Globalization and the Politics of Pay: Policy Choices in the American States. By Susan B. Hansen. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2006. 248p. $24.95.

During the past 50 years, U.S. trade negotiators have consistently tried to pry open global manufactured goods and services markets and to transform publicly regulated service sectors into contestable markets. Most analyses have focused on this strategy's effects on wages and work conditions in the target countries. Susan Hansen provides a detailed empirical consideration of what that strategy means back home at the level of U.S. states. The book's primary contribution is to link two research domains—state and local politics (SAL) and international political economy (IPE)—that are usually strictly segregated not only inside American political science departments but also across universities. Unfortunately, however, the author, a SAL specialist, neglects about a decade of helpful findings from the IPE literature.

Scoring Points: Politicians, Activists, and the Lower Federal Court Appointment Process. By Nancy Scherer. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2005. 288p. $65.00 cloth, $24.95 paper.

The last several decades have witnessed increasing politicization of the selection and confirmation process for judges of the lower federal courts. Nancy Scherer argues that this phenomenon results from politicians engaging in “elite mobilization strategies” designed to placate, and motivate, elite party activists. Republican presidents tend to make ideologically driven appointments. Democratic presidents embrace affirmative action in selecting judicial nominees, both to signal powerful groups and also—insofar as Scherer's empirical analysis confirms that female and minority Democratic judicial appointees tend to be more liberal than other Democratic appointees—on ideological grounds. Senators on both sides of the aisle employ obstructionist tactics, and both parties have made judicial selection and confirmation a campaign issue.

The Powers of War and Peace: The Constitution and Foreign Affairs After 9/11. By John Yoo. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005. 378p. $29.00 cloth, $19.00 paper.

Most readers of this journal will recognize the name of John Yoo, legal architect of the Bush administration's most controversial policies in the war on terror. In the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, Yoo played a decisive role in the Office of Legal Counsel to the U.S. Department of Justice, where he regularly defended the most extreme legal options under consideration by the administration. In August 2002, he penned a memo arguing that both international and domestic legal prohibitions on torture represent illegitimate restraints on presidential power. His legal views rapidly gained the upper hand because they told the president what he wanted to hear: As commander in chief, the president can do pretty much whatever he wants in order to protect the American people.

The Politics of Disgust: The Public Identity of the Welfare Queen. By Ange-Marie Hancock. New York: New York University Press, 2004. 216p. $60.00 cloth, $20.00 paper.

Even the casual observer of politics knows that the very mention of the word “welfare” elicits a visceral, negative reaction from many (e.g., see Tom W. Smith, “That Which We Call Welfare by Any Other Name Would Smell Sweeter,” Public Opinion Quarterly 51 [Fall 1987]: 75–83). In The Politics of Disgust, Ange-Marie Hancock explains that this reaction is a result of the well-ingrained public identity of the welfare recipient, an identity that so marginalizes this group as to lead to their almost complete exclusion from the political process.

The Politics of Precedent on the U.S. Supreme Court. By Thomas G. Hansford and James F. Spriggs, II. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006. 176p. $29.95.

Judging on a Collegial Court: Influences on Federal Appellate Decision Making. By Virginia A. Hettinger, Stefanie A. Lindquist, and Wendy L. Martinek. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2006. 192p. $39.50.

It is all too rare when books are more than the sum of their individual articles. Fortunately for scholars of judicial politics, both The Politics of Precedent on the U.S. Supreme Court and Judging on a Collegial Court are exactly that. Despite the fact that earlier incarnations of several chapters previously appeared in print, both books significantly improve upon the earlier analyses and make independent and important contributions to the literature on courts. In fact, some of the results presented in Precedent contradict previous research published by the authors (see, for example, p. 123).

Why Trust Matters: Declining Political Trust and the Demise of American Liberalism. By Marc J. Hetherington. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004. 208p. $35.00.

Fifteen years after the signing of the Social Security Act, this already broad government program was expanded. With the amendments of 1950, an additional 10 million additional people were covered, including some of the poorest—domestic and agricultural workers. By using the payroll tax to support Social Security payments, citizens saw the program as one to which they contributed and from which they should receive. Even in very different times 55 years later, Americans continued to support this approach to public pensions. Despite comparatively low levels of trust in government and decades of antitax and antigovernment movement successes, President George W. Bush's efforts to privatize Social Security fell flat.

Transforming Latin America: The International and Domestic Origins of Change. By Craig Arceneaux and David Pion-Berlin. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2005. 280p. $27.95.

In this book, Craig Arceneaux and David Pion-Berlin examine the impact of international influences on policy change in Latin American countries. As the authors correctly point out, “the scholarship on political change in Latin America provides little direction for those seeking answers to the relative impact of domestic and international forces” (p. 29). This ambitious project seeks to explain the conditions under which international actors influence governmental decisions, as well as the degree to which government policies are or are not shaped by foreign forces. To this end, they advance an “issue-guided analysis” that attempts to identify the important actors, capabilities, and modes of influence associated with policy change. The book offers a stimulating overview of foreign influences in domestic policy decisions, yet its contribution to the literature on policy reform in Latin America is limited.

