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.

Trading Voices: The European Union in International Commercial Negotiations. By Sophie Meunier. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005. 248p. $35.

One often hears that integration in Europe magnifies the political voice of European countries on the international scene. The larger size of the European Union market surely makes investment in any particular European country more attractive, and importers are certainly more eager to satisfy a regulatory requirement if doing so will give them access to the entire European market. But does unity bring negotiating clout, too? This is the question Sophie Meunier investigates in her book Trading Voices.

The Killing Trap: Genocide in the Twentieth Century. By Manus I. Midlarsky. New York: Cambridge University Press, 480p. $75.00 cloth, $28.99 paper.

An impressive body of work is emerging that aspires to explain what appears to defy explanation: genocide. Although most of these studies focus on individual cases, scholars are increasingly developing theoretical frameworks and applying a comparative method to explain not individual genocides but the very phenomenon. Manus Midlarsky's highly ambitious, original, and impressive book aspires to bring us closer to understanding genocide in the contemporary age. Avoiding monocausal explanations that locate homicidal tendencies either in cultural or strategic variables, Midlarsky draws from international relations theory, comparative politics, and psychology to explain what makes genocide imaginable and executable. Written with controlled passion by a scholar deeply committed to using social science theory and methods to understand this highly emotional topic, The Killing Trap is an invaluable contribution to genocide studies.

Peace Time: Cease-Fire Agreements and the Durability of Peace. By Virginia Page Fortna. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004. 264p. $57.50 cloth, $19.95 paper.

At War's End: Building Peace After Civil Conflict. By Ronald Paris. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004. 302p. $65.00 hardback, $23.99 paper.

The studies under review focus on the question of what happens once violence ends. As such, they illuminate an important segment of world politics that begins once the guns stop roaring. Though different in theoretical outlook, research orientation, and scientific contribution, the two studies supplement one another. The first, by Virginia Page Fortna, investigates the duration of cease-fires while the second, by Ronald Paris, probes the success of peacekeeping missions. Taken together, the factors both studies highlight and the conclusions they offer add to our growing knowledge on intra/interstate wars and peace in world politics.

Bringing Religion into International Relations. By Jonathan Fox and Shmuel Sandler. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004. 224p. $55.00.

With this book, Jonathan Fox and Shmuel Sandler offer the most comprehensive meditation to date on the question of religion as a factor in international relations. Stating as their central purpose a desire to “expand the boundaries of international relations theory by the inclusion of religion as a variable in the research of international politics” (p. 4), the authors provide a superbly structured overview of a topic that has been crying out for sustained engagement for some time now. While the questions asked (and many of the answers eventually posited) are by no means wholly original, Bringing Religion Into International Relations finally offers IR a systematic baseline of inquiry that subsequent scholarship on religion and international affairs can build upon or challenge.

From Resource Scarcity to Ecological Security: Exploring New Limits to Growth. Edited by Dennis Pirages and Ken Cousins. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2005. 280p. $60.00 cloth, $24.00 paper.

With the near quadrupling of the world population in the last century, the melting of the polar ice cap, and the increased frequency of hurricanes such as Katrina and other “natural” disasters, the issue of ecological security is receiving renewed attention. Ecological security focuses not only on threats resulting directly from environmental degradation but also on the economic ramifications of failed environmental policies, military threats that stem from conflicts over scarce resources, and ecologically related health risks. The idea of ecological security achieved a measure of popularity during the 1980s as researchers and policymakers began to consider the broad security implications of crises related to natural resources. In this new volume, the editors and contributing authors try to forecast the potential security ramifications of current environmental trends over the next 30 years. Ecological security serves as an umbrella term throughout the volume for evaluating the risks to humanity created by inaction, weak policies, or slow implementation of environmental policies regarding population, water, food, energy, global climate change, deforestation, and biodiversity.

Calculating Credibility: How Leaders Assess Military Threats. By Daryl G. Press. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2005. 218p. $32.50.

Deterrence by Diplomacy. By Anne E. Sartori. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005. 176p. $32.50.

