Abstract
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Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press, 2003, 240, £12.95, ISBN 0 691 10270 8
Readership: Advanced undergraduates, postgraduates, academic/research
Rating: *****
Reviewer: DOUGLAS JAENICKE
(University of Manchester)
William Howell's important book directs our attention to an important, but often neglected, aspect of the US presidency – unilateral policy-making by presidents. Howell focuses on executive orders that provide presidents with ‘the clearest alternative’ to traditional legislation (p. xvi). While most studies of the presidency focus on the legistative bargaining between Congress and the president and therefore emphasise a president's personal skills of persuasion, Howell's rational choice approach to unilateral presidential policy-making emphasises the institutional context, not a president's personality. His model of unilateral presidential policy-making postulates that a ‘president's freedom to act unilaterally is defined by Congress's ability, and the judiciary's willingness, to subsequently overturn him’ (p. xv). Chapter 2 develops his formal rational choice model; the model then generates three hypotheses about when presidents will resort to unilateral policy-making. Howell hypothesises that presidents will issue more significant executive orders as congressional fragmentation increases (p. 64). Also, an incoming president who replaces a president of a different party is more like to use executive orders than either a re-elected president or a new president who succeeds a president of the same party (p. 68). Thirdly, while the conventional wisdom expects a president to make greater use of executive orders during divided government in order to circumvent a hostile Congress (the ‘evasion hypothesis’), presidents make more use of executive orders during unified government (p. 69). After testing those hypotheses in chapter 4, Howell then investigates ‘the institutional capacities’ of Congress and the federal courts to check the president's unilateral policymaking (p. xvi). Howell concludes that Congress is generally ineffective in obstructing a president's unilateral policymaking, except when the president depends upon Congress appropriating funds. Similarly, the dependence of federal judges upon the president to enforce their decisions renders them unlikely to overturn presidential executive orders. Howell's original and persuasive study is a must-read for students of the US presidency.
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Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press, 2003, 227, £26.95, ISBN 0 691 09189 7
Readership: Postgraduates, academic/research
Rating: ****
Reviewer: DANIEL BÉLAND
(University of Calgary)
Much has been published about the growing political influence of the elderly in contemporary democracies. This is especially true in the United States, where the American Association of Retired Persons is perceived as one of the most powerful lobbies in the country. In her book, Harvard political scientist Andrea Louise Campbell provides much empirical ground to the idea that elderly citizens form an increasingly influential and politically active constituency. Drawing on historical institutionalist scholarship about policy feedback, she demonstrates that the federal old age insurance programme (Social Security) has boosted the elderly's level of political participation while reducing the traditional participation gap between low and high income seniors. Furthermore, Campbell's quantitative analysis demonstrates that this vigorous participation impacts the politics of old age insurance in a significant way. Through letters to the Congress and other forms of participation, the elderly send a clear message to federal elected officials about the fate of this programme and other public policies that affect the elderly in a direct manner. Elderly support for these programmes is clear, and Republicans who may dislike these programmes for ideological reasons must adopt a cautious approach when dealing with them.
How Policies Make Citizens is a concise and well-written work that represents a significant contribution to the study of social policy and democratic participation. Empirically, this book is extremely convincing. There is plenty of data to support the author's claims, and her methodological approach is rigorous. Yet, like other solid accounts that confirm the common wisdom of the day instead of challenging it, How Policies Make Citizens does not provide the reader with path-breaking theoretical insights. Furthermore, the book has no comparative content.
Overall, How Policies Make Citizens provides strong evidence that social programmes impact political participation, which, in turn, impacts policy outcomes. In itself, demonstrating this institutionalist claim is already a great accomplishment, and scholars interested in US politics and social policy could find this book interesting.
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Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004, 221, £17.99, ISBN 0 19 5166809
Reviewer: JOSEPH M. KNIPPENBERG
(Oglethorpe University, Georgia)
Like many of its modern predecessors, the Bush administration has been evaluated, in roughly the middle of its term, by a group of distinguished scholars, whose essays have been collected in this volume. Readers whose acquaintance with George W. Bush comes largely through press reports and other political commentary might be surprised by some of the conclusions.
For example, John P. Burke paints a picture of a thoughtful, well-considered transition from campaigning to governing, despite the extraordinary circumstances of the election's aftermath. The Bush administration, others note, assembled a much more experienced and disciplined team than did its immediate predecessor. The result was an exceptionally focused and politically successful ‘first hundred days’.
