How Voters Decide: Information Processing in Election Campaigns. By Richard R. Lau and David P. Redlawsk. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006. 366p. $75.00 cloth, $29.99 paper.

Models of voting behavior go a long way toward predicting the choices individuals make in elections. And, for practical purposes, prediction is critical, as it gives us important insight into the potential outcomes that might ensue, given certain conditions. However, research on information processing is increasingly focusing our attention more explicitly on understanding the process by which voters make decisions rather than focusing exclusively on the decisions themselves. This is exactly what Richard Lau and David Redlawsk do in How Voters Decide. This book departs from previous information processing research because not only do the authors propose a comprehensive process-oriented model of voter decision making, but they also test the various steps in the process using data gathered in an explicitly dynamic format.

Congressional Preemption: Regulatory Federalism. By Joseph F. Zimmerman. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2006. 288p. $70.00 cloth, $24.95 paper.

The adoption by Congress of major statutes regulating the environment, workplace, and consumer transactions, beginning in the mid-1960s, has been seen by critics as granting too much authority to the federal government at the expense of the states. The critique of federal social regulation initiatives questions not only whether such policy interventions can be justified per se, but as importantly, whether congressional preemption itself is appropriate. Presidents Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan sought specific legislative and policy changes aimed at shifting formal authority away from Congress and back to the states—a “new federalism” to reverse the expansion of federal authority. At least rhetorically (though not necessarily substantively), President George W. Bush has taken a similar stance. But the perceived need to check federal authority is not the sole purview of conservatives; President Jimmy Carter supported a significant program of economic deregulation, and President Bill Clinton oversaw initiatives to devolve federal authority as part of a broader reform of federal public management practices.

Direct Democratic Choice: The Swiss Experience. By Hanspeter Kriesi. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2005. 263p. $90.00.

The determinants of the voters' decision in direct democratic votes have received growing attention over the last 15 years. The reasons for this are mainly twofold. First, there has been a sharp increase in the number of popular votes worldwide. In Europe, the successive waves of referenda on the European Union, up to the recent rejection of the EU constitution in France and in the Netherlands, have put the issue of direct democratic choices on the top of both the scientific and political agendas. Second, we have witnessed important theoretical developments in the study of opinion formation and political behavior (e.g., the contributions of social and political psychology with respect to the role of cognitive strategies, or the contributions of communication studies with respect to media and campaign effects).

The Supreme Court and American Political Development. Edited by Ronald Kahn and Ken I. Kersch. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2006. 400p. $45.00 cloth, $19.95 paper.

In this book, Ronald Kahn and Ken I. Kersch bring together an impressive group of scholars to present essays on how the theoretical tenets of the American political development (or APD) research agenda can help illuminate the behavior and institutional trajectory of the U.S. Supreme Court over time. At the same time, these authors discuss at length the role that the Supreme Court plays in the continuing development of the APD enterprise and the ways in which the American state has evolved. This volume provides a useful contribution, as the APD literature has typically focused on the presidency and bureaucracy (specifically, executive agencies), and more recently on Congress, as the key players in the development of the American state, with “parties and courts” representing the historical antecedents. By focusing specifically on the Supreme Court, Kahn and Kersch place it in a starring role in American legal development, and American political development more generally.

A New Engagement? Political Participation, Civic Life, and the Changing American Citizen. By Cliff Zukin, Scott Keeter, Molly Andolina, Krista Jenkins, and Michael X. Delli Carpini. New York: Oxford University Press, 2006. 253p. $19.00.

Should we be really worried about declining public engagement? Or should we accept that it is merely changing shape? This book describes substantial alterations in the ways Americans are involved in public life, particularly younger citizens, and analyzes a wide range of empirical data with the goal of understanding the implications—both negative and positive—of these emerging patterns of participation.

Democracy and Elections in Africa. By Steffan Lindberg. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006. 240p. $55.00 cloth, $24.95 paper.

