PDFlib PLOP: PDF Linearization, Optimization, Protection

Page inserted by evaluation versionwww.pdflib.com – sales@pdflib.com

BOOK REVIEWS

Ann O’M. Bowman, Editor

Justice and Fairness in International Negotiation. By Cecilia Albin. (New York:Cambridge University Press, 2001. Pp. xiii, 263. $59.95 cloth, $21.95 paper.)

When, why, and how do justice and fairness matter in international negotia-tions? What motivates negotiators to take such considerations into account, andwhat content do they give them in complex political talks? These are the princi-pal questions Cecilia Albin addresses in this well-reasoned book. She does sothrough case studies of negotiations in four issue areas: acid rain, the UruguayRound of GATT talks, the interim talks between Israel and the PLO, and the 1995Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty Review and Extension Conference.

Two chapters provide the context for the case studies. The first makes the casefor the growing significance of issues relating to justice in negotiations in anincreasingly interdependent world and reviews competing criteria for establish-ing what makes a just and fair agreement. Three major categories are identified:those that rely on criteria internal to the negotiating context; those that rely onexternal criteria, that is, on major principles of distributive justice such as equal-ity and proportionality; and those that employ “impartial standards,” that is, speci-fication of the requirements that the negotiation process and agreement must meet if they are to be judged just and fair. Albin adopts the third approach as theframework for the case studies, arguing that justice is best understood as a largelyprocedural notion, the “balanced settlement of conflicting claims.” Balance, sheasserts, does not always involve “splitting the difference” but in reconciling thedifferent principles and claims put forward by the various parties.

The second chapter elaborates the framework for determining whether nego-tiations meet the criteria for justice as defined in the previous chapter. Albin iden-tifies five categories: the structure of the negotiations, the negotiation process,the procedures used to arrive at an agreement, the principles governing the allo-cation of benefits and costs in an agreement, and the post-agreement phase(implementation and compliance).

THE JOURNAL OF POLITICS, Vol. 65, No. 1, February 2003, Pp. 256–297© 2003 Southern Political Science Association

These first two chapters provide both a useful overview of the literature and aplausible framework for evaluating international negotiations according to well-defined criteria for justice and fairness. They would be a good starting point forstudents new to the topic.

The case studies are rather more problematic. Clearly, it would be unfair tojudge these relatively short overviews, given the breadth and complexity of thesubject matter, and the extensive scholarly literature already devoted to them, bywhether they shed new light on the negotiations. A more pertinent criterion iswhether the studies provide answers to the questions that the author poses in thefirst two chapters of the book (and summarized at the head of this review). Heremy assessment is somewhat equivocal.

Albin does makes a persuasive argument that considerations of equity had animportant influence on the course and outcome of the various negotiationsstudied. Issues of “relative fairness” became important in defining solutionsacceptable to all parties. Moreover, procedural notions of justice and fairnessplayed a role in all four sets of negotiations. Far less clear, however, are the moti-vations of the negotiators for taking such considerations into account. As shenotes, none of the participants she interviewed saw considerations of justice andfairness as significant factors in their conduct of the negotiations (218). A skep-tical observer might conclude that the introduction of such considerations wasmerely a tactical move, a realization that unless other parties perceived that thenegotiations met at least their minimum criteria for fairness, a successful outcomewould be impossible.

Albin acknowledges that tactical considerations do come into play when nego-tiators seek legitimacy for their positions by couching them in terms of equity.The possibility that concessions were made primarily for tactical reasons receivesfar less attention. Realists would not be convinced that the evidence presented in the case studies takes us beyond the argument taken from Gauthier that Albin quotes in her first chapter: “Morality enters the equation only because bargainers lack the power to impose outcomes unilaterally and because self-sufficiency is not a viable alternative” (7). And in some instances, especially in her discussion of the concessions won by the South in the Uruguay Round,Albin appears to overstate the extent to which considerations of justice producedoutcomes favorable to weaker parties.

By providing an elegant framework and by making a strong case that princi-ples of justice and fairness play a more significant role in international negotia-tions than is often acknowledged, the book lays the foundations for a morecomprehensive discussion of these issues than they have previously received inmuch of the literature of international relations.

John Ravenhill, University of Edinburgh

The Power-Conflict Story: A Dynamic Model of Interstate Rivalry. By Kelly M.Kadera. (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2001. Pp. 190. $47.50.)

Book Reviews 257

The Power-Conflict Story is patterned after Richardson’s famous work on armsraces. Kelly Kadera transforms the verbal stories that balance of power and powertransition theorists tell about power and conflict into a formal model combiningthe two. Her model offers more than a dozen hypotheses about power relation-ships and conflict, some of which are similar to those already associated with theolder theories, but many of which are novel products of her modeling effort.Kadera compares her model’s hypotheses to the historical evidence regardingmajor power capabilities and conflict interactions and finds strong and widesupport for her expectations.

The formal model at the heart of the book is a system of equations represent-ing changes in the power and conflict behavior of rival states. Kadera structuresthe model such that power growth is driven by internal development. But one rivalcan hinder another’s growth by sending conflict to it. Conflict then is a tool a rivalcan use to prevent the other rival from becoming too powerful. Kadera’s conflictequations represent the conflict rival X sends to rival Y as a function of rival X’spower as well as the conflict rival Y has previously sent to rival X. The system ofpower and conflict equations provide the basis for simulations probing how powerlevels and conflict patterns vary over time. Three types of power-conflict rela-tionships emerge from the simulations. “Bull and gnat” transitions are those inwhich a weaker challenger (the gnat) approaches a stronger state (the bull) inpower, but declines, and no power transition occurs. “Tortoise and hare” transi-tions feature the rapid rise of a challenger (the hare) which surpasses the formerlystronger but slow-growing state (the tortoise), but then declines such that theslower growing state regains supremacy. Finally, “David and Goliath” transitionsinvolve a steadily growing challenger (David) who permanently overtakes adeclining, formerly stronger state (Goliath). In addition to identifying differenttypes of power-conflict relationships, Kadera develops hypotheses specific to eachtype, and thus unanticipated by either balance of power or power transition theo-ries. For instance, whereas power transition theory has long claimed the challengerwill be more conflictual than the dominant power, Kadera deduces that challengerswill be more conflictual in both bull and gnat and tortoise and hare transitions,but that such is not necessarily the case with David and Goliath transitions.

The Power-Conflict Story was developed from an award-winning dissertation(Kadera won the Peace Science Society’s Walter Isard Dissertation Award in1996), and it has been recognized by the American Political Science Association’sConflict Processes section as the Best Book published in 2001. Reading the bookvindicates both award committees’ choices. Kadera’s book presents a complicatedmathematical argument in clear terms any interested reader will understand.Much of the model is presented graphically, with pains taken to make each picturetruly worth a thousand words. The Power-Conflict Story offers the most accessi-ble presentation of formal work I have seen since Bueno de Mesquita andLalman’s War and Reason (Yale University Press, 1992). Kadera is also to becommended for the detailed discussion of what the model’s parameters represent

258 Book Reviews

and for the extent to which she discusses the strengths and weaknesses of thedata against which she evaluates her model’s accuracy. As a result, her bookshould be read not only by those interested in the relationship between power andconflict, but also by those interested in the development of formal models and those engaged by research design questions. On all three scores the book succeeds admirably.

There is, nevertheless, room for complaint. Kadera’s presentations of balanceof power and power transition theories are caricatures. Whereas relative power isa principal component of power transition theory, so too are status quo evalua-tions. Kadera does not mention them, and they are omitted from her model. Alsoomitted are such presentations as that by balance of power theorists RandallSchweller and William Wohlforth that power transition and balance of power theories are complements rather than opposites (Security Studies 9, 73–75). If thetheories are non-contradictory, Kadera’s premise that her model is needed toaccount for a lack of consensus in previous work is undercut. More troubling isthe fact that over the past decade or so, study after study reports that preponder-ance is pacifying while parity is conflict-prone. Daniel Geller and David Singersummarize “a growing and cumulative body of evidence” that “parity and shiftstoward parity are consistently and significantly associated with conflict and war”(Nations at War, Cambridge University Press, 1998, 75–76). Were Kadera topresent a current literature review, much of her justification for her model wouldbe lost.

Readers will also question Kadera’s decision to model conflict as a tool rivalsuse to inhibit each other’s power. Research about post-war recovery concludesthat even the most violent of wars alters national power levels in the short termor not at all. If conflict does not reduce a target’s power, then there is nothing inKadera’s model inhibiting otherwise exponential power growth. Also question-able is her implicit claim that conflict inhibits the target’s power but has no effecton the sender’s power.

Complaints about assumptions are easy to make. In Kadera’s defense it mightbe said that even with the inclusion of such questionable assumptions about therole of conflict, her model generates hypotheses validated in empirical analyses.More generally, Kadera’s book does succeed on many dimensions and is thus notonly a prize winner, but also a truly welcome addition to the literature.

Douglas Lemke, University of Michigan

Foreign Policy and Congress: An International Relations Perspective. By MarieT. Henehan. (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2000. Pp. 232.$49.50.)

Marie Henehan seeks to explain aspects of the activity of the U.S. Senate inthe foreign policy arena over an 88-year period (1897–1984). In doing so sheclaims that she is remedying major defects in existing literature on Congress and

Book Reviews 259

foreign policy (e.g., lack of theory and lack of major longitudinal analysis). Shealso claims that by employing what she calls an international relations perspec-tive, she is essentially undertaking a task ignored in the literature and restoringthe primacy of important international issues facing the United States to the studyof Congress and foreign policy.

Briefly, her critical issue theory posits that as major issues come onto thenational agenda the Senate will react with increased activity and increased division of opinion. The same holds true for policy failures in the critical issueareas. She identifies three critical issues over the 88-year period: imperialism(1897–1914), involvement in Europe (1917–45), and communism (1947–84).The data for measuring increased activity and increased division of opinion come exclusively from all Senate roll calls on foreign policy during those 88 years[n = 6,500+]. She is not interested in measuring congressional influence oraggressiveness, only in roll-call activity. She expects higher rates of activity in the early years of a new critical issue and shortly after an identifiable majorpolicy failure (Vietnam is the sole case). Thus, she expects four bursts of moreactivity during this 88-year period and simultaneous increases in division ofopinion (close roll calls) in the same four periods. Although her treatment of thedata is not always convincing (e.g., an unpersuasive explanation for low activityin 1947 and a definition of close roll calls that eliminates what are, in fact, closeroll calls on issues on which a 2/3 majority is needed) she largely finds what sheexpects.

The book has some important strengths:

— the attempt to integrate attention to literature stemming from scholars of bothAmerican politics and international relations. Unfortunately, she tends to pitthe two literatures against each other.

— the insistence that it is not useful to think of Congress and the President asengaged in a zero-sum game on policy matters.

— the concern for looking at longer periods of time rather than shorter periodsof time to arrive at generalizations.

— the reaffirmation (chap. 5) that foreign policy is not one single large categorybut can be analyzed in substantive subcategories in which behavior varies.

— the affirmation that Congress is involved seriously in matters of foreignpolicy, albeit unevenly over time.

— the stress that Congress is engaged with and stimulated by policy issues. Thisis not news to as many students of Congress as Henehan may think, but it isa point worth underscoring.

Some major limitations, ultimately make the study much less important thanthe author asserts. For isntance, single-variable explanations of behavior arerarely convincing. The single independent variable of “critical issues” partakesof this problem, in part because it is a broad and amorphous concept, which alsomeans that scholars could squabble for years over a definition.

260 Book Reviews

— using the simple number of roll calls and a single definition of “close” withoutregard to what specifically was at stake as the only data for the dependentvariables has all kinds of problems. Henehan acknowledges many of theseproblems, but does not temper her broad claims about the importance of whatmanipulation of those data show. Ultimately, this very simple operationaliza-tion does not tell us very much about what is most important about congres-sional foreign policy behavior. She aims for simplicity, but in doing soartificially avoids the messiness—and interesting information—that a vastarray of other congressional foreign policy activity contains.

— using only the Senate is questionable, although a perfectly understandablelimit for a dissertation that became a book.

— this is not really a predictive theory since the content of future “critical issues”cannot be discerned ahead of time. Postdiction is the strongest claim that canbe made.

— her assertion (83) that “each period covered by one of the critical issues canbe seen as having four stages” followed by her identification of the stages iscritical to her postdiction of level of activity. Yet it is not clear where thesefour stages came from.

The limits and problems in this book lead me to reject her claims of a theo-retical breakthrough. Nor do I think that we know something major that we didnot know before. However, the strengths of the book are also very real.

Randall B. Ripley, Ohio State University

American Exceptionalism and US Foreign Policy: Public Diplomacy at the Endof the Cold War. By Siobhan McEvoy-Levy. (London: Palgrave, 2001. Pp.256. $75.00.)