Diversity in Democracy: Minority Representation in the United States. Edited by Gary M. Segura and Shaun Bowler. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2005. 316p. $45.00.

Freedom Is Not Enough: Black Voters, Black Candidates, and American Presidential Politics. By Ronald W. Walters. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2005. 239p. $27.95.

Diversity in Democracy is an ambitious book—even more ambitious than its subtitle suggests. Together with an impressive team of contributors, Gary Segura and Shaun Bowler set out to examine how minority Americans—blacks and Latinos, in particular—engage with the democratic political process, from how they align themselves within the existing party system to how they use the tools of democratic citizenship (namely, the vote) to advance their interests. In many ways Segura, Bowler, and their colleagues succeed and, in the process, reveal a number of important empirical phenomena and relationships, such as the value of descriptive representation in promoting both political trust and participation. Because of its contribution to basic knowledge about minority political behavior, this book would certainly be a valuable addition to any minority politics syllabus. However, its ambition is both a source of strength and a weakness.

Political Choice in Britain. By Harold D. Clarke, David Sanders, Marianne C. Stewart, and Paul F. Whiteley. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004. 392p. $95.00 cloth, $39.95 paper.

This book is a useful contribution to the psephology of British elections, using the 2001 British general election as its test bed. The authors examine the history of “sociological” and “economic” models of voting behavior, test and find them wanting, explaining that movement to issue, party, and leader perception (Worcester 1991) coupled with economic performance assessment (Sanders et al. 2001) is found to be more effective.

Politics, Policy, and Organizations: Frontiers in the Scientific Study of Bureaucracy. Edited by George A. Krause and Kenneth J. Meier. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2004. 352p. $65.00 cloth, $24.95 paper.

In this important book, coeditors George A. Krause and Kenneth J. Meier, along with their chapter authors, make a strong case for a theoretically informed and empirically advanced social science study of government bureaucracies. Although other social science disciplines have been rigorously studying public and private organizations for some time, the study of government bureaucracies has had a somewhat marginal position in political science. The current cadre of political scientists “scientifically” studying the bureaucracy, including many of the contributors to this volume, attests to the growing prominence of this subject in the discipline.

Besieged: School Boards and the Future of Education Politics. Edited by William G. Howell. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2005. 356p. $19.77.

In college and university towns across the United States, academics are regular fixtures on local public school boards. In search of a way to meet our civic duty, we seem to be drawn naturally to school boards more than other local public institutions. This is a guess, of course, and it is one of the few things one cannot find data on in this collection of essays on the work that has been done by and to school boards in the last decade. If the intuition that academics tend to romanticize local school boards is only half right, these rigorous, fine-grained essays on one area of education politics will intrigue more than just political scientists.

Democracy Derailed in Russia: The Failure of Open Politics. By M. Steven Fish. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005. 313p. $29.99.

In recent years, it has been become abundantly clear that the democratic project in Russia has stalled. In 2004, Freedom House even moved Russia from the “partly free” to “not free” list of states. Russia's democratic shortcomings are legion and well known: corruption, human rights abuses, electoral manipulation, use of the courts to silence regime opponents, and state control over the media. However, there has been little systemic attempt to explain why democracy has not been established in Russia.

If the Workers Took a Notion: The Right to Strike and American Political Development. By Josiah Bartlett Lambert. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2005. 259p. $49.94 cloth, $19.95 paper.

Josiah Lambert's book succeeds at several levels, asking us to take seriously the rights and obligations once thought intrinsic to work and citizenship, especially in the context of the ever-malleable right to strike. One finds here a comprehensive history of organized labor in the United States dependent upon, and effectively situated in, an analysis of the crucial and fundamental right to strike—a right that has over time substantially changed in meaning and usefulness as a weapon in the struggle between capital and labor. This book is perfect for upper-level students in labor or political history, but is far more satisfying than such a recommendation suggests. While those new to this history will find themselves fascinated by accounts of strikes and the often violent reactions they engendered, more seasoned scholars will also be asked to think through their understanding of civil society and labor activism in a new and refreshing way. Well organized and tightly expressed, this volume should receive a wide and appreciative audience.

Institutions and the Fate of Democracy: Germany and Poland in the Twentieth Century. By Michael Bernhard. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2005. 310p. $29.95.

In this book Michael Bernhard asks two questions: Why do new democracies pick the institutions that they do? How do certain patterns of institutions affect the chances of democratic survival? And his theoretical framework, in its initial formulation, makes two claims. First, institutional choices are a product of powerful agents pursuing their narrow interest. If you know who is powerful and what they want, you will be able to predict the institutional outcomes. Second, the key to democratic survival, at least in the initial posttransition phase, is the breadth and strength of the original institution-forming coalition. A key conclusion of the study is that democracies are in trouble when the coalitions that brought about their institutional arrangements lose power too soon, as happened in prewar Poland and in Weimar Germany. And this can occur for a variety of reasons: New actors may be brought in, for example, or the salient issues may change.