Of course, in the aftermath of September 11 the character and focus of the Bush Administration changed. The war on terror overshadowed all else and substantially displaced the initial largely domestic Bush agenda. Contributors to the volume note not only that the Bush Administration was quite successful in its reorientation but that the typically national security ‘rally effect’ in public opinion was sustained for an unprecedented length of time.
With the war in Iraq, we have entered yet another phase in the Bush presidency, one that for now and for the foreseeable future will determine both its success and its legacy. While the Administration comes in for some serious and sustained criticism by Louis Fisher in a chapter entitled ‘The Way We Go to War,’ most of the essays were completed either before or just as the war was launched. Nevertheless, the contributors do enable us to make some predictions: George W. Bush is willing to take calculated risks, does not readily abandon positions in which he believes, and ‘has been consistently underestimated by his opponents’ (p. 196). This is sufficient to suggest that the definitive scholarly account of the Bush presidency will not be written until long after he leaves office four years hence.
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Washington DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2003, 218, £12.50, ISBN 0 8157 0911 0
Readership: Advanced undergraduates, postgraduates, academic/research
Rating: *****
Reviewed: DOUGLAS JAENICKE
(University of Manchester)
Sarah Binder systematically explores the causes of legislative gridlock in the post-war United States and explores its manifold consequences. The author first develops a new measure of gridlock. Rather than adopting Mayhew's method of simply determining the number of major laws enacted by each Congress, Binder cogently argues: ‘… gridlock is best viewed as the share of salient issues on the nation's agenda that is left in limbo at the close of a Congress’ (p. 35). Binder uses the editorials of the New York Times to determine the number of issues on the political agenda and their relative salience. Having developed a new measure of gridlock that is expressed as the percentage of salient issues on the national agenda that did not culminate in the enactment of legislation, Binder's quantitative analysis identifies the variables that have contributed to legislative gridlock since 1947. While Mayhew's earlier Divided We Govern found that unified and divided government had little impact on the number of major laws enacted, Binder has determined that divided government, bicameralism and partisan polarization in Congress have increased the likelihood of gridlock. Other possible explanatory variables – the size of budgetary deficits and surpluses, the public mood, and the number of years a congressional party had been in the minority – are not correlated with either increased legislation or gridlock (p. 68). Since her analysis shows that gridlock is inversely related to the size of the moderate center in Congress, the current partisan polarisation bodes ill for the passage of legislation in a closely divided Congress. Of course, unified Republican government from 2003–04 facilitates the enactment of legislation and therefore partially compensates for the adverse effect of partisan polarization. This book is a must-read for those interested in contemporary US politics and especially Congress.
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Durham NC: Duke University Press, 2004, 280, £17.50, ISBN 0 8223 3265 5
Readership: Academic/research
Rating: **
Reviewer: MARTIN B. CARSTENSEN
(University of Aarhus, Denmark)
In their exploration of the cultural and political impact of sex scandals – a topic more or less ignored by social science – Apostolidis, Willams and colleagues present three main arguments: 1. Sex scandals challenge the liberal idea of the public/private divide, when what is traditionally considered a private matter – e.g. infidelity – becomes a question debated in the media. A sex scandal may thus bring about a debate on whether norms of the public/private divide should be reinforced or altered; 2. Sex scandals display how a culture views questions of gender, race and sexuality. When Zoë Baird (President Clinton's early choice for attorney general) was caught hiring illegal domestic help, the idea that women should devote themselves to their family was largely reinforced. In other cases sex scandals may bring about a change in the dominant view on sexuality, gender and race; 3. Sex scandals – as well as any other kind of scandal – underline the importance of an active citizenry, able to separate the important implications of the scandal from trivial media frenzy.
Though the authors state that the book should be interesting for both political scientists as well as researchers in the field of cultural studies, it is only the perspective of the latter group that is explored. None of the essays deals directly with the question of how the political system may be affected by sex scandals, and no quantitative or qualitative experiments are conducted to measure the significance of scandals on Election Day. Attention is directed towards the cultural significance of sex scandals.
The lack of data is somewhat surprising: Following the Clinton/Lewinsky-scandal, an unprecedented number of polls were conducted, none of which are directly used in any of the ten essays. It is even more surprising that this rich body of data is not put to use, when the Clinton/Lewinsky-scandal is stated to be the main case of the book.