This book offers an interesting foray into an important and timely subject. Theauthor explores chiefly how American leaders have used the idea of Americanexceptionalism to realize foreign and domestic goals, including building supportfor government policies. But the work also deals more broadly with rhetoric andits meaning in American public diplomacy and foreign policy.

The author offers several useful conclusions on American exceptionalism, thenotion that the United States is exceptional, unique, and even morally superiorin the world, and that it has the ability and perhaps the mandate to remake theworld in its own image. First, she shows that the notion of exceptionalism wasan important and not just sporadic factor in shaping American foreign policy rhetoric and, to some extent, behavior. In studying the policies of the adminis-trations of William Jefferson Clinton and George Herbert Walker Bush, the authoraccomplishes this task.

Second, exceptionalism was an important factor, despite changes in leadershipand party. The author shows that despite the transition of power from Bush to

Book Reviews 261

Clinton, we could observe some continuity in public diplomacy and in rhetoricemphasizing exceptionalism. More attention to the literature on individual versusnonindividual determinants of foreign policy would have helped here.

Third, an interesting but somewhat submerged argument is that ideas of excep-tionalism were promoted particularly in times of crisis, transition and uncertainty.The end of the Cold War changed the world and, in turn, the Clinton and Bushadministrations drew from “a common institution of rhetoric for strategic politi-cal purposes” (143). They responded to the conceptual challenge about how tothink about the world, as well as to objective global changes, and they did so byinvoking the rhetoric of American exceptionalism. It helped them navigatedomestic and world affairs in challenging times and reflected the dynamic inter-action of realist U.S. foreign policy concerns as well as a normative impulseshaped over centuries about American manifest destiny, not only at home butabroad.

While these arguments and findings are important, the book, like any work,has a few weaknesses. First, it is a bit quick. For instance, the author argues thatexceptionalism has the potential to foster and prevent international peace and sta-bility, but does not develop this weighty argument. Added attention to develop-ing key arguments would have benefited the work.

Second, the author introduces a range of models of foreign policy analysis,including the well known organizational process and bureaucratic politicsmodels. However, the connection to, and salience of, the models to the centralgoals of the book could be more clear. The models, furthermore, are not exploredmuch in the book, and thus appear to be a bit forced on the reader.

Third, the author would have done well to pay some closer attention to method. For instance, she argues interestingly that the use of exceptionalist rhetoric was linked to times of uncertainty, such as those that accompanied theend of the Cold War, and she offers some evidence to make that point. However,since both Clinton and Bush faced these circumstances, as the author points out, we would also want to see how a President and elites who did not face thesecircumstances might react. Thus, a case study on a Cold War presidency wouldhave helped here. If the nature and execution of public diplomacy differed in a Cold War case, the finding of the book would be strengthened. However, if it did not change much, that would raise questions about causality. In eithercase, the effort would help sharpen and buttress the findings by facilitating comparison.

This book was published prior to the September 11, 2001 attacks, but it istimely because the attacks have reignited a debate about public diplomacy as atool of statecraft. Many now argue that the United States needs to be more effec-tive at communicating central aspects of its experience, and specific policies, toforeign audiences. And bureaucratic efforts are now focused on how to do so inthe future. Moreover, the Europeans and others have been disturbed by perceivedU.S. unilateralism. This raises an inevitable question: should American leadersreconsider the value of exceptionalism as the strategic tool that the author suggests that it is?

262 Book Reviews

On the whole, the author makes a useful contribution, and she is likely toprovoke debate on these important issues of the day.

Steve Yetiv, Old Dominion University

Visions of International Relations. Edited by Donald J. Puchala. (Columbia: Uni-versity of South Carolina Press, 2002. Pp. xxi, 170. $16.95 paper.)

The paradigmatic diversity—or anarchy—of the anachronistically labeled sub-field “international relations” (IR) is distinctive, if not unique, in the disciplineof political science. In a complex evolutionary fashion, theories proliferate,compete for the scarce resources of tenured positions and space in journals andsyllabi, mutate into variants (some earning the coveted “neo-” prefix), and period-ically suffer mass extinction due to an externally changed environment (checkout the dustier shelves of your campus library for the huge literature devoted toU.S.-Soviet nuclear weapons negotiations, 1960–1990). For the graduate studentwith a good memory for labels and categories, this is a boon when preparing forqualifying examinations. However, it leads to a perennial criticism that the fieldof IR pays more attention to how people study international politics than to politics itself.

This book, derived from a series of talks given at a graduate seminar at theUniversity of South Carolina in 1998, is an effort to survey and assess the stateof this subfield. The authors were guided by the three questions: what should bestudied, how should it be studied, and why is the author’s favored approach relevant to contemporary politics?

About two-thirds of the volume is focused on the discipline as it was and is.The essays of Yosef Lapid, Margaret Hermann, Harvey Starr, Charles Kegley, and Puchala critique the existing characteristics of IR, with a primary focus onthe aforementioned problem of theoretical diversity/anarchy. Hermann’s essay—a variant on her 1998 International Studies Association (ISA) presidentialspeech—is one of the most interesting treatments, with Hermann applying herwide knowledge of sociopsychological theory to analyze the sociology of the IRfield itself.

The three remaining essays are more forward looking, pointing to the evolu-tion of the field beyond the state-centered focus of “international relations” tosomething far broader. Gregory Raymond considers the re-emergence of moralissues, invoking classical Greek mythology, the Mayan Empire, and other his-torical referents in understanding the 1990s conflict in the former Yugoslavia.Richard Mansbach likewise focuses on issues that have emerged in the post-ColdWar period, but which have pre-Westphalian antecedents, notably the decliningdominance of territorial issues.

Constructivism—clearly the most important new theoretical approach toemerge in the 1990s—receives an extended and partially autobiographical dis-cussion from Nicholas Onuf. Unfortunately this does not incorporate a discus-

Book Reviews 263

sion of Alexander Wendt’s now-central Social Theory of International Politics(Cambridge University Press, 1999), which appeared after the essay was written.(More generally, despite the February 2002 publication date, the book containsno references to any work published later than 1999.) Constructivism’s evil twin,post-modern deconstructionism, which tore through international relations in theearly 1990s, probably receives more attention (largely negative) in the book thanis warranted at present.

The entire work is self-consciously “mainstream” (xiii). Nevertheless, someimportant theoretical approaches receive almost no attention, notably rationalchoice (now the most prevalent formal modeling approach in IR) and feministtheory (the focus of one of the largest sub-sections in the ISA). Similarly, whileall of the contributors hold named chairs and two are former presidents of theISA, they represent a relatively narrow generational and geographical niche.There are no contributors from the major graduate schools in the U.S. Northeast,Midwest, or West coast or from outside the United States, and no younger scholars.

In the first essay of the book, Lapid appeals for greater attention to flexible,middle-ground theories. After reading this survey, I am struck by the possibilitythat we may already have achieved this provided IR is viewed as a collection ofmiddle-range theories specific to various regions and historical circumstances.For example, while structural realism may be an excellent description of the European state system from 1848 to 1945, radical theories could best describethe political situation in most of the Third World during the same time, and con-structivism, the behavior of the emerging world powers, United States and Japan.The primary problem with contemporary IR is that all of these approaches claimto be universal theories. But to paraphrase Dr. Benjamin Spock, we may knowmore than we think we know.

Philip A. Schrodt, University of Kansas

Global Political Economy: Understanding the International Economic Order. ByRobert Gilpin with the assistance of Jean M. Gilpin. (Princeton, NJ: Prince-ton University Press, 2001. Pp. 423. $65.00 cloth, $19.95 paper.)

This is an outstanding update of the author’s earlier book, The PoliticalEconomy of International Relations (1987). It is meant to complement Gilpin’smore recent work, The Challenge of Global Capitalism (2000). In Global Politi-cal Economy, Gilpin discusses a wide range of theories in the field, combiningcareful textual analysis with advocacy of his own views. The author’s own theo-retical stance is one of “state-centric realism.” He identifies with authors likeThucydides, Machiavelli, and Hans Morgenthau, but not with what he calls the“systemic realism” of authors like Kenneth Waltz. While he admires and uses thework of contemporary economists, he also carefully differentiates his approachfrom theirs (chap. 3). Except for a brief acknowledgement of the difficulty of

264 Book Reviews

explaining European integration in state-centric realist terms (chap. 13) and a bitof defensiveness on the continued value of theories of hegemonial stability (chap.4), Gilpin does a good job of defending his views.

The author does an excellent job of surveying recent work in economicswithout resorting to jargon. There are outstanding treatments of topics like thecontinued relevance of Heckscher-Ohlin trade theory, strategic trade, endogenousgrowth theory, and the new economic geography. The discussion of the globali-zation of international finance in Chapter 10 emphasizes the need to take intoaccount the “increased interdependence of trade, monetary, and other aspects ofthe international economy” that results from “movement toward a single, globally integrated market for corporation ownership” (277). Chapter 11 providesa state-of-the-art discussion of the role of multinational corporations in the worldeconomy. Chapter 12 does a fine job of discussing the likely future of theories ofthe developmental state in light of the Asian crises of the late 1990s. The finalchapter lays out three major scenarios for governance of the world economy,informed as always by the author’s realist views.

This book is long and dense. There are few wasted or unnecessary words. It isnot easy to read. However, it could be used for graduate seminars or upper divi-sion undergraduate courses in international political economy in conjunction withtexts that are more empirical or descriptive in their treatment of internationalpolitical economy.

Global Political Economy is an excellent book. It represents a major and suc-cessful updating of The Political Economy of International Relations. Any personinterested in international political economy can profit from reading it.

Jeffrey Hart, Indiana University

The European Commission and the Integration of Europe: Images of Governance.By Liesbet Hooghe. (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001. Pp. ix,279. $65.00 cloth, $23.00 paper.)

Liesbet Hooghe’s study systematically explores how the top commissioners ofEurope differ in their visions and preferences for a European Union. Her studyis based on data collected from her personal interviews of 137 top European Commission officials during 1996 and 1997. The opened-ended data from suchinterviews were supplemented with survey instruments of each respondent, thusoffering Hooghe a rich lode from which to build a simplified but accurate inter-pretation of the motivations lying at the heart of the Commission. Hooghe testswhether such preferences and visions derive from a social or utilitarian context.That is, do values acquired through socialization both within and outside of theCommission shape the Commissioner’s attitudes toward the European Union, orare such views the product of basic pragmatic calculations of cost-benefit analy-sis of the official’s bureaucratic and political authority and interests?

To do so, she concentrates on four issues that at the time (and for the most

Book Reviews 265

part, still today) seem central to the defining the contours of the political strug-gle for the heart and soul of the Commission: (1.) a European Union reflectingsupranationalism v. intergovernmentalism, (2.) a European political economyorganized along principles of European capitalism v. Anglo-American capitalism,(3.) a Commission of management v. a Commission of executive authority andinitiative capacity, and (4.) a Commission of rational, meritocractic authority v.a Commission of proportional representation of national interests.

In a technical sense, therefore, this is a welcome addition to similar analysesthat have tried to expose the political and social motivations shaping the European parliament. It affords students of Europe a rare glimpse at what isarguably the institution that represents the quickest and surest path to a suprana-tional Europe fashioned along federal or quasi-federal lines. In a nontechnicalsense, and for those who have only begun to peel back the layers of complexityand confusion surrounding the matrix of European institutional authority and pol-itics, her study exposes the most serious challenges to continued European inte-gration via enlargement and democratization.

For instance, her data show quite clearly that the one institution that many casu-ally consider the champion of supranationalism and community policy is really,as one might expect, a sociological reflection of the complexities, fears, anddoubts that color the social environments those in senior levels of authority formon their way to the Commission. It is, in short, an ordinary bureaucracy. And assuch, it is not without severe inherent handicaps in its required role of balancingthe intergovernmental impulse of the European Council and its Council of Ministers. It is a fair guess from Hooghe’s data that as enlargement proceeds, theCommission’s ability to “aggregate” the multiplying and fragmented nationalinterests will only overload the Union with intergovernmental impulses that couldwell neutralize the evolution of a refined and enlarged European polity for a European public.

On the other hand, such a complex and varied social milieu within the Com-mission following enlargement might simply cancel out the effect that socializa-tion has on the role of the Commission in its interinstitutional interactions withthe Council, European Parliament, European Courts, and national and subn-ational units of the Union. Therefore, this more complex environment might meanthe rise of a much more utilitarian Commission, and in this sense, though Hooghedoes not explore the possibility, the Commission may actually become a moreeffective instrument of representation of European interests and may indeed assistthe Commission at becoming more responsive and sensitive to public interests.