Term Limits and the Dismantling of State Legislative Professionalism. By Thad Kousser. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005. 288p. $ 70.00 cloth, $29.99 paper.

Thad Kousser is interested in both term limits and legislative professionalism because they effect fundamental changes in the environment in which lawmakers work. Drawing upon Richard Fenno's paradigm, the author assumes that legislators will behave rationally, seeking to maximize their ability to win elections, affect policy, and gain influence in their chambers. How, he asks, do legislative professionalism and term limits alter the ways in which legislators do “transformative” work: 1) change budgets and 2) innovate in pursuance of their goals? And how do the alterations in the “internal power dynamics” of legislatures resulting from these reforms—3) the stability of leadership, 4) the independence of committees, and 5) the capacity for individual achievement—shape members' goal-seeking behavior?

Revolutionary Passage: From Soviet Union to Post-Soviet Russia, 1985–2000. By Marc Garcelon. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2005. 313p. $23.95.

How Russia Is Not Ruled: Reflections on Russian Political Development. By Allen C. Lynch. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005. 276p. $70 cloth, $24.99 paper.

Even a casual reader of the literature on postcommunist Russia will quickly realize that scholars who study that country face two main challenges. The first is doing research in a place where the course of events is hard to reconstruct, information is distorted or concealed, and relations of power are opaque. The second is to resist the temptation to make evidence from Russia fit preexisting intellectual agendas. Of these two challenges, the latter seems more formidable—even scholarly projects that enrich our factual knowledge may be led astray by the ambition to cast one's findings as a confirmation of pet grand theories. Lamentably, Marc Garcelon's book brings this quandary into sharp relief; reassuringly, Allen C. Lynch's book proves that it may be avoided.

Not Working: Latina Immigrants, Low-Wage Jobs, and the Failure of Welfare Reform. By Alejandra Marchevsky and Jeanne Theoharis. New York: New York University Press, 2006. 336p. $75.00 cloth, $22.00 paper.

This is an ethnographic study of how welfare reform affected Mexican immigrants in Long Beach, California, in the late 1990s. Poverty research is dominated by impersonal statistical studies. Ethnography is valuable for giving more hands-on sense on how the poor react to social policy. The authors know the welfare field well, and they write well. They are, however, much more hostile to welfare reform than are most experts. The major issue their book raises is whether we can take their position seriously. (Full disclosure: I am myself a proponent of reform whom the authors criticize.)

The Third Wave of Democratization in Latin America: Advances and Setbacks. Edited by Frances Hagopian and Scott Mainwaring. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005. 432p. $28.99.

Representative democracies refuse to collapse in Latin America. They endure even in the face of challenges that, in the region's past, have spelled democratic ruin. These include financial and economic crises, coup attempts, and persistent political and/or criminal violence. But if democracies stand, presidents fail with noticeable frequency. In the last 18 years, chief executives have resigned or been removed from office—without suspension of democratic rule—in Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia, Ecuador, Guatemala, Peru, and Venezuela. Interrupted presidencies, to borrow Arturo Valenzuela's apposite description, may well become one of three interlinked regional democratic markers. The second potential marker is the ascendance of political outsiders and the return of outcasts: Obscure, improbable, and discredited candidates (re)emerge as viable, even formidable, electoral contenders. The third, though seemingly at odds with the other two, is in fact closely related: citizenries that waver between disenchantment and bitterness, apathy and mobilization.

The Political Economy of the Living Wage: A Study of Four Cities. By Oren M. Levin-Waldman. Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 2004. $69.95 cloth, $24.95 paper.

Fighting for a Living Wage. By Stephanie Luce. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2004. 288p. $45.00 cloth, $18.95 paper.

While the idea of a living wage is traceable back to concerns about the status of wage earners in a republican political order voiced during the Jacksonian era, the modern history of the movement began in Baltimore in 1994. A coalition of unions, liberal religious groups, and organizations that work with and for the poor persuaded the city council to adopt a policy requiring all firms with city contracts to pay their employees a living wage. From there, the movement has spread to other parts of the country, resulting in about 130 similar ordinances at last count. These two books are the latest in a growing literature covering various facets of this phenomenon.

Reforming European Welfare States: Germany and the United Kingdom Compared. By Jochen Clasen. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005. 264p. $90.00.

This book traces welfare policy developments in Germany and the United Kingdom from the late 1970s to 2003. Focusing on three policy dimensions—unemployment policy, public pension policy, and family policy—Jochen Clasen seeks to understand the scope, nature, and timing of welfare reform. To his credit, the author avoids the usual trap of characterizing welfare reform exclusively in terms of retrenchment. Recognizing the complex nature of shifts in social policy over time, his work details and explains patterns of retrenchment, restructuring, and expansion. To understand the pathways of policy transformation, he considers three types of explanatory factors: party politics (mainly actors' preferences), contextual conditions (such as major events and social trends), and institutional parameters (including legal constraints, existing policy programs, and the characteristics of political economy structures). He also considers the relationships among these causal forces.