This book is an original, important, and in many ways impressive study that will make a contribution to both electoral and Africanist scholarship. The author's central argument is that repetitive elections (three or more) increase the democratic qualities of regimes and broaden and deepen civil liberties in societies. This argument is carefully placed within democratic theory and rigorously tested by a dense and generally sophisticated empirical analysis, although I have criticisms regarding the tightness of the theory and two variables used in the empirical analysis.

The First Amendment in Cross-Cultural Perspective: A Comparative Legal Analysis of the Freedom of Speech. By Ronald J. Krotoszynski, Jr. New York: New York University Press, 2006. 336p. $50.00.

The growing influence of modern foreign laws and legal rulings on the American model of constitutionalism is a dirty little secret no longer. In Lawrence v. Texas (2003), Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy, writing for the majority, made no apologies about his willingness to consult with rulings from the European Court of Human Rights in holding that the Fourteenth Amendment's promise of due process of law forbids the state of Texas from prohibiting sodomy between consenting adults. Court observers should have seen this development coming: With the breakdown of the Soviet Union came the emergence of new Western-style democracies thrust into the position of building new republics from scratch. American constitutional scholars were called upon in the late 1980s and early 1990s to consult with officials from these countries and advise them on the drafting of their own constitutions. Constitutionalism is now a commodity that travels across international lines. The Supreme Court's controversial method in Lawrence may or may not signal the beginning of a new era of cross-national consultations by the high Court. However, it does coincide with a growing interest on the part of political scientists studying comparative law and comparative constitutionalism during the past decade.

Polarized America: The Dance of Ideology and Unequal Riches. By Nolan McCarty, Keith T. Poole, and Howard Rosenthal. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2006. 240p. $35.00.

Hyperbole was rampant in the aftermath of the 2000 elections. Pundits, politicos, and journalists asserted that the United States was in the midst of a culture war. The country appeared to be polarized to many, and this polarization reached a crescendo in 2000, with the now “classic” red/blue map of the continental United States serving as the iconic image of this divide and with blabocrats and politicians alike all pronouncing the end of centrism. Notably absent in all this discussion, though, was actual empirical evidence, a sense of historical perspective, and a meaningful explanation for this apparent polarization beyond sophomoric cries of cultural wars and diverging beliefs about morality. While political science as a discipline had considerable expertise to bear on this “cultural divide,” the discipline had remained fairly quiet on this polarization.

Deliberative Choices: Debating Public Policy in Congress. By Gary Mucciaroni and Paul J. Quirk. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006. 296p. $50.00 cloth, $20.00 paper.

Gary Mucciaroni and Paul Quirk have done the field a service by reminding us that Congress is a deliberative body, even if it is not always a good deliberative body. The authors foreshadow their findings, stating: “Congressional debate is only moderately realistic and informed. Listeners encounter a considerable volume of distortions, omissions, and even falsehoods, with apparent potential to mislead” (p. x). They base this conclusion on a study of effects claims made during three significant policy debates: Welfare Reform in 1995 and 1996, the Estate Tax Repeal in 1999 and 2000, and the Telecommunication Deregulation Act of 1996. Effects claims are claims made during debate about the likely effects of the legislation or amendment under consideration: Reforming welfare will reduce illegitimate births; current tax rates depress incentives to invest; deregulation will help the telecommunications industry grow. The heavy lifting in the book comes from the authors' assessments of the validity of these effects claims (and rebuttals) based on contemporary knowledge of the issues that would have been available to members of Congress.

Soldiers to Citizens: The G.I. Bill and the Making of the Greatest Generation. By Suzanne Mettler. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005. 280p. $30.00 cloth, $15.95 paper.

Americans are not very good citizens—they do not participate actively in civic life, follow public affairs closely, or vote at a level comparable to other industrialized democracies. It has not always been this way, of course. A long line of commentators and scholars has celebrated the robust civic engagement demonstrated by Americans in the past; today, a cottage industry has developed to lament the sad state of contemporary citizenship and probe the causes of its decline. Scholars are not the only ones invested in explaining the downward trend in participation. The phenomenon has become a matter for ideological contestation, with conservatives (and some radicals) blaming the modern state for reducing citizens to passive dependents, while liberals insist the fault lies with other culprits such as the corporate media.