In sum, this a major contribution to the study of the European Union and asignificant contribution to the literature on comparative democracy in general.While one may quibble about the methodology, and some may wonder why somany powerful statistical analyses were brought to bear on data when simplerand more straightforward methods might have sufficed (and made the book moreapproachable to a broader audience), Hooghe’s analysis opens the door to under-standing the complexity of European Union politics. Her findings remind us that

266 Book Reviews

if we wish to understand where Europe is likely to go in the near future, we mustmove beyond broad geo-strategic models and take seriously the complex politi-cal dynamics within the institutions of Europe. Europe, after all, has reached thepoint where it is moving forward on a logic and momentum almost of its own.What bothers so many, of course, is that much of this momentum comes not fromheads of state and government in the Council, but in the hallways of the Com-mission where, at present, no one stands for election before a European public.

John D. Robertson, Texas A&M University

Re-forming the State: The Politics of Privatization in Latin America and Europe.By Hector E. Schamis. (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2002. Pp.xi, 204. $55.00 cloth, $19.95 paper.)

During the past two decades, most countries have instituted comprehensivemarket reforms, including the privatization of state-owned industries. The divesti-ture process has been extensively studied, especially by neoclassical economistsand contemporary scholars of globalization. In this book, Hector E. Schamis chal-lenges two of the central arguments commonly found in mainstream scholarship.

Schamis’s first objective is to reconsider the role of domestic forces in the pri-vatization process. Neoclassical scholarship generally assumes that state inter-vention in the economy increases rent-seeking opportunities and that thebeneficiaries of these rents will favor continued state involvement and protection.Domestic support for neoliberal reform, on the other hand, is much weaker sincefuture payoffs are uncertain and rents will likely dissipate. Political leaders wouldneed to act autonomously if market reforms are to be initiated and sustained.

For Schamis, recent experience with privatization calls into question this neo-classical argument. Far from diminishing rent-seeking opportunities, privatiza-tion actually creates new opportunities for realizing rents. As a result,“distributional coalitions” frequently emerge to support privatization programswith the hope of appropriating future rents. The behavior of these coalitions,Schamis contends, often determines the pace and content of the reform process.

Schamis then turns to the long-term impact of privatization on state institu-tions. Contemporary scholarship typically associates privatization with the“shrinking” or “retreating” of the state. This is especially evident in the volumi-nous literature on globalization that tends to link the penetration of market forceswith the decline of state power and erosion of national sovereignty. States are nolonger able to pursue domestic economic policies that substantially deviate frominternational norms.

For Schamis, the idea of a shrinking or retreating state is not consistent withthe historical record. Through the privatization process, he argues, the state isactually able to reassert and centralize power. As evidence, Schamis points tostricter specification and enforcement of property rights, reorganization ofrevenue collection, recomposition of fiscal and budgetary institutions, and the

Book Reviews 267

centralization of administrative and political resources. Privatization is thusthought to engender state-building strategies and increase executive authority byre-forming public institutions. “By reshaping the very structure of the state, economic reform in general, and privatization in particular, affect the way polit-ical order is generated and political power is distributed” (67).

Schamis presents various country case studies to substantiate these theoreticalclaims. His primary research, which is the subject of three chapters, focuses onthe divestiture program implemented by the military regime in Chile after 1973.Subsequent chapters examine privatization efforts in Argentina, Britain, Hungary,and Mexico. The countries chosen reflect considerable variation in regime type,economic system, and level of development. In each case, Schamis reviews theprivatization process, describes the reproduction of rent-seeking opportunities,documents the emergence of distributional coalitions, and outlines the long-termimpact of divestiture on state institutions. Although Schamis’s central objectiveis to highlight similarities in patterns of collective action and state formation, heis careful to identify important differences among the cases.

While the analysis presented is compelling, Schamis may be drawing too finea line between his own findings and past scholarship. The support of financialand industrial elites for privatization is widely acknowledged in the extant liter-ature. Much has been written, for example, on the extent to which financial elitesbankrolled Mexico’s ruling party to ensure continued divestiture during the 1980sand 1990s. At the same time, domestic support for other neoliberal reforms, suchas the reduction of state services, subsidies, regulations, and tariffs, is not asstrong, especially in Latin America. In this respect, Schamis’s tendency to asso-ciate divestiture with broader market reforms, and assume the same processes areat work, might be questioned. The author accords less attention to alternatefactors that have clearly influenced the course of privatization, such as the accu-mulation of external debt, onset of economic crises, pressures from internationalfinancial institutions, or simply the desire of state actors to jettison unprofitablefirms. Lastly, it is not always clear how privatization facilitates the centralizationof administrative and political resources or increases executive authority, partic-ularly in the Argentine and Mexican cases.

Despite these shortcomings, Re-forming the State represents a significant con-tribution to the comparative study of political economy and market reform.Schamis elucidates the societal forces supporting privatization and documents the broader impact of divestiture on state institutions. Both scholars and practi-tioners of economic reform will find this book of considerable interest and utility.

Francis Adams, Old Dominion University

A Chill in the House: Actor Perspectives on Change and Continuity in the Pursuitof Legislative Success. By Lewis G. Irwin. (Albany: State University of NewYork Press, 2002. Pp. 259. $73.50 cloth, $24.95 paper.)

268 Book Reviews

In this fine study comparing legislative case studies from the 1960s and 1990s,Lewis G. Irwin examines the effects of strained interpersonal relationships amongmembers of Congress on the production of legislation. Given the interpersonal“chill” in the House, not to mention the ways in which the legislative process hasbecome vastly more complicated in the number and diversity of relevant internaland external players, Irwin explores how legislators build coalitions for policypassage. Here, amidst important institutional changes, he argues that the primaryingredients for legislative success as in the pre-reform period are—the personalskill and leadership of individual legislators.

The book begins with careful examination of legislative battles informed by press accounts, congressional documents, and personal interviews. The analy-sis then turns to making more general claims comparing the legislative processand its participants, procedures, and products in the two periods. The case studiesare nicely selected to illustrate how legislative coalitions are built, and the lever-age of his historical technique allows Irwin to make insightful claims about howthe legislative process and the keys to legislative success have and have notchanged.

Although there are far too many conclusions in this ambitious book to becovered here, Irwin makes several valuable contributions of note. For instance,he highlights the personal dimension as an important factor in legislative success.In most of his case studies, Irwin finds a legislative “hero” whose efforts are, inhis view, primarily responsible for legislative success. Based on his findings,Irwin makes the case that in addition to the literature’s traditional legislative goals(reelection, policy, and influence), there is a fourth goal that needs to be explored:“the goal of assisting or thwarting a colleague’s policy aims for purely personalreasons” (98).

Another strength of this book is its exploration of the practical implications ofits findings for legislating. Irwin employs (at least implicitly) a theory of delib-eration that requires strong interpersonal relationships to stabilize the legislativeprocess around common policy goals and the common good. The author correctlyidentifies compromised deliberation and the difficulty of coalition building as theprimary costs of the chilly relationships that have developed in Congress. In citinginstitutional “missed opportunities” to bring members of differing perspectivestogether in the 1990s, he joins the chorus of legislative observers who would prescribe, among other things, bipartisan retreats in order to rebuild these brokenrelationships.

Still, this book is not without its shortcomings. Some readers will find that theconclusions overreach the analysis of the cases at hand. Indeed, the work coversso much theoretical ground that nearly every legislative scholar will find faultwith one or two of the dozens of conclusions set forth. Irwin’s narrative style isto introduce evidence and then proceed to a series of conclusions that, althougharguable and even astute, at times are impressionistic and only loosely based onthe evidence presented. A more thorough integration of evidence and conclusionsmight lead a more skeptical reader to give greater weight to some of the author’s

Book Reviews 269

more controversial findings. Perhaps a more fundamental objection would be thatdue to his focus on interpersonal politics and his method of relying on personalinterviews, Irwin downplays the importance of structural changes in the electoralsystem and the House itself. Thus, a more complete reading would put Irwin’s“actor perspectives” and chamber focus in the context of changes in the partysystem, the character of congressional districts, the media, and the nature of campaigning, all of which likely have played a role in the “chill.”

None of this should be taken as criticism sufficient to detract from the valueof a book that deserves the attention of all congressional scholars. Given theimportance of the legislative case studies and their straightforward presentation,this book is appropriate for undergraduate courses in Congress as well as publicpolicy. Although this book has many accomplishments, its chief value is itsglimpse into the practical world of legislative politics within the House chamber.Irwin’s legislature is akin to a small town with declining social capital becauseits community members are too busy to get to know one another, of sufficientdiversity to imperil opportunities for collective action, and where the bonds oftrust are so strained that opposing factions (in this case, the parties) are unwill-ing to work together. That said, Irwin’s work identifies and explores the implica-tions of what might be the most important institutional challenge facing theCongress.

Douglas B. Harris, Loyola College

The Rise of Southern Republicans. By Earl Black and Merle Black. (Cambridge,MA: Harvard University Press, 2002. Pp. 442. $29.95.)

For roughly three decades Earl and Merle Black have been among the fore-most chroniclers of southern political change. Their two previous co-authoredbooks, Politics and Society in the South (Harvard 1987) and The Vital South(Harvard 1992), have had a significant impact on southern politics students andscholars. The Rise of Southern Republicans is the final volume in this trilogy, andit is certain to be equally influential.

The general context for all three books has been the broad social, economic,demographic, cultural, and political change in the post-World War II South. The more specific focus has been on the resulting erosion of the traditional Democratic one-party system and the development of a competitive two-partysystem in the region (and the attendant consequences of this partisan transfor-mation for national politics). In The Rise of Southern Republicans, the Blackbrothers examine this from the perspective of congressional electoral politics.Here the stark numbers framing the last half of the twentieth century demonstratethis dramatic change in the South’s political landscape: in 1950, all southern senators were Democrats, as were 103 of the region’s 105 representatives; afterthe 2000 elections, the majority of southern senators (14 of 22) and of southernrepresentatives (71 of 125) were Republicans. The authors describe how this

270 Book Reviews

transformation took place and examine the factors that fostered and promoted it.Along the way, special attention is given to the impact of the civil rights move-ment (including one of its most recent manifestations, majority-minority dis-tricts), demographic change (e.g., in migration), and the Reagan Revolution ofthe 1980s, to mention a few of the more important developments.

Although their task is complicated by the varying pace of change in the Peripheral South and the Deep South, even among states in each of these subregions, and by the range of variables contributing to this change, the Blacksshow how the South’s congressional politics evolved from the period of theDemocratic smother in the 1960s and 1970s to the period of Democratic domi-nance in the 1980s to the Republican breakthrough of the 1990s. Of the manycontributors to this dramatic transformation, they identify sustained federal inter-vention and Reagan’s successful presidency as particularly important.

Finally, the Blacks argue that the change in southern politics has had a tremen-dous impact on national politics. In their final chapter, they set the changes ofthe past 50 years in a larger historical context and demonstrate how the battle-field sectionalism that characterized the nation’s congressional elections forroughly a century following the Civil War changed with the rise of Republicancompetitiveness in the South in the last decades of the twentieth century. This, inturn, has produced the nation’s most nationalized two-party system since the1830s and 1840s.

In telling this story of partisan change, the Blacks effectively marshal a massiveamount of data on each congressional election during this period and relate these data to such variables as ideology, race, gender, religion, type of residence(urban, suburban, rural), and measures of party unity in congressional votes.Although the analyses of these connections are selective—for example, theBlacks are more interested in examining the relationship between patterns of partisan support in congressional elections and the Religious Right than in doinga detailed denominational analysis—this selectivity is carefully honed to help put the key pieces of the puzzle into place. Indeed, one of the main strengths ofthe book is its ability to address the central concerns of the research through data presentations that do not become so bogged down in detail as to becomeuninterpretable.

Those looking for elaborate multivariate models will not find them here. Thesedata are presented mainly through a myriad of creatively developed graphs andscatterplots that are understandable and fully and skillfully explained and elabo-rated in the accompanying textual discussion. They all make points that contributeto the development of the book’s thematic focus.

The story does not, however, rest on data alone. The authors also provide rich descriptions of many of the key players, races, campaigns, and events in this drama. Discussions of data in each state are interwoven with discussions of the people and events those data represent, thus providing depth and human-ity to the analyses and adding a level of interest beyond that of data analysisalone.

Book Reviews 271

In short, this is a very important book for students of both southern and American politics. It is thoroughly researched, tightly argued, effectively relatedto the large body of literature on southern politics, and clearly written, with a nice blend of hard facts and human insights. It is authoritative, compre-hensive, and readable. With it, Earl and Merle Black have solidified their reputations as leading scholars and observers of the southern (and national) political scene.