Because the theoretical frameworks are not clearly outlined, and the chapters predominantly are essayistic rather than scientific, the book most probably will not be a part of the growing research on political scandals. Even though the book deals with an interesting topic, the reader will miss the two most important ingredients in scandal research: theoretical framework and quantitative or qualitative data.
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New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003, 218, £19.99, ISBN 0 312 29622 3
Reviewer: GARY L. GREGG
(University of Louisville)
One of the quirks of the American political system is that it allows a relatively unrepresentative sample of the American population to have a disproportionately large impact on the quadrennial choice of Presidential candidates. For the last thirty years, primary voters in America have had the definitive say on who will represent the Democratic and Republican parties in the Presidential Elections and none of them have been more influential than the voters of the tiny state of New Hampshire. Because they vote first and because they are a small population who can be reached at a relatively low cost, candidates aspiring to the presidency flock there year in, year out in hope of gaining their support when they eventually reach the primary season. Though studies have shown that the vote in New Hampshire is not as definitive as it was once believed to be, it is still the prize most sought after by candidates and will remain so for the indefinite future. Dante Scala is both an academic student of the New Hampshire primaries and experiences them by living and working in the state. He has produced a readable and learned book outlining the history and importance of this phenomena and it is commended to all interested in the way America chooses its presidential candidates (and its presidents). The bigger lesson for American politics seems to be that rather than the actual vote, it is the expectations that really count. Gore's relatively modest 4 point victory in 2000 seemed like a deathblow to a surging Bill Bradley; Clinton's garnering of just a quarter of the vote gave him the chance to claim the title ‘comeback kid’ in 1992. Scala offers us the chance to ruminate on whether or not this system is a good one for choosing presidents.
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Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004, 369, £20.00, ISBN 0 521 83834 7
Reviewer: MICHAEL COX
(London School of Economics)
So much has been said about the American ‘neo-cons’ and their apparently baleful influence on the conduct of US foreign policy over the past few years, that it was obvious that someone, somewhere, at some time, would write something worthwhile about them. Fortunately, Halper (an American with insider understanding of the game played in the Beltway) and Clarke (a former British diplomat with an obvious feel for the American scene) have written a very fine book on this most important of topics. Indeed, what makes it all the more convincing is that they attack the issue – and the neocons – not from the left but from a somewhat conservative position. In fact, their underlying message is that this hard-core band of ideologues have actually betrayed ‘Republican foreign policy principles in which balance and pragmatism’ have always played a key role (p. 15), and substituted them with a radical credo that combined liberal evangelism with hard power, moral certainty with American exceptionalism, and hubristic arrogance with strategic ignorance. The cocktail was lethal and taken together brought us Iraq in the short-term, and could easily bring us much worse Bush has been re-elected in 2004. The story, supported by great scholarship, is well told. It begins with the neo-conservative rise in the post-Vietnam 1970s, continues with the resurgent 1980s under Reagan (a key hero), goes on through what for them was the awful 1990s, and concludes (for the moment) with the election of George W. Bush (quite literally a Godsend) and September 11 – the opportunity. It is no accident that we are in the state we are in therefore, facing disaster in the Middle East, a level of anti-Americanisn that is almost unprecedented, and a terrorist movement more confident than ever. We live, as Halper and Clarke suggest in their conclusion, in most dangerous times, only one reason for which is Al-Qaeda and their charismatic leader, Osama bin Laden.
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London: Pluto Press, 2004, 256, £14.99, ISBN 07453 2305 7
Reviewed: MARK J. ROZELL
(George Mason University, USA)
Domke's book is an ambitious attempt to link religion, communications strategies, media coverage, and White House political strategies into an overall explanation for the Bush administration's successes at framing the debate in the US in the war on terrorism. In Domke's view, the Bush administration capitalized on the post-9/11 climate of fear to promote an extreme agenda favoured by the religious right, and a compliant media and Congress gave the president the leeway that he needed to achieve his goals.