Principles of Constitutional Design. By Donald S. Lutz. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006. 278p. $80.00.

This is a complex, important, original, and unusual work. It should be studied carefully (not simply read) by all those interested in constitutional studies broadly understood. This includes constitutional lawyers (especially those with an interest in comparative constitutional law, and in constitutional design), political theorists of many different stripes, and most notably scholars in comparative politics interested in institutional questions. If in your research or teaching or consulting you rely on the work of Arend Lijphart, you should definitely read this book. You should also read it if you are interested in institutional design more generally.

Political Movements and Violence in Central America. By Charles D. Brockett. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005. 404p. $75.00 cloth, $29.99 paper.

From Movements to Parties in Latin America: The Evolution of Ethnic Politics. By Donna Lee Van Cott. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005. 300p. $75.00.

The two books here reviewed make remarkable contributions to our understanding of contemporary Latin American politics. Despite their distinct individual merits and methodological, analytical, and theoretical differences, they are worth reading together, for they both address the theme of political contention in Latin America, a topic of enduring importance.

Rightful Resistance in Rural China. By Kevin J. O'Brien and Lianjiang Li. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006. 200 pages. $70.00 cloth, $24.99 paper.

Studies of contemporary China move between two poles of presentation—richly detailed analyses of phenomena that seem specific to China and more sweeping panaromas that leap to broad generalities without always marking their steps forward clearly. Kevin J. O'Brien and Lianjiang Li offer an insightful study of collective action in contemporary China that successfully steers a course between the typical extremes. Their work is solidly anchored in years of research in the Chinese countryside, where they have conducted interviews and administered surveys, and about which they have read government documents and the press. This work also takes into account the growing amount of scholarship being produced by the Chinese themselves. And most helpful to their efforts of explaining Chinese cases to a broader audience, their analysis consistently engages the literature on collective action conceptualized principally out of studies of advanced industrial societies and the histories of those societies.

The Politics of the Governed: Reflections on Popular Politics in Most of the World. By Partha Chatterjee. New York: Columbia University Press, 2004. 173p. $33.00 cloth, $20.00 paper.

Nostalgia for the Modern: State Secularism and Everyday Politics in Turkey. By Esra Özyürek. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2006. 227p. $74.95 cloth, $21.95 paper.

Few leaders have been as lionized by their people decades after their deaths or have influenced their nation's political development as much as Turkey's Mustafa Kemal Atatürk. In the wake of World War I and the fall of the Ottoman Empire, Atatürk (an honorary title meaning “father of the Turks”) led a war of national independence, established the Turkish Republic, and introduced a series of modernizing/westernizing reforms that included secularization of the state, relative emancipation of women, and westernization of the alphabet, dress, and the legal code.

Saving Democracy: A Plan for Real Representation in America. By Kevin O'Leary. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2006. 394p. $50.00 cloth, $19.95 paper.

It is difficult to solve a problem to everyone's satisfaction when so few agree about the nature of the problem, let alone whether one exists. Such is the daunting task Kevin O'Leary faces in Saving Democracy, a book written to save us from a peril few onlookers see the same way, if they see it at all.

The Constitution as Social Design: Gender and Civic Membership in the American Constitutional Order. By Gretchen Ritter. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2006. 400p. $70.00 cloth, $29.95 paper.

Gretchen Ritter takes the American Constitution seriously. Like few others, she views the country's fundamental charter as announcing far more than a design for government institutions and a series of individual rights guarantees. The importance of the Constitution, she insists, extends deeper than can be captured by examining the text's most obvious features. It “creates and regulates a social order” (p. 8), a comprehensive understanding of public and private life. “The constitutional order acts as an instrument of social design,” claims Ritter; it endorses certain relationships over others, while also choosing to recognize certain members of the polity as privileged (p. 9). Traditional conceptions of the marital relationship or of the role of particular classes of people in the public realm, for example, are fostered and perpetuated by the constitutional scheme, not because the words of the text necessarily command it but because the nature of a constitution—an instrument that embraces a particular political and social order—makes it so.