In Cold War deterrence, nothing was more important or disturbing than the credibility problem. Success depended on conveying credible threats, yet it was hard to see how to make retaliatory threats credible in mutual nuclear deterrence, particularly in extended deterrence or to prevent conventional attacks. It was also hard to make nuclear retaliation threats credible against nonnuclear powers; nuclear use would arouse condemnation, set an awful precedent, and stimulate nuclear proliferation. In fact, how were retaliatory threats of any sort made credible?

Economic Nationalism in a Globalizing World. Edited by Eric Helleiner and Andreas Pickel. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2005. 271p. $57.50 cloth, $22.95 paper.

The editors lay out three goals for this book. They wish us to question contemporary understandings of economic nationalism, to appreciate the importance of identity in shaping economic policy, and to recognize how ideas and identity can be integrated into work in international political economy (IPE). The editors and contributors go a long way toward achieving all three aims, though not with equal success. They are most successful in highlighting the importance of identity in establishing the goals of political action, including economic policymaking, and thus any reader will think more seriously about the possible contributions of constructivism to IPE.

The Enlargement of the European Union and NATO: Ordering from the Menu in Central Europe. By Wade Jacoby. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004. 287p. $70.00 cloth, $23.99 paper.

The enlargement of Europe has proven a lush garden for researchers to cultivate new approaches and theories of international and comparative politics and reengineer older approaches and theories. Many of these studies fit under the larger rubric of the “Europeanization” of the Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries and focus on the external impact of the European Union on the political and economic reforms of the new members of the EU and/or NATO. Good examples include the works of Frank Schimmelfenning and Ulrich Sedelmeier (The Europeanization of Central and Eastern Europe, 2005) and Milada Anna Vachudova (Europe Undivided: Democracy, Leverage, and Integration After Communism, 2004). Wade Jacoby's piece fits squarely into this large and excellent body of growing literature—theoretically sophisticated, methodologically sound, and well written.

International Democracy and the West: The Role of Governments, Civil Society, and Multinational Business. By Richard Youngs. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004. 232p. $99.00.

In his seminal article published nearly 30 years ago, cleverly called “Second Image Reversed,” Peter Gourevitch outlined a set of arguments for why and how to study the international causes of domestic outcomes. This framework had a profound effect on several literatures, but only a minor ripple in the study of regime change. A handful of international relations scholars, including John Owen and Mark Peceny, have made important contributions to this field, and a smattering of comparativists have added the international dimension to their list of independent variables that influence regime type, but the subject could not be considered a mainstream field. In fact, the third-wave transitologists gave only passing attention to the international dimensions of democratization. Laurence Whitehead did write an important chapter on international dimensions of democratization in the four-volume study on transitions from autocratic rule edited by Louillermo O'Donnell, Philippe C. Schmitter, and Lawrence Whitehead. Yet, in one of the introductory essays in this study, Schmitter wrote that one “of the firmest conclusions that emerged … was that transitions from authoritarian rule and immediate prospects for political democracy were largely to be explained in terms of national forces and calculations. External actors tended to play an indirect and usually marginal role” (in O'Donnell, Schmitter, and Whitehead, eds., Transitions from Authoritarian Rule: Southern Europe, 1986, p. 5). Scholars and policy analysts writing about democratization after the end of the Cold War have devoted more attention to international factors, yet the subject is still grossly neglected. This absence of scholarship is all the more surprising given the foreign policy debates in Washington, Brussels, Moscow, and Tehran about the role the United States in fostering “regime change.”

Dams and Development: Transnational Struggles for Water and Power. By Sanjeev Khagram. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 2004. 270p. $45.00 cloth, $21.95 paper.

This is a strong example of recent work in political science that mines the boundary of comparative politics and international relations to identify the complex sources of political change. Sanjeev Khagram draws on an intensive case study of the Narmada Dam projects in India and the increasingly successful transnational protests against them to produce a more general argument about how development visions can be transformed—even by actors who seem powerless. In his broadly constructivist analysis, Khagram traces the impact of changing norms not just on visions but also on concrete global practices of development, especially the sharp drop in the number of dams completed in the last two decades of the twentieth century.

Dangerous Sanctuaries: Refugee Camps, Civil War, and the Dilemmas of Humanitarian Aid. By Sarah Kenyon Lischer. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2005. 204p. $35.00 cloth.

