Sustainability and the Civil Commons: Rural Communities in the Age of Globalization, Jennifer Sumner, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2005, pp. viii, 179.

As we are continually reminded, Canada is now an overwhelmingly urban country. Mythic vastness notwithstanding, most of its people and certainly its mobile “creative class,” presumed driver of the knowledge economy, live in major cities, whose policy requirements have captured a good deal of national attention in the past decade. By contrast, rural Canada has been reduced to the status of the space in-between. Its resource-based communities and livelihoods—farming, fishing, forestry—live with the downward price pressures of global commodity trade as well as the most intractable trade disruptions. Its public services and social infrastructure have been diminished. Aside from pretty places that have become recreational or residential enclaves, its population typically is declining and aging. Its widespread sense of abandonment so far has generated only inchoate, perhaps incoherent political responses. Meanwhile, the growing consensus among newspaper editorialists and think-tank policy specialists is that “dependent” and “unsustainable” rural Canada has been subsidized long enough for sentimental reasons at the expense of real needs elsewhere.

The India-Pakistan Conflict: An Enduring Rivalry, T.V. Paul, ed., Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005.

The rivalry between India and Pakistan has clearly been both deep and enduring. The two sides have fought four wars since attaining independence in 1947, and have waged a low-intensity conflict in the disputed territory of Kashmir since the late 1980s. And despite recent improvements in Indo-Pakistani relations, their fundamental political and territorial disagreements remain unresolved. However, it is not obvious why the two countries' relationship has been so stubbornly antagonistic. The India-Pakistan Conflict: An Enduring Rivalry, edited by T.V. Paul, addresses this issue. Specifically, the volume asks: Why has the Indo-Pakistani rivalry been so persistent, even compared to other long-standing conflicts? How have factors at the international, state and leadership levels contributed to this outcome? And why are the prospects for achieving a negotiated settlement of the rivalry so dim?

Reclaiming the Enlightenment: Toward a Politics of Radical Engagement, Stephen Eric Bronner, New York: Columbia University Press, 2004, pp. xiii, 181.

I am very sympathetic to the project that Stephen Eric Bronner undertakes in this book. As someone inspired by the progressive potential of the Enlightenment, I find myself constantly on the defensive in a world deeply suspicious of the dead white men of eighteenth-century Europe. So I welcome a vigorous and uncompromising defence of those men and the ideals and values they stood for. For those of us who already see ourselves as working to further that tradition, this book is an inspiring call to keep up the good work. But for those who have been hesitant in their enthusiasm for the Enlightenment, this book will be more like a red flag waved in their face, confirming many of their suspicions of Western rationalism. Theorists of recognition, identity, post-colonialism, post-modernism, republicanism, communitarianism, post-secularism and multiple-modernities, are just some of the people who will not find this book very congenial. Ultimately, Bronner's uncompromising defence of the Enlightenment is less successful than it might have been.

Quelle formation pour l'éducation à la citoyenneté?, Sous la direction de Fernand Ouellet, Québec : Les Presses de l'Université Laval, 2004, 246 pages.

Face à la baisse du taux de participation aux élections et à l'accentuation du pluralisme dans un monde où les frontières sont de moins en moins étanches, le gouvernement québécois a institué des réformes ayant comme objectif d'inclure au curriculum une éducation à la citoyenneté. Différents penseurs s'interrogent sur le rôle des enseignants et sur la formation nécessaire en vue de cet enseignement. Quelle formation pour l'éducation à la citoyenneté, sous la direction de Fernand Ouellet, est le produit de ces préoccupations.

The Big Red Machine: How the Liberal Party Dominates Canadian Politics, Stephen Clarkson, Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 2005, pp. xii, 335.