Robert P. Steed, The Citadel

Race and Place: Race Relations in an American City. By Susan Welch, LeeSigelman, Timothy Bledsoe, and Michael Combs. (New York: CambridgeUniversity Press, 2001. Pp. 206. $54.95 cloth, 19.95 paper.)

The Kerner Commission concluded in 1968 that “our nation is moving towardtwo societies, one black, one white—separate and unequal.” Thirty years later,Fred Harris and Lynn Curtis (eds., 1998) revisited the issues considered by theKerner Commission and concluded that blacks and Hispanics had remainedLocked in the Poorhouse in urban areas. Yet, clearly, many things have changedover that time, including some decline in residential segregation in major metro-politan areas. In some instances blacks have followed whites to suburbia. Whatdifference, if any, do these changes in residential patterns imply for race relationsin the United States?

Welch, Sigelman, Bledsoe, and Combs provide a well researched, important,and thought-provoking answer to this question. The heart of their work is ananalysis of attitudes measured by responses to in-home interviews of blacks and whites conducted in 1992 in the three-county Detroit metropolitan area. The significance of their work is magnified because they skillfully draw on theresults of Detroit Area Studies conducted by the University of Michigan in 1968and 1969 to provide a portrait of change in racial attitudes over a quarter of acentury. By oversampling residents of mixed-race neighborhoods, the authorsachieve the power to report the attitudes of subpopulations of individuals, whitesliving in the city, blacks in the suburbs, black central-city residents, and whitesuburbanites. In short, they are able to look at variations in racial compositionand location of neighborhoods to deliver on the promise of their title, Race andPlace.

The locus of the study—Detroit—also adds to the significance of the work. Ifone thinks of cities plagued with racial tension, violence, segregation, anddepopulation, Detroit quickly comes to mind. It is also a city where blacks exer-cise political control over city government, the school system, and the policeforce. Thus, a variety of conditions make the political attitudes of both blacksand whites potentially very interesting.

Not surprisingly, these researchers identify a number of areas in which blacksand whites perceive different realities. For example, blacks see little diminution

272 Book Reviews

of discrimination against themselves; whites see great progress having beenmade. Even when there is an apparent convergence of black and white prefer-ences, as when a majority of both races express a preference for integratedhousing, probing reveals that “integrated housing” means something close to a50–50 split to blacks but only token black presence to whites.

What is clear, however, is some changes have occurred that either have had orportend political impacts. In Detroit, both casual and more intense interracialcontact has increased, and there is evidence of whites’ attitudes toward blacksbeing less racist. Blacks’ and whites’ assessments of urban services have con-verged; unfortunately, members of both races agree in their negative assessmentof these services. Beyond these statements, perhaps the most accurate summaryis that almost every pattern of interracial tolerance has changed in Detroit overa quarter century, sometimes for the better, sometimes for the worse. Those familiar with the earlier work of Sigelman, Welch, Hochschild, Sniderman,Piazza, Kinder, Sanders, and Carmines will find some support for the conclu-sions reached by those authors.

The innovation of this study is its careful consideration of racial context—cityversus suburb and level of racial integration in the neighborhood in both settings.Even controlling for a plethora of factors, living in mixed-race areas leads tointerracial contact, which promotes change in attitudes about race. This conclu-sion is not as tautological as it may at first seem. The rural South historically hasbeen residentially integrated, with high levels of interracial contact, but withseemingly immutable racial attitudes. Whites living and working in the city havemore interracial contact than those living in the suburbs. Blacks working in thesuburbs have more interracial contact than those working in the city. City resi-dents and residents of mixed-race neighborhoods regardless of race perceive morediscrimination than suburbanites and residents of racially homogenous neigh-borhoods. Black racial solidarity is lower in mixed-race neighborhoods andamong older, black suburban dwellers. Suburbanites, including black subur-banites, are more satisfied with police and school services than are city dwellers,even though political control of these institutions rests with blacks in the city andwhites in the suburbs. The bottom line is that context matters, but not in anysimply described way. The authors do a masterful job of presenting the complexmosaic of how attitudes vary by race and place.

Welch, Sigelman, Bledsoe, and Combs focus on how full the glass is, not howempty. Indeed, if more residential integration leads to more interracial contact,which leads to more positive views of the other race, which leads to greater con-gruence in policy attitudes, and, if the trend is toward more residential integra-tion, however slowly, the story should be—not about the degree to which the glassis full or empty—but that the glass is filling, not emptying. Of course, “simple”black versus white dynamics are passé in many cities, as Latinos and Asian populations, generally less residentially segregated than blacks, have been added to urban populations.

The study of racial discrimination often involves stereotypes, as do contem-

Book Reviews 273

porary epistemological debates within the discipline of political science. Colleagues pit the “richness” of qualitative studies against the “sterility” of quantitative studies. This study about the former stereotypes helps reveal theinappropriateness of the latter stereotypes. The subtle nuances, the currents andcountercurrents, that these authors painstakingly tease out with their carefulexamination of survey data and comparison to earlier survey data stand as anexample of how well done quantitative research can produce—and may well besuperior to qualitative studies in producing—a rich, highly textured picture ofracial attitudes and their change over time in the Detroit metropolitan area.

This volume will be valuable to scholars in the subfields of urban politics,racial/ethnic politics, and public opinion. Furthermore, it has implications forscholars of representation and political change. Given the building these scholarshave already done on earlier foundations, there is promise of an additional accumulation of knowledge about an important topic—racial attitudes—so thatthose whose goal is to “speak truth to power” will have some truth to speak.

Joseph Stewart, Jr., University of New Mexico

Race, Power, and Political Emergence in Memphis. By Sharon D. Wright. (Flo-rence, KY: Garland Publishing, 2000. Pp. ix, 218. $75.00.)

In this book, Sharon D. Wright examines the development and emergence ofcontemporary African American political power in Memphis, Tennessee, withinthe context of three foci: mobilization, emergence, and incorporation. A nativeMemphian, Professor Wright’s analysis evolved from her dissertation completedat the University of Tennessee Knoxville. Chapters 2 through 6 describe variousphases of the development and emergence of African-American political powerin Memphis in chronological order. These chapters are useful in that they providethe facts of the evolution of African-American political power in the city. In thebest chapter in the book, Chapter 7, she examines the first term of the city’s firstAfrican-American mayor, W. W. Herenton. This book would have been muchmore useful and would have contributed much more to the scholarly literature,however, had Professor Wright chosen to encapsulate her analysis of the evolu-tion of African-American political power in Memphis within the context of majortheories used to explain American politics.

The subfield of research on African-American politics has developed over thelast 30 years to the point where we have numerous accounts of the developmentand emergence of African-American politics in U.S. cities. In order to advancethe subfield to the next level of intellectual development, students of African-American politics must begin to analyze systematically the accounts of the evolution of African-American politics in the cities they study within the contextof major theoretical frameworks used to study American politics. If we fail to dothat, our analyses of African-American politics in individual cities are little morethan interesting stories. The following major theoretical frameworks come tomind as useful analytical lenses that Professor Wright could have used to provide

274 Book Reviews

a richer analysis of black politics in Memphis: elite theory, pluralist theory, andclass analysis.

To her credit, Professor Wright does employ two theories in the early stagesof development to augment her analysis: urban regime theory and deracializationtheory. Further, she integrates into her analysis the works of other students of African-American politics, thus effectively placing her analysis in a largerscholarly context. While new accounts of the development and emergence ofAfrican-American politics in political jurisdictions previously not studied are of some utility to the development of the subfield of African-American politics,of much greater utility is the culling of general patterns of African-Americanpolitical development and behavior from the many individual analyses. Researchon African-American politics has reached the point in its development wherethese two aspects of scholarship must be executed concomitantly in new contri-butions to the subfield. Professor Wright’s comparison of W. W. Herenton’s cam-paign to that of Harold Washington in Chicago is useful in that regard. Similarly,Professor Wright’s analysis of the campaign styles of several African-Americanmayoral candidates in terms of whether they were consistent with deracializationtheory is very important, and it contributes to the rapidly developing scholarshipon deracialization theory and African-American politics.

Chapter 7 is the best chapter because it represents Professor Wright’s greatestsuccess in incorporating theory into her analysis of African-American politics inMemphis. In this chapter, her analysis of Mayor Herenton’s first term, in light ofPaul Friesema’s hollow prize theory and Clarence Stone’s urban regime theory,contributes to the literature on African-American and urban politics. The strengthof Chapter 7 reveals the weakness of the other chapters. Leaving aside theoreti-cal coverage for the moment, insufficient attention is paid to relevant works thatcould have enriched Professor’s Wright’s analysis. For example, although mobi-lization is a major part of Professor Wright’s analysis of the development andemergence of African-American political power in Memphis, there is no discus-sion of Professor Minion K. C. Morrison’s useful work on that topic. Similarly,there is no discussion of Doug McAdam’s theoretical work on the confluence offactors that led to the emergence of the civil rights movement in the United States.Nor is there discussion of Michael Dawson’s theoretical and empirical analysisof why African Americans tend to view themselves as a collectivity despite rathersubstantial differences in social class among the group.

These deficiencies notwithstanding, Professor Wright’s book is a useful addi-tion to the literature. Professor Wright is a promising scholar, and I believe herfuture contributions to the fields of African-American and urban politics will besignificant.

Huey L. Perry, Southern University

Rogues, Rebels, and Rubber Stamps: The Politics of the Chicago City Councilfrom 1863 to the Present. By Dick Simpson. (Boulder, CO: Westview Press,2001. Pp. 342. $26.00.)

Book Reviews 275

The Chicago City Council has been something of an enigma. Attempting tocharacterize the institution and its members has confounded political scientists,historians, and journalists who want to be fair to the many dedicated aldermenwho were good public servants. Dick Simpson’s exhaustive look at the politicalhistory of Chicago since the Civil War provides the first comprehensive study ofthe city council, and in its title Rogues, Rebels and Rubber Stamps, may havegiven us an appropriate set of labels for this political institution. Simpson’s bookis part history, part participant-observation, and part political analysis. The com-bination yields an interesting story of the effective and troubled roles of the citycouncil in Chicago’s political system.

Simpson has been assembling the pieces of this work for many years. It pullstogether coherently the previous manuscripts that he produced on the city council.Part I reviews the experiences of the nineteenth-century councils that were characterized by merchant-led boosterism and, later, by ethnic partisanship. Following the Chicago Fire of 1871, an early style of machine politics developedin Chicago’s wards. This period of competing ward bosses lasted until 1930 and“was characterized by corruption, ‘boodle,’ and fragmented power” (46). Thesecouncils were labeled the “gray wolves” by journalist Lincoln Steffens for theirhair color and rapacious appetites for boodle and a share of the city treasury—all chronicled by Simpson. Part II is the heart of the book, an examination of themany periods of rubber-stamp councils that acceded to the proposals of strongermayors, particularly during the run of the Democratic party machine, 1933–1983.Although there were brief episodes of rebellion and attempts at reform, includ-ing the time in which Simpson served as 44th ward alderman, the councils of thisperiod were dominated by mayors like Ed Kelly and Richard J. Daley. The thirdsection of the book chronicles the resurgent city councils of the 1980s that battledwith weaker mayors like Harold Washington and Eugene Sawyer. It was a periodof chaos—“council wars”—that would give way to a period of calm and newdominance in the mayoralty of Richard M. Daley, discussed in Part IV. The bookends with an empirical analysis of roll-call voting and campaign contributionsfor mayors that helps the reader to understand the relationship among power,money, and policy in Chicago.

At the center of this work is the thesis that most political science paradigmsfail to explain the apparent anomalies of Chicago politics. Simpson attempts tobuild upon the regime paradigm in articulating a systems model of Chicago politics and to show how the changing regimes in Chicago, the charter changesin governmental organization and powers, and the influence of campaign and tax money have shaped the roles played by city councils over time. Perhaps oneof the strongest arguments advanced in the book is that one cannot understandthe behavior of political actors in the city council without an understanding ofthe mayoral regimes that shaped the city’s politics. In fact, the reader will learnas much about Chicago’s mayors as about the city councils in the discussion ofmayor-council relationships. One also learns that each change in the city’s charterresulted in some modification—typically a reduction—in the power of the city

276 Book Reviews

council. In a city still operating today with a “weak mayor-council” form of government, the mayor’s power has been expanded by law and practice duringmuch of this city’s 150 years. The changes have produced a government in whichthe aldermen focus on ward-level issues, favors, and symbolic policy, deferringto the mayor on nearly every major policy action.

The book would benefit from a closer connection between its title and the chapters. Although it has a large section on the rubber-stamp councils, it doesnot label any chapters to be rogue councils or rebel councils. Readers must finda parallel between text and title with their own interpretation of events described.The coverage of mayors and councils is a bit uneven. For example, the so-calledreform mayor, Martin Kennelly, who served during the years 1947–1955, and hiscouncils are discussed only in a few paragraphs, whereas Michael Bilandic, atransitional figure who served (1976–1979) after Richard J.’s death and Bilandic’scouncil are given a whole chapter.