Where Women Run: Gender and Party in the American States. By Kira Sanbonmatsu. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2006. 264p. $70.00 cloth, $24.95 paper.

In recent years, scholarship in the subfield of women and politics has met with a puzzling trend. The percentage of women in state legislatures, once steadily growing, has leveled off and even decreased in recent years. It is from this puzzle that Kira Sanbonmatsu's book begins: Why is the growth of women's representation in the state legislatures slowing down, and what do political parties have to do with it? Sanbonmatsu's argument is thoughtful, detailed and compelling, and she generates a bounty of information for scholars of women and politics, state politics, and political parties.

True Faith and Allegiance: Immigration and American Civic Nationalism. By Noah Pickus. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005. 272p. $35.00 cloth, $22.95 paper.

Is civic nationalism an oxymoron? Noah Pickus does not think so, at least not in America. Here, the best leaders have been able to combine a “rational commitment to a common creed based on abstract ideals” with a moderate nationalism valuing “tradition, inherited opinion, and a set of obligations that flow from sharing a distinctive history and culture” (p. 5). Civic nationalism, he argues, is possible in theory and has been achieved in practice. At pivotal moments in American history, leaders like James Madison and Theodore Roosevelt found a way for “civic principles and American nationalism” to reinforce each other (p. 5). Pickus calls for a new emphasis on civic nationalism in our time and cautions against too quickly dividing “civic nationalist positions into civic or national positions alone” (p. 125). In this carefully argued if not always persuasive book, he counsels a prudent policy of balancing “the universal thrust of civic principles” with “the particularist bond of nationalist sentiment” (p. 62). He bravely challenges a new generation of civic nationalists to fight for that balance today.

Runaway State-Building: Patronage Politics and Democratic Development. By Conor O'Dwyer. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006. 278p. $49.95.

This first book by Conor O'Dwyer adds to a growing and impressive collection of works on state building in postcommunist countries. In it he seeks to explain the variation in the growth of large patronage networks in state administrations in three central European countries—Poland, the Czech Republic, and Slovakia. In doing so, he looks to the relationship between the establishment of strong party systems and the ability of states to withstand the emergence of extensive patronage networks. Specifically, he posits (p. 13) that “the magnitude and character of administrative expansion is determined by the capacity of party competition to constrain patronage.” He concludes that taking all considerations into account, it is the presence or absence of a strongly competitive party system that most clearly explains the sleek state administrative structures in the Czech Republic and the bloated bureaucracy in Poland and Slovakia. The failure of these two countries, whose leaders had so keenly sought to dismantle the communist nomenklatura system, to gain control of what O'Dwyer calls “runaway state-building” is richly detailed and persuasively argued in this excellent book.

Locked in Place: State Building and Late Industrialization in India. By Vivek Chibber. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003. 334p. $49.50 cloth, $22.95 paper.

Despite the newfound optimism about the turnaround in the Indian economy, this book's arguments about the failure of the postcolonial state to build a developmental state in the 1950s and 1960s are original, important, and relevant. Vivek Chibber's Locked in Place sets out to dispel important misconceptions about India's early state-building effort. His arguments are both theoretically innovative and empirically novel. Theoretically, he aims to bring back class in our understanding of comparative political economy and to insert India into conversations about the developmental state that have focused only on East Asia. He also aims to give us some sense of the “mechanisms that generate contrasting reactions” (p. 226) in the two cases that he studies: India and South Korea. This is a welcome modification to the state-centric debates about India's past failure where the state is the only target of attack or of pious hope. Empirically, the author uncovers some new archival material to argue that Indian business “defeated” the state's efforts to build a developmental state in the 1940s. The new evidence shows powerfully that Indian business had much greater power to shape economic policy in the 1940s and 1950s than we knew.