Stephen Clarkson's The Big Red Machine offers an insightful chronicle of the Liberal Party of Canada's electoral behaviour over a period of thirty years. By bringing together revised versions of his previously published accounts of the Liberal Party's successes and failures in the nine general elections held between 1974 and 2004, Clarkson provides a unique opportunity for serious reflection on Liberal Party dominance of twentieth-century Canadian politics. Beyond that, however, his accessible and compelling presentation of the story of Liberal electoral politics offers a nostalgic review of the events and personalities that shaped the political journey from Pierre Elliott Trudeau to Paul Martin. In accomplishing this, Clarkson has produced a book that will be of as much interest to non-academic followers of Canadian politics as it is to serious students of partisan politics.

Canada Among Nations 2005: Split Images, Andrew F. Cooper and Dane Rowlands, eds., Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queens University Press, 2005, pp. xiv, 295.

Split Images marks the twenty-first installment of the Canada Among Nations series. It also marks a new beginning as the first collaboration between the series host institution, the Norman Patterson School of International Affairs, and the Centre for International Governance and Innovation at the University of Waterloo, editors Andrew Cooper and Dane Rowlands, and publisher, McGill-Queen's University Press. It is reassuring to see that others have come forward to assume the task of providing an annual assessment of Canadian foreign policy, its current challenges, and future prospects. The Canada Among Nations series has, through the years, provided a valuable chronicle of the pressing concerns of the day. On occasion the volume has been overshadowed by unexpected events, such as the terrorist attacks of September 11th, that give the text less urgency than it would otherwise have. Potentially, this volume could have suffered a similar fate, given the election of Stephen Harper's minority government after the collection went to press. Repeated references to the Liberal government's International Policy Statement (IPS), not to mention the image of Paul Martin, Jr., that graces the cover, seem somewhat nostalgic, in the face of the Harper government's move to put its own face on such critically important policy arenas as relations with the United States, defence spending, climate change and the Middle East, among others.

Municipal Reform in Canada: Reconfiguration, Re-Empowerment, and Rebalancing, Joseph Garcea and Edward C. LeSage, Jr., eds., Toronto: Oxford University Press, 2005, pp. ix, 350.

This book will be an essential reference for students of local government in Canada. It deals with the most recent period of municipal reform, from 1990 onwards. There are chapters on each of the ten provinces, plus a combined chapter on the northern territories. The editors establish an analytical framework for the book in their introduction, and then try to bring things together in a long concluding chapter. The individual chapters differ somewhat in approach, but the editors were fairly successful in getting the contributors to keep to a common analytical framework. Reading the whole book straight through is a bit of a slog, because there is so much detail; on the other hand, it is handy to have all this material collected together. It will stimulate useful reflection, as much about what is not here as what is.

Friends, Citizens, Strangers: Essays on Where We Belong, Richard Vernon, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2005, pp. vii, 325.

“Should we put locality before citizenship, citizenship before human obligations?” This is the central question animating Richard Vernon's new book. He defines the three sorts of relationship it invokes as follows. Ties of friendship are those partial relationships which “arise from the particular and local character of our lives, lived as, clearly they must be, in particular local contexts”; ties of citizenship are those that “arise from sharing political space, from common subjection to law, and from participation in institutions and processes through which consent to political authority is generated”; and ties among strangers “arise among those who are ‘only humans,’ [who are] categorically but not concretely related to us” (3–4). Vernon recognizes that all three are important, and that is why he believes we need to face “the question of priority of attachment.” He himself does so through an investigation of citizenship, which he pursues in two ways. First, with a number of fascinating chapters—all of them models of scholarship in the history of political ideas—that examine how the question of priority of attachment was dealt with by eight writers, four English (Locke, Wollstonecraft, George Eliot and Mill) and four French (Rousseau, Comte, Proudhon and Bergson). Vernon claims that his question has, for historical reasons, been particularly pronounced in these two countries, although I must say that I cannot think of one country in which it has not. Regardless, he then deals with it more directly, in chapters about the notion of a crime against humanity and about the very nature of special ties and what they imply we owe each other. Finally, in the book's concluding chapter, Vernon offers us an outline of his own solution to the question.