Overall, the book helps to fill a void in the political history of Chicago. Itstreatment of the city council is thorough and fair, demonstrating the good andthe bad of this legislative body. It also adds to the political science literature oninstitutional relationships in urban government and the impact of structure onpublic policy. Perhaps the Chicago city council’s impact on policy would havebeen more pronounced over time if it had abandoned its parochial focus on wardsand looked to the broader interests of the city. But, as Simpson shows, there hasbeen only limited success with reforms in the council, even after periods of cor-ruption, conviction of aldermen, and egregious conflicts of interest. To paraphrasePaddy Bauler, an alderman in the 1950s, it may just be that Chicago’s city council“ain’t ready for reform.”

John P. Pelissero, Loyola University Chicago

The Civic Culture of Local Economic Development. By Laura A. Reese andRaymond A. Rosenfeld. (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2002. Pp. 408. $92.95cloth, $37.95 paper.)

Dissatisfied with current theories attempting to explain local economic devel-opment policies, Reese and Rosenfeld identify the concept of civic culture as oneof the determining variables that explains why similar communities select dif-ferent economic development strategies. Though not a new idea (Daniel Elazarfirst employed a similar concept that he identified as the “civil community” inhis Cities of the Prairie volumes), the authors take previous studies a step fartherby employing a methodology that combines survey research with comparativecase studies in order to operationalize and investigate the impact of civic cultureon local economic development decisions.

Civic culture “denotes the patterns or way of life in a local community” (41).It is shaped by environmental factors such as the local political culture, theeconomy, and regional location. Civic culture’s role in influencing local economic

Book Reviews 277

development policy is explored and operationalized through three key compo-nents: economic development structures, locus of power, and decision-makingstyles.

Reese and Rosenfeld surveyed 987 cities with populations over 10,000 personslocated throughout Canada and in the 15 U.S. border states. The dependent vari-ables included a comprehensive listing of 67 economic development strategies,including Type II policies designed to “redistribute or equalize the benefits ofpublic expenditures” (9). The independent variables included those one wouldexpect, such as structure of government and demographic characteristics, as wellas indicators of the components of civic culture. Using cluster analysis tech-niques, Reese and Rosenfeld identify four broad categories of local civic culture.They are mayor-dominated, elite-dominated, externally driven, and politicallyinclusive systems. However, the cluster analysis further indicates that the statis-tical indicators of civic culture do not explain differences in economic develop-ment policies and that most cities, regardless of civic culture, pursue traditionalefforts such as loans and infrastructure development. This finding leads theauthors to conclude “that more subtle differences are being masked by the surveymethodology” (164). The authors also assert that the best method of teasing outthese subtle differences is through case studies.

Based upon the survey responses, nine communities were identified for furtherstudy, three each in Ohio, Michigan, and Ontario. The fieldwork for each casestudy was conducted in 1999 and 2000, five years after the surveys were com-piled. This time lag may provide a limited measure of longitudinal understand-ing, allowing an examination of changes in policy; it is also problematic since it precludes an immediate examination of the policies reported in the surveyunder the environmental conditions in which they were reported, most notably abooming U.S. economy that was winding down by 1999 when the fieldwork wasconducted.

A second shortcoming in the case studies is the number of individuals inter-viewed and the time spent in each community. Investigators spoke to betweenseven and ten individuals in each community over a two-day period. The over-whelming majority of those interviewed were selected based upon the formal governmental position they held within the economic development hierarchy.Individuals previously holding these positions and actors from the private sector,with the exception of the chamber of commerce, were apparently excluded. Bynot including previous office holders, the rationale for previous developmentdecisions (and thus an indication of the impact and continuity of civic culture)was not explored, or it was reported secondhand. The exclusion of key privatesector decision makers limits our understanding of the reception given to—andthe impact that public policies have had on—the business community. Signifi-cant opinion leaders from the media, political parties, and nonprofit arenas, thosewho are likely to shape civic culture, were not included.

Despite these limitations, the case studies are informative, providing back-ground on the community’s governmental structure, its economic circumstances,

278 Book Reviews

and its internal politics. Most important, the case studies shed some light on thefactors that influence economic development decisions. Reese and Rosenfeldconclude that environmental forces such as economic conditions, the formalstructure of government, or place in the spatial urban hierarchy do not determinethe economic development approaches. The only external force that has someinfluence is intercity competition. The authors conclude that civic culture has amore significant impact on such decisions.

A key factor in all communities that needs to be explored further is the roleof leadership and the impact an individual can have upon taking advantage ofhis/her position within the economic development hierarchy to drive policy. Theposition and influence of such an individual is often determined by civic culture.The authors implicitly recognize this, but a more explicit explanation of the roleof leadership would be useful.

This study points out both the uniqueness and the complexity of individualcommunities in the United States and Canada. While certain generalities amongthem can be drawn, each community responds to external forces in ways thathave been shaped by its history and immediate circumstances. The authorsdemonstrate the importance civic culture plays in shaping these responses in economic development policy. Reese and Rosenfeld have identified an area ofresearch in urban public policy making that should spawn further investigation.

Joseph R. Marbach, Seton Hall University

Improving Governance: A New Logic for Empirical Research. By Laurence E.Lynn, Jr., Carolyn J. Heinrich, and Carolyn J. Hill. (Washington, DC: George-town University Press, 2001. Pp. xii, 212. $60.00.)

Lawrence E. Lynn, Jr., Carolyn J. Heinrich, and Carolyn J. Hill (hereafter LHH)conduct a sweeping review of the literature in political science, economics, soci-ology, and public administration to determine why public programs work and whythey do not. Their objective is to set out a logic of governance, or more accu-rately a logic for studying governance, the process by which programs are established, structured, managed, implemented, and evaluated. Their logic is aframework, a list of variables and relationships that should be examined whenstudying decisions about government programs. It is not a theory but designedto be more general so that it might be compatible with different theories of gov-ernance (e.g., rational choice, institutionalism).

A full appreciation of how programs work requires an understanding of howlegislatures make decisions, how top-level managers translate legislative man-dates into bureaucratic structures and processes, how street-level bureaucrats thenimplement the programs, how citizens (or clients in LHH’s terms) then respondto the programs—all set within an environmental context that encompasses eco-nomics, politics, culture, interpersonal relationships, and so on. The governanceloop is completed by including how citizens communicate their satisfaction or

Book Reviews 279

dissatisfaction with programs, both electorally and nonelectorally. Tersely sum-marized, the LHH logic of governance is as follows:

O = f (E, C, T, S, M)

where O is a vector of program outputs or outcomes,E is environmental factors,C is client characteristics,T is treatments (or the primary activities undertaken by the program),S is structures, andM is managerial roles and actions.

In presenting this framework of governance and discussing its components,LHH show how various policy theories fit within the framework, review a largesample of policy studies, and make recommendations that good studies of publicprogram governance would include. Many of these prescriptions are simply goodsocial science: think about alternative measures of concepts, try to include asmany of the governance levels and factors as possible or qualify what is left out,show and report other specifications in quantitative studies, adjust one’s methodsto the situation, and seek causal explanations. Some, LHH concede, are unlikelyto be realized; journal editors, they recognize, are not going to permit extendeddiscussions of alternative specifications and measurement.

LHH, none of whom are political scientists, implicitly demonstrate why publicadministration, or public management as it now calls itself, can still fit withinpolitical science. Decisions made by citizens (voting, participating) and legisla-tors (votes, casework, program creation) affect actions taken by public managersand street-level bureaucrats. Bureaucratic decisions in turn affect citizens and,either through citizens or directly, politicians. Studying only one part of theprocess provides a truncated and biased view of how a democracy functions.

Any book as broad ranging and as ambitious as this one will generate contro-versy. While clearly a strength, LHH’s eclectic approach is also a source of weak-nesses. Whether LHH recognize the intellectual tension between those who studyprograms as pure substantive specialists and those who study them for what theysay about important political theories is unclear. The critical assessment that LHHgive to existing studies of governance would have been valuable to apply to theirdiscussion of existing theory. Given that most policy theories seek parsimony(including LHH’s favorite, political economy) and thus ignore large parts of thegovernance process, the uncritical discussion of theory is hard to reconcile withthe key theme of comprehensiveness. Despite its inclusion in the model, the bookhas the least to say about management, although this is as much a criticism ofthe existing literature as it is of LHH.

Despite its limitations, Improving Governance, is a major contribution to socialscience. It integrates myriad literatures in several disciplines, and several con-ferences have been organized around the key concepts that LHH present. Thelogic for constructing valid studies and fitting them within the framework is

280 Book Reviews

sound. What remains is for other scholars to take the logic of LHH and use it todevelop better theories of public policy and management. The book should be required reading for students of public administration, public policy, policyimplementation, and public management. It would be worthwhile reading for allpolitical scientists because it demonstrates better than any other existing workwhat students of public management and governance are all about.

Kenneth J. Meier, Texas A&M University

The Limits of Policy Change. By Michael T. Hayes. (Washington, DC: George-town University Press, 2001. Pp. 204. $60.00 cloth, $21.95 paper.)

Michael T. Hayes offers a book about “the limits of policy change.” His argu-ments are founded in now classic readings, with special attention paid to thoseadvancing arguments about and for “incremental policy making.” These argu-ments are based on “three major empirical propositions about the policy process,”including the description of the policy making process as characterized by “par-tisan mutual adjustment,” deliberation focused on incremental adjustment fromprevious policy baselines, and, as a result, policy outcomes that “tend to be incre-mental as well” (3). In keeping with this tradition, he regards these propositionsas both descriptive and prescriptive.

He begins his argument by contrasting “rationalist” and “anti-rationalist”worldviews. Rationalists are portrayed as utopian visionaries, relying on reasonto solve social problems. In his more sympathetic treatment, anti-rationalists aremore alert to the limits to human capacity and understanding, emphasizing theamelioration of social problems since “genuine solutions are precluded by thetwin problems of human fallibility and self-interest” (11). This leads to the reviewof arguments by various classical figures, notably James MacGregor Burns andWillmoore Kendall, over the desirable form and exercise of power in the U.S.political system. It concludes with Hayes’s preference for more dispersed, delib-erative arrangements over more intentionally ordered arrangements such as thoseassociated with parliamentary democracies.

In Chapter 3, he develops a typology of worldviews, based on the contrastbetween “reformers” and “preservers,” and “process-oriented” versus “end- orsolution-oriented” perspectives. Preservers of both sorts are “conservative,” while“utopian visionaries” (solution-oriented reformers) are contrasted with “melio-rative liberals” (process-oriented reformers). The labels foreshadow Hayes’s pref-erence for process-oriented reform. In Hayes’s account, this perspective is linkedto the “amelioration” of social problems through a process of “systematic ration-ality”—a process characterized by gradual improvement through evolutionarychange and social exploration and experimentation. A typical list of advantagesto incrementalism is reviewed: at least some action is more likely, analysis is lesscostly, social learning is facilitated, coalition building is enhanced by the limitedobjectives, and subsequent action may be nurtured by the modesty of previous

Book Reviews 281

efforts. The list does not fully consider other, frequently offered arguments forredundancy, on the other hand.

These arguments also do not consider the contentions of Ian Lustick, nor dothey incorporate the somewhat more recent formal work of Jonathan Bendor. Thisliterature extends and clarifies important claims made by proponents of incre-mentalism and is recommended to the interested reader. Those familiar with thework of Robert Goodin will also recognize that these arguments may not be sufficient where public purposes do not develop increasing clarity over the evolution of public policies—drift, not amelioration, may be the result. Wherethreshold and sleeper effects are involved, catastrophic consequences mayemerge. Finally, where theories of intervention are not reasonably well specified,it may be difficult to ascertain what steps would constitute “incremental” and“ameliorative” change in existing policies.

Arguments for incremental processes are partly based on the operation of inter-est group conflict. Accordingly, Hayes then considers the unequal contest amonggroups, generally organizing his discussion around Charles Lindblom’s concernsover the “privileged position of business.” Considering other advantaged groupssuch as Robert Alford’s “structural interests” would enhance these arguments.

These concerns prompt Hayes to propose a typology of policy processes—asix-fold scheme based on demand patterns that are consensual or conflictual,leading to nondecisions, “delegative” or “allocative” outcomes. For Hayes, thecrucial distinction is between “delegative” outcomes, where “a vague bill . . . del-egates broad discretion to the bureaucracy,” and “allocative” outcomes, where a“clear-cut specific decision” is the result. This latter result represents “the rule oflaw,” much as in Theodore Lowi’s well-known argument.

