Same-Sex Marriage and the Constitution. By Evan Gerstmann. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003. 236p. $60.00 cloth, $22.00 paper.

One hundred and twenty years ago, the Congress of the United States was embroiled in a debate over how best to regulate a type of marriage that appalled most Americans. Republicans were making political capital out of their vigorous and vitriolic attacks against the idea of such marriages, while Democrats were looking for a way to finesse the issue to maintain the political support of the unpopular minority believing in such marriages without offending the majority. Laws were introduced and passed prohibiting these marriages. Fearing that a law would be insufficient, however, a constitutional amendment was proposed to ban such marriages. The Supreme Court upheld the right of states to criminalize such marriages, though it was never asked to rule on the right of a state to recognize such marriages. Persons wishing to enter such marriages were advised to go to a neighboring country that would recognize the legitimacy of their unions. In the 1880s, the issue was polygamy, the unpopular minority Mormons, and the neighboring country Mexico (see Edward L. Lyman, Political Deliverance, 1986). Today same-sex marriages between gays or lesbians, some marrying in Canada, are causing as much turmoil in Congress as the issue of polygamy did then.

Cultivating Democracy: Civic Environments and Political Socialization in America. By James G. Gimpel, J. Celeste Lay, and Jason E. Schuknecht. Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press, 2003. 278p. $32.95.

Scholarly studies of political socialization began a dramatic decline during the mid-1970s. One source of this downward spiral lay in the dwindling novelty of studying pre-adults. Political scientists are accustomed to dealing with the “real world” of politics, one occupied and ruled by adults. After a prolonged lull, research began to increase in the 1990s and has continued onward. One driving force in this renewal stems from the decline in civic virtue among upcoming cohorts said to characterize most Western countries. A second influence was the crumbling of the former Soviet Union and the appearance of transitional and new democracies around the globe. In an effort to understand each of these developments and to propose possible solutions, a variety of institutions and scholars have returned to the question of citizenship development, often with the intention of improving the inculcation of civic virtue among the young.

No Fire Next Time: Black-Korean Conflicts and the Future of America's Cities. By Patrick D. Joyce. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2003. 240 pages. $45.00 cloth, $19.95 paper.

Patrick D. Joyce's book not only has a provocative title but also says something important about the future of America's cities. Joyce argues that the United States, and by extension, especially its cities, faces a contentious future, and that this is suggested by three trends: First, racial and ethnic diversity is increasing; second, economic inequality has widened; and third, our governing institutions have weakened. He suggests that these trends originate in separate causes, but their coming together at the same point in history means that the potential for racial and ethnic tension may be heightened just as our capacity to cope with them have diminished (p. 3). Central to his concerns is the black-Korean conflict in American cities.

The Urban Voter: Group Conflict and Mayoral Voting Behavior in American Cities. By Karen M. Kaufmann. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2004. 248p. $60.00 cloth, $24.95 paper.

In her book, Karen M. Kaufmann persuasively argues that context shapes the degree to which racial and ethnic factors structure voting in mayoral elections. While this may sound obvious, what is not obvious is determining which contextual factors matter and how they matter to urban voters. Her answer, in part, provides an explanation for how two quintessentially Democratic cities—Los Angeles and New York City—elected (and reelected) Republican mayors during the 1990s, a fact that alarmed local activists and intrigued both urban scholars and political pundits alike.

The Mass Media and the Dynamics of American Racial Attitudes. By Paul M. Kellstedt. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003. 155p. $60.00 cloth, $20.00 paper.

The literature on race and public opinion has been dominated by the debate between those who emphasize the continuing role of prejudice or racial resentment and those who emphasize the role of other values and ideologies, such as limited government or individualism, in explaining sources of individual-level support and opposition to current race policy. Thus, it is refreshing to find a book like The Mass Media and the Dynamics of American Racial Attitudes, which looks at racial attitudes from a different perspective. In the tradition of Howard Schuman and his colleagues in Racial Attitudes in America (1997), Paul Kellstedt demonstrates and explains variation in the American public's racial policy preferences over the last half of the twentieth-century. Kellstedt draws on the existing opinion and media effects literature to develop a theory that can explain how the public as a whole evolves on matters of race. This book's most valuable contribution comes from the specific attention he gives to media framing. Many researchers suggest a role for media coverage in the development and trajectory of racial policy preferences over this period, yet little empirical work examines this relationship. Using an innovative approach, the author provides convincing evidence that media coverage “is an important part of a system of influences that determine public opinion on race in America” (p. 134).