Indeed, Bush is sympathetic to many of the goals of the religious right, many in the media were not critical of the government in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks, and Congress gave much room for the president to prosecute the war on terrorism. Regrettably, the author repeatedly overreaches and makes overstated claims that undermine his own arguments. I admire works of scholarship that blend good research with impassioned arguments, but often the effect of the author's rhetoric is the opposite of his intention, in that he causes the reader to become almost sympathetic to the target of his criticisms. An example would be his equating of what he calls Bush's ‘political fundamentalism’ with the worldview of international terrorists. He says that ‘fundamentalism in the White House is a difference in degree, not kind, from fundamentalism exercised in deep, dark caves’ (p. 179). Such a stark claim demands proof, but the author is not convincing. Yes, Bush has laced speeches with religious rhetoric and appointed John Ashcroft, but it would be equally easy to present some of the texts of Jimmy Carter's or even Ronald Reagan's speeches and then claim that either of these former presidents imposed a fundamentalist vision on the US.
Although much of the media went easy on Bush after the terrorist attacks, there also were significant voices of criticism – the New York Times editorial page for example – of Bush's overheated rhetoric immediately after 9/11, the Patriot Act, the war in Iraq. Plenty of members of Congress and interest group organizations spoke out, people protested. Domke is being provocative, controversial, and that is all fine, but a more balanced presentation would have made a stronger case.
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Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004, 365, £21.95, ISBN 0 691 11585 0
Readership: Postgraduates, academic/research, professional
Rating: ****
Reviewer: ZÜHTÜ ARSLAN
(Police Academy, Turkey)
Randy Barnet's new book is a valuable asset for those interested in controversial topics of constitutional theory. The bulk of Restoring the Lost Constitution is aimed at substantiating a central claim: by ignoring certain provisions of the US Constitution the courts have engaged in a ‘wishful construction’ leading to ‘a systematic skewing of the Constitution’ (p. 354). This skewing has dramatically reversed the delicate balance between liberty and authority by creating ‘islands of liberty rights in a sea of governmental powers’, while the original Constitution actually suggests ‘islands of government powers in a sea of liberty’ (p. 1). Barnet, as a libertarian, rejects the orthodox view of constitutional legitimacy claiming plausibly that the idea of the consent of ‘We the People’ as the legitimate ground of obedience is merely a fiction (p. 14). He also argues that constitutional legitimacy, which must be based on natural rights rather than popular sovereignty, entails a commitment to ‘moderate’ originalism in interpreting the Constitution (p. 109ff). Having examined the cases in which the judges have ignored certain provisions of the Constitution, Barnet concludes that the original written Constitution, which is much more libertarian than the unwritten judge-made Constitution selectively enforced by the Supreme Court, must be restored (p. 356). Barnett seems to be sceptical towards judges or ‘hercules’ of the ‘Law's Empire’ to use Ronald Dworkin's terminology. ‘Had judges done their job, this book would not need to be written,’ says Barnet at the opening sentence of his book. His closing remarks however indicate a kind of constitutional optimism: ‘So long as the courts profess fealty to the written Constitution … the opportunity still exists to adopt a Presumption of Liberty and restore the lost Constitution’ (p. 357). Loyalty to the written Constitution is not sufficient for restoring the deviated Constitution. Ironically, restoring the lost constitution requires nothing less than the presence of ‘Hercules’, who would resist the temptation to refrain from judicial deviations.
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Washington DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2004, 287, ISBN 0 8157 1838 1
Readership: Academic/research, professional
Rating: ***
Reviewer: DANIEL BÉLAND
(University of Calgary)
As in most affluent societies, a debate over the future of Social Security has been raging in the United States since the late 1970s. Although there is no short-term fiscal crisis in sight, demographic change could negatively affect the financial situation of the programme over the next decades. In their new book, economists Peter A. Diamond and Peter R. Orszag formulate a balanced approach to Social Security reform that rejects the diversion of Social Security revenue to individual savings accounts. Arguing that such a reform would prove too costly and risky, Diamond and Orszag propose a set of apparently modest adjustments that would prevent a long-term deficit in Social Security while improving the protection offered to the most vulnerable beneficiaries of the current program (low-income workers, widows and widowers, disabled workers, and young survivors). According to the authors, three factors contribute to this long-term deficit: improvements in life expectancy; increased earnings inequality; and an ongoing legacy debt derived from the fact that the first cohorts of beneficiaries received overly generous pensions. Among the measures that could offset the negative financial effects of these trends are universal coverage and an increase of the maximum taxable earnings.