Within this typology, Hayes advances a series of arguments that leads him toassert that “nonincremental policy change will occur only where the balance offorces shifts in favor of challenging groups” (72). This argument is developedthrough consideration of Charles Jones’s case study of the Clean Air Act of 1970and Hayes’s study of the nuclear freeze issue from 1981 to 1983. Hayes brieflyreviews the cases and reinterprets them to argue that the result of both politicalcontests took the form of “dramaturgical incrementalism,” involving symbolicresponses (as in Murray Edelman’s work) to temporarily aroused, if not neces-sarily always vigilant, groups. In a sentence, he rejects Frank Baumgartner andBryan Jones’s portrait of a policy-making system characterized by punctuatedequilibria resulting in occasional dramatic change. Those familiar with thisresearch program will want further argument and evidence if they are to find thisclaim persuasive.

Hayes then turns to a discussion of the deliberations over health care reformin 1993–94. This discussion proceeds along well-established ground, attributingthe failure of reform efforts to the usual suspects (the advantage afforded oppo-nents of reform by multiple veto points, the important role played by determinedRepublican political opposition, etc.). It is noteworthy that Hayes does not extendthe argument a further modest step to recognize the implications of this case forthe optimistic perspective of “meliorative liberalism,” and the promise of “in-

282 Book Reviews

cremental” policy evolution. As Thomas Oliver and others have pointed out, thebreakdown of these deliberations may be better understood as leading to a patternof increasing deterioration and dysfunction in the U.S. health care system (withdramatic increases in spending, growing pressure on the system of employer pro-vided health insurance, and so on).

He then turns to consideration of welfare reform in 1995–96, arguing that theabolition of AFDC and adoption of the new TANF program constituted a “cal-culated risk” springing from a “broad bipartisan consensus . . . about the bank-ruptcy of existing welfare policy” (124). This diagnosis did not lead to agreementabout desirable reform and, he argues, led to the resulting changes that delegatedpolicy to existing organized interests, in his account, governors seeking greaterautonomy. The risks, as he notes, were largely imposed on the poor. While theanalysis of the case is relatively conventional, it can be strengthened by consid-ering a longer time frame, encompassing the decline in the real value of welfarebenefits over many years. In this path-dependent perspective, welfare reform maybe understood as the culmination of a more lengthy policy struggle over redis-tributive policy, with “reform” ratifying policy shifts that had been under way formany years.

Hayes concludes his study by revisiting his arguments for partisan mutualadjustment, which he regards as a means of checking the exercise of power. Inthis discussion, he acknowledges that his arguments “hinge on the ability to learnfrom mistakes” (150), which he believes can be achieved through creative polit-ical tensions among those with different worldviews. He then considers the impli-cations of uneven representation—in his account, these imbalances should beremedied, and he briefly reviews some standard solutions.

More important, he argues that these arguments support the “rule of law” argu-ments associated with Friedrich Hayek and Lowi. The claims are familiar ones,urging “clear instructions” and “impersonal targets.” The failure to develop clearinstructions leads to unfortunate delegation, with attendant advantages for organ-ized interests and subversion of larger perspectives. The failure to focus on imper-sonal targets leads to policies with particularized benefits and burdens. Reflectingon this conclusion reveals that the tension between a preference for partisanmutual adjustment processes and clear instructions affecting universalized targetsremains unresolved.

Professor Hayes has thus provided a review of two sometimes related litera-tures, advocating incrementalism as a strategy and urging the rule of law. Thereader will find this work most beneficial when joined with the related literaturethat extends and critiques these arguments.

Mark E. Tompkins, University of South Carolina

Environmental Policymaking in Congress: The Role of Issue Definitions in Wet-lands, Great Lakes, and Wildlife Policies. By Kelly Tzoumis. (New York:Routledge, 2001. Pp. 133. $65.00.)

Book Reviews 283

Kelly Tzoumis has laid out several purposes for her book. First, she is inter-ested in exploring how participants in the congressional policy-making processhave defined various environmental issues over time. She uses as her data testi-mony given at congressional hearings between 1789 and 1999, and she codes thattestimony in terms of the tone taken in addressing the issue. Using rhetoric andsymbols, participants reflect a tone that is either positive and supportive or crit-ical and negative. Her examination of congressional hearings seeks to demon-strate how those hearings have helped shape the way environmental policies havebeen defined and emphasizes the role that hearings play in linking agenda settingand policy making. She focuses on three environmental issues: wetlands, theGreat Lakes, and wildlife protection, issues that have a long legislative historyand allow for considerable evolution and change in how each issue is defined.

The second purpose of this book is to “provide a better understanding of thelink between issue definitions and agenda setting” (9). Tzoumis explores the roleof issue definition in different kinds of policy change, from incremental to majorpolicy shifts. Using Frank Baumgartner and Bryan Jones’s theory of punctuatedequilibrium, a theory suggesting that policy making is generally stable but occa-sionally punctuated by periods of volatility that upset the equilibrium, she exam-ines how changes in policy definition are linked to changes in environmentalpolicy. She presents three models of how policy definition shapes the policy-making process: the dominance issue, the bounded issue, and the valence issuemodel, and she uses each of these models to help explain the evolution of thethree environmental issues on which she focuses.

A third purpose is to link literatures in congressional agenda setting and envi-ronmental policy making. She seeks to add to those who study Congress in termsof the behavior of individual members, the relationship between members andtheir constituents, the role of committees and subcommittees, the functioning ofissue networks and political streams, her study of congressional hearings and ofhow issues are defined. The environmental policy literature, she argues, has givenlittle attention to longitudinal and comparative studies that allow for more under-standing of long-term patterns in congressional policy-making. Looking at issuedefinition before the 1960s and the rise of the modern environmental movementis particularly useful in seeing how definitions change over time.

Her methodology rests on the differentiation among the three issue-definitionmodels she uses and on her approach to coding hearing testimony. The domi-nance model relies on rhetoric that is polarizing and seeks to mobilize interests.It is generally stable, but the issue may be redefined during periods of intenseconflict when views that have been excluded in the past become dominant. Thebounded issue definition model seeks to encompass a variety of interests, createmultiple images of the issue, and contain conflict, and it does not typically allowfor a major redefinition of issues over time. The third model, valence issue,employs very powerful images that provide justification for the status quo, and asignificant redefinition of issues rarely occurs. The dominance issue model is usedto examine the case of wetlands policy, the bounded issue model to illuminate

284 Book Reviews

policy making for the Great Lakes, and the valence issue model for understand-ing public policies aimed at protecting wildlife.

Tzoumis argues for the following conclusions from her study of these threeenvironmental issues. First, the evolution of the definition of an issue in Congresscan be tracked over time, and changes in tone or redefinition of the issues can bediscerned and measured. The three models of policy definitions are associatedwith distinct political relationships. Second, contrary to the hypothesis that non-legislative hearings might provide a forum for competing definitions of an issue,such hearings did not play a significant role in shifting the baseline definition.More important in explaining those shifts were the adaptation of committees tonew definitions and the introduction of new committees to address the issue.Third, environmental problems are not locked into the same issue definition overtime. The Great Lakes issue, for example, initially followed the dominance issuemodel but eventually shifted to the bounded issue model, and that has led to pos-itive policy outcomes attributed to a more stable policy-making environment.

Tzoumis also suggests that the way in which a natural resource is defined hasconsequences for its management and its sustainability. A bounded issue, sheargues, is the optimal path an issue can take; a dominance issue model may leadto overconsumption, and a valence issue model can be useful in making a strongcase for preservation. But the bounded issue model suggests a balance betweenhuman consumption and resource preservation that leads to sustainability.

Students of Congress will find this book useful in its longitudinal study of hear-ings as a key institution of Congress and in its exploration of how the definitionof issues changes over time. Students of natural resource policy will be able toexplore the evolution of natural resources and how changes in scientific research,public awareness, and policy goals are reflected in congressional hearings.

Gary Bryner, Brigham Young University

Politics and Banking: Ideas, Public Policy, and the Creation of Financial Insti-tutions. By Susan Hoffmann. (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press,2001. Pp. 304. $42.00.)

There is no doubt that without a sound monetary system economic develop-ment falters. For over two centuries, the key ingredient of a monetary system hasbeen a paper currency created by government that can sometimes have gold orcommodity backing. Among other things, the role of money is to facilitate con-temporaneous economic exchanges—the coordination of buyers and sellers.

At least since David Hume, a major focus has been on the functions and con-sequences of money. Aside from the power that money brings to coordinatingeconomic activity, there are some consequences to this system of exchangeincluding inflation and deflation. Improperly managed, money can destroy thevery functions it is intended to provide.

While a good deal of attention has been paid to the functions of money, there

Book Reviews 285

has been far less attention paid to the various financial institutions and processesthat lead to the creation and evolution of monetary systems. In her book, SusanHoffmann describes in considerable historical detail the ebbs and flows of U.S.financial institutions—banks, savings and loan associations, and credit unions.

Professor Hoffmann’s perspective is to explore the “influence of ideas in publicpolicy making and institutional design” (x). Overall, she develops a narrativelinking regulatory frameworks to public philosophies—institutions to ideas thatundergird them—in the public policy domain of banking since the earliest daysof the Republic. The narrative focuses on the organizations that make up the regulatory frameworks, on their origins and significant changes (14).

Her analytic perspective contains three interdependent factors: (1) a regulatoryframework, defined as “a network of interacting organizations” (3), (2) an ideo-logical paradigm or public philosophy (her focus is on utilitarianism, progres-sivism, and populism), and (3) the ideas or beliefs about “what would be goodpublic policy . . . in the public interest regardless of any particular impact ononeself ” (6).

The product of this analytical perspective is to link each type of financial insti-tution with a particular public philosophy. Banks, for example, are utilitarian inprinciple because their existence helps “maximize aggregate well being” (225).Savings and loan associations are primarily a progressive entity since they supporthome ownership, and credit unions are an outgrowth of the progressive move-ment because they provide individuals the ability to “partition their money fromthe nation’s capital pool, to be allocated by different people and according to dif-ferent criteria than those prevailing in banks” (227).

This analytic perspective informs the analysis in the book’s eight chapters.Chapters 2 through 5 center on monetary institution development from 1791 to the 1930s. In particular, the focus is on the development of the First and Second Bank of the United States, the creation of state banks, and ultimately the creation and evolution of the Federal Reserve. Chapters 6 and 7 examine the development of savings and loans and of credit unions. Chapter 8 is asummary of the previous chapters, with an eye on future financial institutiondevelopments.

The strength of the book is its broad historical sweep. One cannot help but beimpressed with the recitation of various events and actors. There is, however, ashortcoming with the analytical framework: it lacks explanatory power since itcannot provide cause and effect analysis. In general, if one wants to analyze polit-ical, social, and economic processes in cause and effect terms, then there mustbe a thorough description of the incentives being created, compared to the rhet-oric about the goals being sought. It also means examining the empirical evi-dence with an eye on identifying specific causal linkages. In this way, one canaggregate up to systemic, macro-level arguments such as those posed by Professor Hoffmann.

This weakness is manifested in various ways in the book. For one, the book’sanalytical framework really cannot assist in a detailed discussion of the relation

286 Book Reviews

between both good and bad social and economic events and the various institu-tions. There can be little valid discussion about policy prescriptions.

This is more than having a discussion about reactions to crises. There will beunanticipated consequences in the development of any institution. The issue,however, is whether this analytical framework helps predict the set of circum-stances that would lead to minimizing policy error and maximizing policyacumen. The stakes are not small since some policy errors have been catastrophic.The Fed, for example, did not fulfill its responsibilities in the late 1920s and early1930s. By letting the money supply decline by one-third, real income fell by one-third, industrial production fell by one-half, and unemployment rose to one-fourthof the labor force.

The fact that the analytical framework lacks scientific power means that evenwhen a sweeping cause and effect prescriptive statement is made, it is void ofcontent. One example is the following passage on “Neoliberalism”:

Neoliberalism is again ascendant. The force of its logic has been deployed to undermine publiceducation, demoralize the civil service, minimize the sense of national responsibility for theparticular problems of big cities, and constrain environmental regulation (248).

Undermine public education? Demoralize civil servants? Writing as someonewho is a civil servant and a product of public schools, it would be worthwhile to know where Professor Hoffmann provides the valid cause and effect model,with explicit linkages, that shows that after accounting for confounding factors,these consequences of that particular public philosophy.

If you agree with Thomas Jefferson’s goal of designing institutions “to yieldsome outcome but also as social processes with which individuals would learn”(24), then this book will provide abundant descriptive historical background.However, the analytical perspective is in no way “cause and effect.”