The relationship between refugee flows and the incidence of conflict has troubled security analysts and policymakers, as well as the humanitarian aid community, for some time. Although the connection has long been recognized, little systematic work has been done to pick it apart. We know that some refugee communities are conflict prone while some are not; some refugee movements appear to induce substantial regional insecurity while others do not. Why?

Ordering International Politics: Identity, Crisis, and Representational Force. By Janice Bially Mattern. New York and London: Routledge, 2005. 303p. $25.95.

Janice Bially Mattern's impressive first book comes with all barrels loaded. Although her subtitle suggests that she will take on the usual suspects, realist power-politics and neoliberal common-interest approaches, she also includes a critique of the approach closest to her own, namely, constructivism. The book can be read for the strength of its theoretical arguments alone; although the author labels this view a “post-constructivist” approach, it is perhaps better understood as a “linguistic turn.” Theoretical arguments are “tested” against the Suez crisis of 1956, in particular the breakdown and reconstitution of the so-called Special Relationship between the United States and the United Kingdom.

Agents of Atrocity: Leaders, Followers, and the Violation of Human Rights in Civil War. By Neil J. Mitchell. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004. 228p. $35.00.

Final Solutions: Mass Killing and Genocide in the Twentieth Century. By Benjamin A. Valentino. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 2004. 317p. $29.95 cloth, $18.95 paper.

In the last decade, we have made great progress in recognizing patterns in the use of state-sponsored mass murder and other life integrity violations. As a result of this body of work, policymakers now have better tools with which to predict massive human rights abuses, and fewer excuses to hide behind when confronted with potential or ongoing atrocities. Yet much more needs to be done. On the policymaking side, mass killings continue unabated, with few international actors willing to address them head-on. On the academic side, we have spent so much time and intellectual capital on the structural factors that allow, encourage, exacerbate, or inhibit atrocities that we have often neglected the role of the perpetrators themselves. The two books reviewed here take on this deficit in the literature. These important new books convincingly argue that in order to understand and address the most egregious human rights violations, we must begin with those responsible for devising and implementing these murderous policies.

Democratizing Global Politics: Discourse Norms, International Regimes, and Political Community. By Rodger A. Payne and Nayef H. Samhat. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2004. 194p. $45.00.

Since the September 11 attacks, depending on the month or even the day, one might or might not reply in the affirmative to the question of whether there is an emerging international or even global political order. President George W. Bush justified the United States March 2003 invasion of Iraq as the preservation and enhancing of that order and of the United Nations itself. A few months later, the UN secretary general suggested that the U.S. invasion was illegal. And even if one grants the emergence of a nascent global political order, its character is uncertain: Is it democratic, consensual, and egalitarian, or hierarchical and undemocratic?

Cities in the International Marketplace. By H. V. Savitch and Paul Kantor. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002. 488p. $65.00 cloth, $19.95 paper.

The growing popularity of comparative research is one of the most exciting recent developments in the field of urban politics. Comparison allows urbanists to transcend the local and see cities as part of a national or global system. It helps urban scholars identify which factors derive from the workings of democratic capitalist systems, and which grow from particular national practices and policies. But comparative urbanists have a difficult task as they try to disentangle cities from their national contexts. On the one hand, one can hardly understand, say, education policy in Detroit and Düsseldorf without clarifying local and national roles. On the other, an urbanist eager to highlight what is salient about the local does not wish to make national policy analysis central to his or her research. These special theoretical and methodological challenges confronting the comparative urbanist can be daunting.

Ending Empire: Contested Sovereignty and Territorial Partition. By Hendrik Spruyt. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2005. 305p. $55.00 cloth, $22.50 paper.

In his latest book, Hendrik Spruyt returns to a long-standing debate among scholars of twentieth-century decolonization: Why did some metropolitan governments withdraw from their empires fairly quickly, while other imperial powers waged a protracted struggle to retain their overseas possessions, sacrificing men and money in the process? Spruyt not only offers a sophisticated theoretical response to a question of historical significance but also applies it to more contemporary cases of dissolution by examining the breakup of the Soviet Union into 15 independent states and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.