Saving Social Security is a concise and well-written book that is not designed for a purely academic audience. The authors want policy-makers and the general public to know about their proposal that, as the book's sub-title suggests, is well balanced, though not strikingly original. The book will certainly provide more ammunition to those who oppose a shift from social insurance to forced savings. Unfortunately, Saving Social Security contains only a handful of references to pension reform in other nations, as if the United States had little to learn from them. Furthermore, political scientists who seek to increase their knowledge about the politics of Social Security reform in the United States will find little new here. Although political issues are discussed in some chapters, the book will appeal more to pension experts and policy-makers than to students of politics.
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Baltimore MD: Johns Hopkins University, 2004, 274, £14.00, ISBN 0 8018 7439 4
Readership: Postgraduates, academic/research
Rating: ****
Reviewer: ALEXANDRA KELSO
(University of Strathclyde)
The authors’ comment on the US Senate is that ‘no other institution is saddled with such elaborate purposes and responsibilities’ (p. 2). This book seeks to explore the creation of the US Senate, and claims to break new ground. It does so by exploring three central components of the creation of the Senate: its precedents in theory and practice prior to the Constitutional Convention; the work of the Convention in clarifying the composition and powers of the Senate; and the path of early institutionalisation of the Senate during the infant years of the new Congress. The authors claim that the existing literature has tended to underdevelop one or more of these dimensions, and that it is therefore comprised of ‘a series of partial truths about the creation of the Senate’ (p. 3).
The book is grounded in an analysis of the constitutional models and early practices that informed the establishment of the Senate. It explores the approach of the Constitutional Convention to the representative function of the Senate, and how its composition and powers were decided. It examines how the Senate emerged from the Constitutional Convention as the ‘most uncertain of the institutional innovations produced’ (p. 135) and how it fared during ratification as a result of this uncertainty. It also charts the early institutionalisation of the Senate. The authors dispute the claim that the early years of the Senate ‘bore out the expectations of the founders’, arguing instead that its evolution ‘was part and parcel of the signal features of the Federalist era’, and that the Senate was forged by ‘a turbulent confluence of events’ (pp. 203–4).
This is a very detailed book, and is enjoyable, although the early theory-based chapter required close reading. The study attempts to provide an institutionalist account for the creation of the Senate. It will therefore appeal to those institutionalists who have thus far succeeded in explaining institutional evolution and continuity, but not institutional creation, and makes a useful contribution to this aspect of institutionalist debate.
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Lanham MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2004, 306, £22.95, ISBN 0 7425 2919 3
Reviewer: LEWIS L. GOULD
(University of Texas at Austin)
This is an interesting book with a very misleading title. Anyone expecting to find out about the presidential candidates in 2004 will be disappointed. John Kerry makes only a brief appearance, George W. Bush is discussed largely in terms of his 2000 race for the White House, and Howard Dean does not appear at all. There is nothing substantive about terrorism, September 11, or the war in Iraq. So the book is not about candidates, but rather consists of a series of scholarly essays on the conditions and practices of American presidential elections in recent years as background for 2004; a useful exercise. For specialists in political science and presidential elections, these articles can provide helpful context for understanding how candidates campaign and the institutional obstacles that they encounter in so doing.
On that basis, the piece by Andrew E. Busch and William G. Mayer on ‘The Front-Loading Problem’ has value as a primer for future candidates. David Shribman has a characteristically lucid article on journalists and presidential races. Kathryn Dunn Tenpas makes some astute observations about how incumbent presidents seek re-election though more can be said about the impact of continuous campaigning and the effects of mass entertainment on this aspect of the presidency. The other chapters in the book seem more tailored for the specialist and require a good deal of background knowledge that undergraduate readers, the presumed audience for this paperback, are not likely to possess. The book needed an introduction by the editors to tell readers why these essays were selected and what the larger significance of the project is. Otherwise, the book seems to have been assembled on the basis that here were some informative articles about what was likely to take place in 2004. A more accurate title would have been ‘the making of the context for the presidential election, 2004’, but that would have lacked pizzazz. So in the end there is a title that has more marquee appeal than the actual contents of the book.