Jim Granato, National Science Foundation

Political Competition: Theory and Applications. By John E. Roemer. (Cambridge:Harvard University Press, 2001. Pp. 335. $55.00.)

This is an important book and one that should be studied by all formal polit-ical theorists interested in the spatial theory of voting. John Roemer builds ahybrid spatial model that combines the Downsian model of vote-maximizing can-didates with the Wittman model in which candidates have policy preferences oftheir own. This new model is meant to represent party rather than candidate com-petition because part of the model includes a theory of how party preferences arederived from citizen preferences. The “multifaction model” of Chapter 8 postu-lates that a party is composed of three factions: the Downsian members who careonly about winning; the Wittmanian members who care only about the winningpolicy; and the party militants who care only about seeing their ideal policyadopted. What Roemer terms a “party-unanimity Nash equilibrium,” or PUNE,

Book Reviews 287

is a policy for each party such that, given the policy of the opposing party(ies),there exists no other policy that all three party factions prefer. With the excep-tion of the last chapter, the author confines his attention to two-party competi-tion, but mathematical complexity is the only obstacle to expanding his approachto multiparty systems.

To provide a brief overview of the book, the first seven chapters contain a thor-ough theoretical description of eight spatial models: {Downs parties, Wittmanparties} ¥ {certainty about voter behavior, uncertainty about voter behavior} ¥{unidimensional policy space, multidimensional policy space}. These chaptersprove everything from the median voter theorem to a corrected existence theoremfor a Wittman equilibrium. Roemer takes it for granted that the median voterresult is unrealistic, but most political scientists would agree with him.

Chapter 4 applies the Wittman model to income tax policy and a two-issueelection concerned with an economic and a social issue. Particularly interestingis the dynamic model of political cycles that shows that Wittman equilbrium predicts the kind of left-right political cycles observed over time in American politics.

Chapter 8 introduces the multifaction model of party competition, Roemer’smost important contribution. He recognizes that the assumption of party una-nimity is strong, as opposed to a weaker assumption such as “two factions out ofthree” as sufficient to overturn an electoral equilibrium, but a weaker assumptionis likely to result in the nonexistence of equilibrium. This is a key point, Roemerargues convincingly that a model that has no Nash equilibrium is underspecified,and the equilibrium he means is pure-strategy Nash equilibrium, not mixed-strategy equilibrium or some form of stability weaker than the Nash concept.While some top formal theorists would take issue with him, his point is well-argued.

In Chapters 9–12 Roemer uses his multifaction model of party competition toexplore several empirical questions, including the prevalence of progressive taxpolicies in democratic countries (chap. 9), why the poor don’t use the tax systemto expropriate the rich (chap. 10), why socialists won in some European coun-tries and fascists in others between World Wars I and II, and why there is no majorsocialist worker’s party in the United States (chap. 12). It is laudable that in abook that is so theoretical the author spends significant time on empirical applications.

In Chapter 13 Roemer returns to the subject of “endogenous parties” to accom-modate multidimensional policy spaces and to develop the multifaction model in its most general form. He uses this expanded model to estimate electoral equilibrium in U.S. party politics. In the final chapter, he looks at three-partycompetition and some of its additional complexities compared with two-partysystems.

Having praised this book as an important contribution to formal politicaltheory, I must add a significant caveat. The book is mathematically inaccessibleto almost the entire political science discipline. For example, I doubt there are

288 Book Reviews

many political scientists who know what a 2-manifold is. The author claims thata course in real analysis (i.e., advanced calculus) and another in linear algebraare sufficient to follow his arguments, but I have my doubts. There are some con-cepts in the book (e.g., Lebesgue integrals or the Radon-Nikodym theorem) thatin my student days (a long time ago, I admit) were taught in graduate-level mathcourses. A solid grounding in measure theory is also useful (another graduatemath course in my day). In addition, a reader unfamiliar with microeconomictheory will have trouble following the argument, though I think this is a lessserious barrier than the math level.

John Roemer says that he used this book in a graduate political science courseat NYU. I’d really like to know how that went. My guess is that he spent most ofhis time recasting his model in much simpler form because I cannot believe thatpolitical science graduate students anywhere (except maybe Caltech) can readthis book. That is too bad because the book is important and deserves to be under-stood. Perhaps someone else will translate Roemer’s results into a form withsimpler math and more words. I am thinking of something like Peter Ordeshook’sgame theory book from the 1980s, which explained the logic of the proof ofMcKelvey’s global cycling theorem in a form that was accessible to students witha background in only high school math. Has formal political theory reached thepoint where that is no longer possible? I hope not.

Jim Enelow, University of Texas at Austin

Constitutional Politics: Essays on Constitution Making, Maintenance, andChange. Edited by Sotirios Barber and Robert George. (Princeton, NJ:Princeton University Press, 2001. Pp. 384. $55.00 cloth, $22.95 paper.)

Anthologies are tough to review. They never really hang together, one istempted to summarize each chapter so as to avoid hurting authors’ feelings, andspace limitations make it impossible to provide an adequate summary of four-teen essays. What binds these essays together is that they come out of two con-ferences organized at Princeton and that all the authors (dubbed by the editors“the Princeton group”) know Walter Murphy, either as former students or formercolleagues (even if only as one-year visitors at Princeton). Even the title adver-tises the non-unity of the volume; there are really three subjects here, not one. Infact there are four: both the Walter Murphy chapter and the Mark Brandon chap-ters are really about constitutionalism. In the case of the Murphy essay, one findsan admirably thorough and thoughtful comparative politics essay (comparingtypes of constitutional regimes to each other and to nonconstitutional ones). Thisessay blends formal institutional comparisons with an examination of empiricalresearch on the consequences of institutional choice in terms of crime levels, civicliberty, cross-national peaceableness, prosperity, political stability, and quality ofcivil society/civic culture. The Brandon chapter is (to this reviewer’s sensibilities,at least) maddeningly abstract, attempting to define five key attributes of consti-

Book Reviews 289

tutionalism in order to say how one can decide when one or another aspect ofconstitutionalism has “failed” (or, one might say, “been lost”). Lincoln believedthat constitutionalism in the United States required an all-out effort to save theUnion; Brandon thinks the North’s decision to fight secession went contrary toconstitutionalism. But Brandon never makes clear what hangs on the answer.What are the significant consequences of choosing the Lincolnian response versusthe Brandon response?

Rather than continue in this vein of chapter summary/critique, it is probablybest to advise the curious to check out pages three to eight, which summarize theessays one by one. To the extent that any themes unify the book, two seem promi-nent to this reader. First, these FOWMs (friends of Walter Murphy) share his (andAristotle’s) concerns for how constitutions constitute us, that is, how they con-stitute ways of life of a community and thereby the character of citizens withinthat community. Within this vein, the essays by Sanford Levinson, Steve Macedo,Sot Barber, and Jeff Tulis stand out as particularly rich in thoughtfulness andinsight. The latter two, both University of Chicago Ph.Ds, implicate issues of tensions between constituting citizens who care about natural justice and con-stituting the peaceable, individualistic, profit-seeking citizens of a commercialrepublic. Sanford Levinson and Stephen Macedo produce essays that work particularly well together as a dialogue on how approaches to the Free ExerciseClause and public school classrooms shape the quality of the American polity.Harry (H. N.) Hirsch’s essay attacking recent progressive post-liberal approachesto First Amendment scholarship also fits into this category of discussions on howreigning constitutional doctrine/policy constitutes us as American citizens and,thereby, our polity. This reviewer disagreed with his arguments but believes theessay would work as an excellent teaching tool in civil liberties or constitutionallaw classes (counterpoised against work by Catherine MacKinnon, Harry Clor,or critical race theorists), as would the Levinson and Macedo essays (counter-poised against each other). Similarly, the Barber and Tulis essays would servenicely as assignments in an American political thought class.

The other prominent theme in this work is the importance (both for constitu-tional change and for constitutional maintenance, and thereby for the ways inwhich we citizens collectively constitute ourselves) of the constitutional inter-pretation that goes on outside the Supreme Court, indeed, outside the courts alto-gether, and even (heaven help us) outside the law school professoriate. The essaysby John Finn, Chris Eisgruber, Wayne Moore, and Keith Whittington fit into thiscategory as does some work by other scholars without obvious connection toPrinceton. These include, perhaps most prominently in political science, JohnAgresto, Gary Jacobson, Michael McCann, and Susan Burgess, and among lawschool faculty, Barry Friedman, Mark Tushnet, Bruce Ackerman, and SteveGriffin. Of this category, the Whittington chapter stands out as an extraordinar-ily insightful contribution. It focuses on the presidency and builds on StephenSkowronek’s typology of presidents, which in turn is built on critical elections

290 Book Reviews

scholarship. Whittington analyzes the ability of the president to shape constitu-tional discourse and constitutional policy (consider Lyndon Johnson’s impact onthe powers of the federal government vis à vis the states, or George W. Bush’simpact on [the lack of ] rights of persons incarcerated without charges or trial).Whittington blends the insights of Richard Neustadt, by looking at constraintsand resources affecting presidential power that stem from the nature of the office,with those (à la Skowronek) that stem from the nature of the electoral coalitionthat brought the president to office—is his a long-term dominant party, a long-term “out” party, a party on the cusp of majority dominance? Whittington’s analy-sis is remarkably wise, and I fully expect it to find its way (in a mercifullyshortened version, I trust) into anthologies designed for introductory Americangovernment courses.

The Robbie George and Sue Hemberger pieces do not fit the collection par-ticularly well. George basically is writing a response to critics of his earlier essayin First Things, in which he had called the Roe v. Wade decision “illegitimate.”He argues here that it is illegitimate under the Fourteenth Amendment’s equalprotection principle and that even though it is, one who agrees with him is not necessarily committed to revolution. He does not explain why anyone whodisagrees with his assertion that an embryo is in the constitutional sense a“person” should agree with any of his conclusions. The Hemberger essay startsout promisingly by looking at international relations dimensions of concerns of the Federalists (e.g., the desire to render the U.S. a “player” on the world stage) but then descends into what looks like a rehash of the old discussion ofwhere the Federalists and anti-Federalists differed, without any clear explanationof what her treatment adds to earlier analyses like those of Murray Dry or CeciliaKenyon.

All in all, this book is a good read, suitable for the nightstand (because it canbe read in chunks), and especially attractive to those scholars of law and courtswho are bored with the prediction fetishism of the attitudinal modelers and whowant a change from the what-the-court-should-have-written content of most lawreviews.

Leslie Friedman Goldstein, University of Delaware

Calhoun and Popular Rule: The Political Theory of the Disquisition and Dis-course. By H. Lee Cheek, Jr. (Columbia and London: University of MissouriPress, 2001. Pp. 202. $29.95.)

John C. Calhoun is best known for his principle of the “concurrent majority”:in order to prevent majority tyranny, Calhoun argued, every distinct “portion” or“interest” in a political community must have either a veto on legislation or aconcurrent voice in the legislative process. For Calhoun as Southern statesman,this meant that agrarian free trade states like South Carolina should have the

Book Reviews 291

power to nullify decisions of a protectionist Congressional majority and that theslaveholding Southern minority must be protected from the interference of thefree-state majority.

Calhoun’s relation to the Founding vision, as expressed in the Declaration ofIndependence and the Constitution, is ambiguous and contested. Did Calhoun, ashis critics charged, renounce the ideals of the American Revolution when heexplicitly rejected the phrase “all men are created equal” and distort the Consti-tution with his doctrine of nullification? Or was Calhoun, as H. Lee Cheek arguesin Calhoun and Popular Rule, “an authentic exponent of American constitution-alism” (x) who “attempted to translate the Founders’ worldview to the nineteenthcentury” (2)?

Calhoun and Popular Rule makes the “authentic exponent” case by placingCalhoun within a tradition of “South Atlantic republicanism” and sees his polit-ical and constitutional thought as a continuation of that of Jefferson and Madison.He persuasively connects Calhoun’s nullification doctrine with Jefferson’s Kentucky Resolutions of 1798 (40–49). More problematic is Cheek’s claim thatCalhoun’s thought is a faithful development of Madison’s constitutionalism(49–60). Madison lived long enough to reject vehemently the doctrine of nullifi-cation as advanced by Calhoun and others during the 1830s. Cheek, followingCalhoun, sees this as the unfortunate inconsistency of an aged statesman. For adifferent view, see Drew McCoy, The Last of the Fathers: James Madison andthe Republican Legacy (Cambridge University Press, 1989).

Calhoun and Popular Rule does not go into much detail on the tariff, nullifi-cation, and slavery controversies in which Calhoun participated as statesman, andwhich provided the raw material for his political and constitutional theory. Cheekis more interested in Calhoun’s view of human nature, which he argues is Augus-tinian rather than Hobbesian (103), and in Calhoun’s understanding of the rela-tion between individuals and the “organic” local communities that sustain andrestrain them (98). Cheek rightly stresses the importance Calhoun places onenlightened statesmen setting an example of “integrity and morality” for the com-munities they represent (168).