Plaidoyer en faveur de l'intolérance, Slavoj Zižek, Éditions Climats, 2004, 164 pages.

La tolérance est aujourd'hui la nouvelle vertu cardinale de la science politique. Intégration, ouverture, compréhension de l'autre, hybridité : toute pensée politique doit être au diapason du discours sur la tolérance. Plusieurs seront heureux de voir un philosophe introduire une note discordante dans ce refrain. Dans son essai Plaidoyer en faveur de l'intolérance, Slavoj Zižek tente de démontrer qu'il est possible et même nécessaire aujourd'hui de penser et d'agir à contre-courant des tendances politiques actuelles qui favorisent la tolérance et le multiculturalisme.

Mao: The Unknown Story, Jung Chang and Jan Halliday, New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2005, pp. 814.

Mao Tse-Tung has always had a radical allure. Mao's legions of fans have included such luminaries as Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, Pierre Trudeau and numerous others. Now we have a book that forces us to radically reconsider our view.

Human Rights in the ‘War on Terror’, Richard Ashby Wilson, ed., Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005, pp. xv, 347.

Given this book's title, I assumed that it would consist mainly of elaborations of already over-rehearsed debates about the “trade-offs” between “liberty” and “security.” And while it does include plenty of this, several chapters in this volume offer thoughtful, nuanced analyses which challenge the dichotomous rhetoric of the day, and force the reader to rethink not just the future, but also the nature, of contemporary human rights and security.

La négation de la nation. L'identité culturelle québécoise et le fédéralisme canadien, Eugénie Brouillet, Sillery: Septentrion, 2005, 478 pages.

Compte tenu de la multitude d'ouvrages portant sur le fédéralisme canadien et son incapacité à reconnaître la spécificité nationale du Québec, est-il vraiment possible d'apporter un éclairage nouveau sur cette question ? Kenneth McRoberts a déjà démontré l'influence qu'a eue le trudeauisme sur la négation de la nation québécoise (Un pays à refaire : l'échec des politiques constitutionnelles canadiennes, Montréal : Boréal, 1999), alors que Guy Laforest a illustré les impacts similaires de la Constitution de 1982 sur le fonctionnement actuel du fédéralisme canadien (Trudeau et la fin d'un rêve canadien, Sillery : Septentrion, 1992). À première vue, il semble que la question ait déjà été discutée sous tous ses angles et qu'il soit impossible d'innover en la matière.

Pension Power: Unions, Pension Funds and Social Investment in Canada, Isla Carmichael, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2005, pp. 219.

Isla Carmichael has been writing about union pensions for a decade. Over the past ten years, she has examined different aspects of union-based pension funds and labour-sponsored investment, including fiduciary responsibility, the role of union pension trustees, social accounting, collateral benefits and economically targeted investment. In this book, she brings together these, and other, arguments to make a case for the greater involvement of unions in directing and investing pension funds, not only to provide benefits to union members but also to shape economic growth and community development. Her analysis is comprehensive and her argument is persuasive.

The Quest for Modernity in the Middle East and the Islamic World Memories of State: Politics, History, and Collective Identity in Modern Iraq, Eric Davis, Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005, pp. xi, 385.

The Future of Kurdistan in Iraq, Brendan O'Leary, John McGarry and Khaled Salih, eds., Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005, pp. xxi, 355

Nationalism and Minorities Identities in Islamic Societies, Maya Schatzmiller, ed., Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2005, pp. xiii, 346

Muslims and Modernity: An Introduction to the Issues and Debates, Clinton Bennett, London, New York: Continuum, 2005, pp. xviii, 286

These four books encapsulate a range of political issues that have shaped the formation of states and ideologies in the Middle East and North Africa since the beginning of the modern encounter between Europe and the Islamic world, from the Napoleonic invasion of Egypt through the post-World War I demise of the Ottoman world up to the American invasion of Iraq in 2003.