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Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 2003, 390, ISBN 0 674 01162 7
Readership: Undergraduates, advanced undergraduates, postgraduates, academic/research, professional
Rating: ***
Reviewer: ALEX J. BELLAMY
(University of Queensland)
Freedom on Fire provides an insider's account of the Clinton administration's responses to massive human rights abuse in the 1990s. As the chief human rights official in the Clinton administration, Shattuck is well placed to chronicle the bureaucratic struggles about how best to respond to crises such as the Rwandan genocide, the Srebrenica massacre, ethnic cleansing in Kosovo, the Haitian coup, and human rights abuse in post-Tianenmen China. Throughout the volume, Shattuck maintains two central claims. First, that there is a clear link between human rights abuse and global insecurity, a link that was present but not so apparent to most in government and opposition during the 1990s, but which came to the fore on 9/11. According to Shattuck, 9/11 demonstrated what he had long believed: that addressing humanitarian rights abuse globally was not a matter of charity but of vital national interests. Second, he argues that because these links were not apparent during the 1990s, human rights hawks like him faced five major bureaucratic obstacles whenever they attempted to place human rights at the heart of the Washington policy agenda: inter-agency gridlock, presidential indecision, public opinion hostile to American interventionism, the fear of repeating Somalia, and Washington's short attention span.
Most of book is taken up with Shattuck's narrative account of his activities in relation to the many human rights crises that dogged the Clinton years. Because the work is organised thematically rather than chronologically, a trait common to works of this kind, it does not perhaps fully convey the chaotic nature of Shattuck's job. Only occasionally does he refer to the fact that the crises in Rwanda, Bosnia and Haiti were virtually simultaneous. However, this volume provides important insights into the bureaucratic struggles in relation to human rights that barely get a mention in, for instance, Clinton's own autobiography.
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Chicago IL: University of Chicago Press, 2004, 312, $19.00, ISBN 0 226 07797 7
Readership: Undergraduates, advanced undergraduates and postgraduates
Rating: *****
Reviewer: ANTHONY O’ HALLORAN
(University College Cork)
This book provides a wide ranging and comprehensive account of how direct democracy works in the town halls of New England. Consisting of twelve chapters its range and depth is extremely impressive. Drawing on over three decades of research and involving direct observation of a total of 1,389 town hall meetings, the author leaves few stones unturned.
The chapters explore themes ranging from history and methodology to attendance, scale, community context and participation. Combining detailed empirical analysis with that of quantitative descriptions, each chapter offers rich and revealing insights into aspects of the New England Town Meeting. Concluding that scale matters, he establishes a clear link between higher participation and smaller scale meetings.
Frank M. Bryan's book is very different in several respects, which makes it all the more refreshing. It is to the author's credit that he straddles the boundaries of qualitative and quantitative research with such ease. Empirical work does not clash with a sometimes-passionate writing style. The author makes no secret of his passionate commitment to town hall democracy. His obvious love of numbers is equally undisguised.
Passion and enthusiasm for the task at hand in no way interferes with his empirical rigor. Major deficiencies will not be discovered in this book. However, some readers may find the author's approach excessively autobiographical. Similarly, some of his asides, whilst fascinating, could be deemed irrelevant by a harsher critic.
The author informs us that he wanted to write the definitive book on town hall democracy as early as in the summer of 1972. Doubting he could ever achieve this task he consulted his friend Jane Mansbridge. Undeterred, she replied ‘Then it will become your life's work, Frank’ (Preface). Town hall democracy became the author's life's work. Frank M. Bryan has clearly produced the definitive text on New England town hall democracy. In time, the book may very well become a classic.