Cheek has little to say about Calhoun’s views of slavery, and what he does sayis misleading. He claims that Calhoun was “a source of moderation” in the slaverydebate, and he suggests in several places that Calhoun supported some gradualabolition of slavery: the “problem would resolve itself over time” (22); hedefended the institution as “temporarily” necessary (91); he looked to “the even-tual transition to another relationship” (22). But Cheek provides no evidence forthese claims; he cites passages from Calhoun’s Papers, but those passages do notsupport the claims.

In fact, Calhoun insisted that slavery was not merely an evil to be tolerated,but a positive good: “Many in the South once believed that it was a moral andpolitical evil; that folly and delusion are gone; we see it now in its true light, andregard it as the most safe and stable basis for free institutions in the world”(Papers 14:84). He supported an extreme version of the gag rule: Congress had

292 Book Reviews

no right even to receive antislavery petitions because they were a slander on itsSouthern members. He opposed any restrictions on slavery in federally ownedterritories. He was a moderate on the slavery issue only insofar as he consideredsecession a tragic last resort and hoped the Union would hold. But he was willingin the end to dissolve the Union to protect the institution of slavery.

This reviewer agrees with Cheek that Calhoun’s political theory cannot be dismissed as a mere rationalization for slavery. But in order to appreciate where it goes beyond a defense of slavery, one must dissect those points whereslavery shapes the theory. Calhoun’s “organic” local community, for example, iscommunity-with-slavery where certain minorities have veto rights and otherminorities have no rights at all. What a Calhounian organic community wouldlook like in a world without slavery or racial hierarchy is difficult to determine.

Calhoun’s political theory is sometimes criticized as an implausible combina-tion of a Hobbesian theory of human nature with a consensus model of politics.The main contribution of Calhoun and Popular Rule is to challenge this Hobbe-sian reading of Calhoun’s view of human nature. This book, however, does noteffectively answer many of the key criticisms of Calhoun’s political and consti-tutional theory.

James H. Read, College of St. Benedict

Conscience and Its Critics: Protestant Conscience, Enlightenment Reason, andModern Subjectivity. By Edward G. Andrew. (Toronto: University of TorontoPress, 2001. Pp. 259. $45.00.)

Edward G. Andrew’s Conscience and Its Critics is an ambitious and provoca-tive book: in just under 200 pages of text, Andrew aims to “examine the evolu-tion of the meanings of conscience from the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries”(3). Toward this end, its introductory chapter lays out a number of related projects: a “major thesis” that “Enlightenment thinkers welcomed Locke’s sub-stitution of public opinion . . . for natural law and the rights of conscience” (5);a “position” that a major strand of Enlightenment thought equated reason withpublic opinion, thus sundering reason from individual conscience (9); a “hypoth-esis tested” that modernity is the product of this tension between (Enlightenment)reason and (Protestant) conscience (9); and a typology in which Protestantism isgrouped with such terms as equality, certainty, and individuality and Enlighten-ment with inequality, skepticism, and sociality. From the outset, Andrew takes ona large task, wrestling with a variety of materials—including especially intrigu-ing discussions of Hamlet and William Blake—from thinkers who have takenpart in the theoretical articulation of the modern self. The result is a boldly argued,clearly articulated position on the productive—at times, destructive—tensionbetween these two aspects of human personhood.

As noted above, Andrew characterizes his aim as a consideration of the variousmeanings of the term “conscience”: more specifically, a “history of thoughtful

Book Reviews 293

attempts in Britain to characterize conscience” (10). But such a description seemsnot to communicate his real intention, for it quickly becomes clear that Andrewis writing a pointed critique of the Enlightenment substitution of public opinionfor natural law or revelation. Indeed, it seems that the seeds of modern subjec-tivity predate the Enlightenment: Milton, Andrew claims, “anticipated the contemporary libertarian stance that . . . anything is morally permissible betweenconsenting adults” (58). At other points in the book, the critique is more overt:Andrew claims that Locke’s theory of toleration lacks the moral seriousness ofRoger Williams’s (88), that Shaftesbury’s morality is clearly “of greater nobilitythan that of Locke” (100), and that Mill’s account of conscience is “unsatisfac-tory” (163) due to internal inconsistency.

As one might expect, any book attempting to do so many things in so brief aspace is bound to sacrifice depth for breadth. Conscience and Its Critics aboundswith broad statements that tend to obscure more than they reveal. For example,Andrew advances the familiar view that Luther unintentionally unleashed radicalsubjectivity, that “by the time of the English Civil War, Luther’s egalitarian con-science had become revolutionary, antinomian, and subjectivist, with individualjudgment rather than God as the measure of all things” (32). But if a small numberof sects are to be identified with “Luther’s conscience,” what becomes of the manyLutheran churches across Europe, which bear scant resemblance to such radi-cals? Or what of Calvin (to whom Andrew devotes just two pages) and European,English, and even New England Calvinism? Protestant theological individualismcan, and for many thinkers must, depend intimately on communal values (see,e.g., Michael Walzer, The Revolution of the Saints; Adam Seligman, InnerworldlyIndividualism: Charismatic Community and its Institutionalization). Andrewclaims that Locke was allied with the Anglican hierarchy in opposing James II’sattempts to promote liberty of conscience (90). But James was attempting to ruleby decree, and Locke’s opposition to James was on procedural as much as sub-stantive grounds. (Supporting James would have meant endorsing the extralegalmeasures by which he sought to implement toleration.) Andrew’s claim that Burkewas hostile to rights of conscience (139) overlooks Burke’s support for a varietyof relief measures for English Dissenters and the external factors that led him tooppose such claims later in his career (see Norman Ravitch, “Far Short ofBigotry: Edmund Burke on Church Establishments and Confessional States,”Journal of Church and State 37 [1995], 365–83).

The Enlightenment plays a central role in Andrew’s analysis of the evolutionof conscience in the modern era. The term “Enlightenment,” however, especiallywhen paired with the singular definite article, remains elusive. Andrew admitsearly on in the book that “perhaps . . . one cannot characterize definitively move-ments such as the Enlightenment,” and that “neither Protestantism nor Enlight-enment is unitary or easily defined” (9). But this early caution disappears as oneproceeds through the book: “What the Enlightenment picked up from Locke wasnot Locke the revolutionary and man of Protestant conscience, but [the rejectionof innate ideas]” (82). Shaftesbury “seems to inaugurate the Enlightenment belief

294 Book Reviews

that the desire for social approbation is the most powerful of human motivations”(101). “For the leading thinkers of the Enlightenment, freedom of conscience wasHobbesian Erastianism, not Miltonian or Lockean separation of church and state”(117). Andrew places Hobbes “at the apex of that tradition of thought known asthe Enlightenment” (65) and sees in Smith’s Theory of Moral Sentiments “thesupreme effort in the English-speaking world to articulate the dictates of theProtestant conscience in the language of the Enlightenment” (129).

What exactly is this thing called Enlightenment? Given his focus on Britainand his claim that “eighteenth-century England did not have an Enlightenment”(144), Andrew appears to equate “Enlightenment” with “Scottish Enlighten-ment.” (The chapters on Hume, Hutcheson, and Smith seem to bear out thisclaim.) Elsewhere, however, Andrew identifies Hume, Voltaire, and Diderot as“the leading thinkers of the Enlightenment” (117). So we are never entirely sureexactly what “the” Enlightenment is all about, and thus generalizations regard-ing what “Shaftesbury taught the eighteenth century” (103) remain questionableand problematic. Missing here, but highly germane to Andrew’s argument, is B.W. Young’s Religion and Enlightenment in Eighteenth-Century England: Theo-logical Debate from Locke to Burke (Oxford, 1998). Young argues passionatelyand persuasively that eighteenth-century England did have an Enlightenment.England’s Enlightenment was of a different sort than that of the French—moreclerical, less rationalistic—but no less real. Also notable in its absence fromAndrew’s account is any mention of Charles Taylor’s magisterial investigationinto the modern self (Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern IdentityHarvard, 1988).

Conscience and Its Critics is written in a refreshingly straightforward manner,and the impulses that drive Andrew’s analysis—evoked nicely in the openingpages by his consideration of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights—should be of great interest to scholars interested in modernity and its discontents.At the same time, the grand strokes in which Andrew frames his account unfor-tunately leave a great deal of historical context and conceptual nuance behind.One may disagree with Andrew’s conclusions, or urge a more complex story; butthis engaging perspective on how “we” came to be modern subjects will not failto provoke thought and reflection.

Andrew R. Murphy, Valparaiso University

Augustine and Politics as Longing in the World. By John Von Heyking. (Colum-bia and London: University of Missouri Press, 2001. Pp. 278. $37.50.)

It is rare that a new work on an eminent political philosopher can do more thanembellish already established interpretations of the author’s thoughts. VonHeyking’s new book offers a refreshing if potentially controversial analysis of theimportance of politics to St. Augustine of Hippo.

In the conventional account, Augustine relegates politics to the City of Man,

Book Reviews 295

the dirty and corrupt world that humans have made as a consequence of our sinfulnature and our inordinate desires. According to this understanding, political lifeitself is grounded in sin, thus coercion is legitimate. As a consequence, from theReformation on, Augustine has been read as profoundly anti-political and anti-democratic–which has justified all manner of barbarities, such as forced baptismand the burning of heretics—and as completely pessimistic about a human naturehelplessly divided between soul and body as part of a dichotomized world. Bycontrast to this widely accepted view, Von Heyking argues that politics and polit-ical life are a substantive good for Augustine. Humans, he argues, have a deeplonging for wholeness that can be satisfied on this earth only in political com-munities. Von Heyking explicitly rejects the conventional post Reformation view:“Augustine is usually said to deny the goodness of the world, the created order,and to advocate an ethic of asceticism. This study attempts to show that this viewis false when it comes to Augustine’s views on politics” (4).

The main purpose of this book is to encourage a close and more contextual-ized reading of Augustine’s works and to suggest a richer understanding of whatit means to be defined by our longings. Augustine’s famous prayer ordinate in mecaritatem reflects this desire for wholeness in the world. Love of God and loveof neighbor are demonstrated in political community; therefore, it is itself thelocus of virtue. As Von Heyking notes in the introduction:

The first [theme of the work] is that Augustine understood human beings interms of their longings, that what they long for is what defines them. Longingsignifies neediness in our incomplete natures and the fullness of experiencemore accurately than other words such as craving or loving, for example. Thesecond theme that this study shows is that, as a virtue thinker, Augustineregarded the world as the appropriate locus for this longing . . . The appropri-ate way to understand Augustine’s theory is to consider it in terms of the properway for human beings to live in the world, and whether they love differentobjects ordinately or inordinately. (3–4)

Thus, Van Heyking argues, the political city in its role as the virtuous mean isthe “best practical regime as understood and governed by natural reason” (13).Chapter 6 demonstrates that “love of God is a virtue and is not reducible to acode,” which allows non-Christians as well as Christians to “cultivate equivalentpolitical virtue” (13).

I find myself in great sympathy with Von Heyking’s argument. My own workon twelfth-century understandings of Augustine reveals that some medievalreaders also saw political life as a good. John of Salisbury, for example, readAugustine through a kind of Aristotelian lens that Augustine himself provided.John’s Augustine always emphasizes the virtuous mean as a mediator betweenextremes. Thus, the will mediates between mind and body and humans, betweenangels and beasts. For the cleric, such as John himself, the “administrative” lifelies between lay and monastic callings. Most important, the political community

296 Book Reviews

is the midpoint between the otherworldly City of God and the hellish and corruptCity of Man.

Von Heyking’s work has many virtues. Its provocative reevaluation of the con-ventional view is based on close reading and a familiarity with both Augustine’stexts and the circumstances in which his works were written. His awareness ofAugustine’s audience is most helpful in understanding some of Augustine’s moretroubling positions, as when in the final chapter, Von Heyking addresses the ques-tion of heretics. While arguing that Augustine distinguishes between nonbeliev-ers and those who do violence to impose their heresy on others, Von Heykingreminds us that Augustine wrote not as a theologian but as a pastor, a bishopaddressing different audiences.

Von Heyking’s interpretation is sure to be challenged by interpreters of Augus-tine for whom the Reformation axiom of corrupt human nature is paramount andwho insist on a rupture in the ideas of Augustine and Thomas Aquinas. VonHeyking’s argument is subtle and scholarly as well as provocative, and this bookis essential reading for any scholar interested in Augustine’s political thought.

Kate L. Forhan, Northeastern Illinois University

Book Reviews 297