This volume traces the origins of clientelism, defined as “the trade of votes and other types of partisan support in exchange for public decisions with divisible benefits” (p. 4), in eight European countries: England, France, Greece, Iceland, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain, and Sweden, from the late eighteenth to the late twentieth century. It has two main goals: to identify the incentives that make clientelism feasible or unacceptable, and to challenge the view recently advanced by Robert Putnam (Making Democracy Work 1993) that polities can be nicely divided between clientelist polities (i.e., those in which particular interests are promoted) and civic polities (i.e., those in which particular interests are expressed as part of the general interest).

The reader of this book wonders whether Shinder Purewal chose the title with a view to appropriately reflect his analytical approach, or simply because categories such as “ethnicity” and “ethnonationalism” reflect a mainstream paradigm in the social sciences of the 1980s and 1990s. Purewal has chosen the concept of “Sikh ethnonationalism” in the title of the book only to reject what the reviewer feels are its most basic assumptions and, instead, privileged a rather traditional Marxian politicaleconomy approach that relies heavily on class as the fundamental analytical and explanatory category. From this perspective, ethnicity is merely a resource for the dominant class to mobilize the masses for its own narrow economic and political interest. Therefore, “The Political Economy of Punjab” is much more fitting for the author's main argument.

Until recently, the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) was a newly fledged opposition group trying to find its place in the turbulent process of Taiwan's democratization. But in March 2000, the DPP's candidate, Chen Shuibian, won the presidency, and in December 2001, the DPP replaced the former ruling party, the Kuomintang (KMT), as the largest party in Taiwan's Legislative Yuan. This dramatic rise to power and the party's current policies and future evolution are greatly illuminated by Shelley Rigger's up-close account of the DPP's history, organization, policies, and personnel.

The 1980s may have been a “lost decade” for Latin America as a whole, but it certainly was not for Indian movements across the continent. During the 1980s, regional and national-level Indian organizations grew in number and strength. Indians launched political movements (and in some cases political parties) during the 1990s in Mexico, Venezuela, Colombia, Bolivia, Guatemala, and, perhaps most impressively, Ecuador. In June of 1990, Ecuador was paralyzed for days as Indians across the country blocked highways, occupied local government offices, organized land invasions, and marched on the capital, Quito—thousands strong.

At crucial turning points in the history of U.S. political science, urban politics has moved to the center of the discipline. In the early 1900s, comparative studies of local government and administration contributed to the emergence of professional political science. In the postwar era, studies of community power played a critical role in the behaviorialist revolution. In recent years, the rethinking of national boundaries and institutions has presented new opportunities for studies of politics at the local level to contribute to reformulated approaches to state-society relations in general. This extended theoretical essay, though addressed to “urban studies” rather than to political scientists as such, offers glimpses of how such a reformulation might look.

This well written volume could not have come at a better time. At no time has the issue of political structure and/or restructuring been more contentious in Nigeria's political history. This study is a courageous effort at isolating and discussing the issues that shape Nigerian politics: federalism, revenue sharing or allocation, population, local governance, and state creation. Rotimi Suberu admits that the Nigerian federation is “hypercentralized,” thus negating the basic principles of federalism. He notes quite correctly that this is both a product of Nigeria's historical experiences and the character of postcolonial politics, but more importantly, the legacy of decades of military dictatorship with its commandist style of rule. This political reality, according to the author, is further complicated by several fault lines in Nigerian politics and society: the North-South divide, Christian-Muslim antagonism, ethnic suspicions and conflicts, majority-minority ethnic calculations, oil and nonoil state struggles, and a political elite that has found it rather challenging to build a national project.

The wave of market reforms that swept across the world during the last two decades stunned most observers. It came as a particular surprise that even fragile democracies would implement painful neoliberal programs. Why did presidents enact drastic, risky measures that could easily trigger opposition and protest, thus endangering their political survival? How did the people respond to this bitter medicine? And how did democracy fare? Did its quality suffer because presidents autocratically imposed unpopular reforms? Or did political leaders manage to obtain popular support for their neoliberal programs through democratic mechanisms?