North America
New books received
Geoffrey Brennan and Philip Pettit (2004) The Economy of Esteem. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 339, £30.00, ISBN 0 19 924648 3
Senator Robert C. Byrd (2004) Losing America: confronting a reckless and arrogant Presidency. New York: W.W Norton and Company, 269, £14.99, ISBN 0 393 05942 1
Richard Delgado and Jean Stefancic (2004) Understanding Words That Wound. Boulder CO: Westview Press, 238, £20.00, ISBN 0 8133 4139 6
George C. Edwards III (2004) Why the Electoral College is Bad for America. New Haven CT: Yale University Press, 198, £17.50, ISBN 0 300 10060 4
Jason D. Ellis and Geoffrey D. Kiefer (2004) Combating Proliferation. Baltimore MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 287, £34.50, ISBN 0 8018 7958 2
John Lewis Gaddis (2004) Surprise, Security and the American Experience. Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 150, £12.95, ISBN 0 674 01174 0
Donald Green, Bradley Palmquist and Eric Schickler (2004) Partisan Hearts and Minds: political parties and the social identities of voters. New Haven CT: Yale University Press, 266, £14.00, ISBN 0 300 10156 2
John G. Gunnell (2004) Imagining the American Polity. Philadelphia PA: Penn State University Press, 289, £40.00, ISBN 0 271 02352 X
Ted Halstead (ed.) (2004) The Real State of the Union: from the best minds in America, bold solutions to the problems politicians dare not address. New York: Basic Books, 287, £14.95, ISBN 0 465 05052 2
Robert Harrison (2004) Congress, Progressive Reform, and the New American State. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 293, £39.87, ISBN 0 521 82789 2
James J. Heckman and Alan B. Krueger (2004) Inequality in America: what role for human capital policies? Cambridge MA: MIT Press, 370, ISBN 0 262 08328 0
Godfrey Hodgson (2004) More Equal Than Others: America from Nixon to the new century. Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press, 379, £19.95, ISBN 0 691 11788 8
Ran Hirschl (2004) Towards Juristocracy: the origins and consequences of the new constitutionalism. Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 283, £32.95, ISBN 0 674 01264 X
Thomas M. Magstadt (2004) An Empire If You Can Keep It: power and principle in American foreign policy. Washington DC: CQ Press, 262, £19.99, ISBN 1 56802 879 2
Beverly Merrill Kelley (2004) Reelpolitik II: political ideologies in ‘50s and ‘60s films. Lanham MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 328, £20.95, ISBN 0 7425 3041 8
Ethan J. Leib (2004) Deliberate Democracy in America. Philadelphia PA: Penn State University Press, 155, ISBN 0 271 023635
Carnes Lord (2004) The Modern Prince: what leaders need to know now. New Haven CT: Yale University Press, £10.99, ISBN 0 300 10007 8
David Lublin (2004) The Republican South: democratisation and partisan change. Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press, 245, £22.95, ISBN 0 691 05041 4
David B. Magleby and J. Quin Monson (2004) The Last Hurrah?: soft money and issue advocacy in the 2002 congressional elections. Washington DC: Brookings Institution Press, 320, $22.95, ISBN 0 8157 5437 X
L. Sandy Maisel and Ira N. Forman (2004) Jews In American Politics Essays. Lanham MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 350, £22.95, ISBN 0 7425 2880 4
William G. Mayer and Andrew E. Busch (2004) The Front-Loading Problem in Presidential Nominations. Washington DC: Brookings Institution Press, 227, $22.95, ISBN 0 8157 5519 8
Charles Noble (2004) The Collapse of Liberalism: why America needs a new left. Lanham MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 186, £16.95, ISBN 0 7425 2757 3
Karen Orren and Stephen Skowronek (2004) The Search for American Political Development. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 233, $23.99, ISBN 0 521 54764 4
Judith Russell (2004) Economics, Bureaucracy and Race: how Keynesians misguided the war on poverty. New York: Columbia University Press, 244, $24.50, ISBN 0 231 11253 X
Mark Satin (2004) Radical Middle: the politics we need now. Boulder CO: Westview Press, 220, £15.50, ISBN 0 8133 4190 6
Alan Schroeder (2004) Celebrity-in-Chief: how show business took over the White House. Boulder CO: Westview Press, 354, £19.99, ISBN 0 8133 4137 X
Daniel Shaviro (2004) Who Should Pay for Medicare. Chicago IL: University of Chicago Press, 169, £17.50, ISBN 0 226 75076 0
Robert Shogan (2004) Constant Conflict: politics, culture and the struggle for America's future. Boulder CO: Westview Press, 362, £13.50, ISBN 0 8133 4221
Robert Shogun (2004) The Fate of The Union: America's rocky road to political stalemate. Boulder CO: Westview Press, 332, £13.99, ISBN 0 8133 4237 6
Paul Teske (2004) Regulation in the States. Washington DC: Brookings Institution Press, 275, £16.95, ISBN 0 8157 8313 2
Steve A. Yeliv (2004) Explaining Foreign Policy: US decision making and the Persian gulf war. Baltimore MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 288, $19.95, ISBN 0 8018 7811 X
Peter J. Wallison (2004) Ronald Reagan: the power of conviction and the success of his presidency. Boulder CO: Westview Press, 314, £13.99, ISBN 0 8133 9047 8