse desires are read in each moment in time. If we abandon the generational model, wherein each new generation of feminists improves upon the last, for a genealogical perspective where women recognize our feminist origins and empathize with the diverse struggles of other women, we might reaffirm social justice for the community as central to feminist politics. To articulate this possibility, I turn to the work of Simone de Beauvoir to explain her discovery of how her embodiment as a woman and her relationship to femininity becomes a way of grounding a feminist politics. Recognizing the “demands of femininity” in other women's lives allows us to affirm feminist community while retaining the capacity to make judgments that realize social justice as a feminist goal.

I am grateful for Eric Uslaner's thoughtful review of my book. The exchange between us highlights for me, above all, the benefits of reading and conversing across disciplinary boundaries. Uslaner correctly notes that my book refers relatively little to a vast political science literature on corruption. My aim was to understand corruption in Nigeria as it is experienced by ordinary citizens, rather than to contribute to Western analytical debates about (possibly) more universal aspects of corruption and its consequences. But I certainly acknowledge and accept that my own analysis and understanding (as well as the larger contribution of my book) would have benefited from a deeper engagement with the political science literature on corruption. I would quibble with his contrast between anthropologists' “stories” and political scientists' “data.” To me, real people's lives and narratives are among the most powerful data in the social sciences—but that is why I am an anthropologist.

Eric Uslaner's ambitious book argues that—across a wide range of countries and contexts—the fundamental underlying engine and explanation for corruption is inequality. Mustering an array of sources, including survey data, comparative literatures, and personal anecdotes, Uslaner makes a compelling case that the faith often placed in relatively simplistic institutional changes as a means for combating corruption is misguided. Such approaches ignore the deeply embedded economic and social underpinnings of corruption, which, he argues, are tied less to political institutions (narrowly conceived) and more to systematic inequality and the economic and cultural processes that support it.

In his book, Bruce Miroff provides a captivating account of the ill-fated 1972 presidential campaign of George McGovern. Indeed, given Miroff's access and diligence in interviewing many of the major players, this is likely to be the definitive study of that campaign for the foreseeable future. To read it is to relive the events of a crucial episode in the career of American liberalism—and also to relive the emotions of hope, anguish, frustration, and dismay that attended them. In addition to providing such a wonderful narrative and judicious assessment of this campaign, Miroff also wants to argue that these events marked the onset of and contributed in some ways to what he calls “the identity crisis of the Democratic Party.”

I respond to the foregoing essays and take up an ambivalent defense of Hirshman's argument. While agreeing with various points the contributors make, I highlight the fact that women's choices are still made under conditions of oppression that shape not only the options women have, but the desires themselves that shape their choices. Recognizing oppression as a social phenomenon allows feminists to accept a wider range of individual choices than we might think acceptable under the feminist umbrella, but it also requires a distinction between making a feminist choice and offering feminist support for choice.