The Politics of Quasi-Government: Hybrid Organizations and the Dynamics of Bureaucratic Control. By Jonathan G. S. Koppell. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003. 239p. $60.00.

Do policymakers surrender popular sovereignty by granting public authority to semiprivate institutions? Jonathan Koppell compares hybrid organizations and government agencies in three policy areas—housing, export promotion, and international market development—and concludes that although hybrid organizations are more difficult to control, they are not inimical to democracy.

Straddling the Border: Immigration Policy and the INS. By Lisa Magaña. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2003. 132p. $37.50 cloth, $16.95 paper.

In this book, Lisa Magaña provides a concise and thoughtful analysis of the immigration policy process from inside the bureaucratic agency formerly responsible for its implementation, the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS). Using a combination of interviews with high- and low-level INS representatives and immigration advocates, government policy evaluations, immigrant surveys, and intensive field study, Magaña shows the disconnect that often exists between congressional immigration mandates and their actual implementation in INS district offices.

Confronting Right-Wing Extremism and Terrorism in the USA. By George Michael. New York: Routledge, 2003. 256p. $104.95.

“Right-wing extremist” is a label that covers a lot of territory (radical Second Amendmentists, antitax and antigovernment extremists, radical Christians, in addition to a variety of white supremacist groups: Ku Klux Klan, neo-Nazi, skinhead), but it is a term that perhaps became unavoidable, at least as a practical matter, after Timothy McVeigh bombed a federal government building in Oklahoma City in 1995, killing 168. This is a book written in the post–Oklahoma City period and is not primarily informed by post-9/11 concerns. It is largely descriptive and historical. Although it does make use of interest-group theory at points, this work is not organized around any specific social scientific theory-building agenda. George Michael provides a detailed survey of right-wing extremist groups and their activities (to include terrorism), as well as an account of the efforts of both the government and a wide array of private interest groups to resist and undermine their efforts. Perhaps most notable and interesting are 20 interviews Michael conducted with actors on all sides of this struggle (including William Pierce, chairman of the neo-Nazi National Alliance, and author of the novel The Turner Diaries, which served as a blueprint for McVeigh).

Chasing the Wind: Regulating Air Pollution in the Common Law State. By Noga Morag-Levine. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003. 264p. $35.00.

This book covers an impressive array of topics: the contrasting styles of air pollution regulation in the United States and Europe; the English common law of “noxious vapours” from 1611 to 1900; the origin of the highly effective British Alkali Inspectorate; the development of the common law of nuisance in Pennsylvania from 1869 to 1970; American regulation of “smoke” and “odors” over the past century; and a detailed examination of contemporary regulation of odor at foundries in four American cities. The author is to be commended for the extensive research packed into nine dense chapters.

Unfair Housing: How National Policy Shapes Community Action. By Mara S. Sidney. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2003. 200p. $35.00 cloth, $16.95 paper.

In this well-written book, Mara Sidney skillfully utilizes the “policy design” approach developed by Anne Schneider and Helen Ingram (Policy Design for Democracy, 1997) to elucidate the relationship between national policy decisions and local political struggles surrounding the implementation of the Fair Housing Act of 1968 and the Community Reinvestment Act of 1977. The 1968 Act made housing discrimination against individuals because of race, creed, color, and national origin illegal. The 1977 Act was aimed at preventing credit discrimination (redlining) against geographical areas within cities. Sidney argues that the type of local groups that emerge to influence enforcement, and the strategies they utilize, are shaped by the resources built into the legislation's policy design, as well as by local political conditions. Case studies of two cities—Minneapolis and Denver—illustrate the impact of policy design in different local circumstances.

Bringing Representation Home: State Legislators Among Their Constituencies. By Michael A. Smith. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2003. 227p. $34.95.

In his seminal essay on state legislatures (“The State of U.S. State Legislative Research,” Legislative Studies Quarterly 6 [February 1981]: 1–25), Malcolm Jewell seemed puzzled that our knowledge of state legislative representation was so limited. After all, there was a long and productive history of work on representation in Congress, and the states provided variation that could help advance our theoretical understanding of this important topic. Unfortunately, apart from recent work by Alan Rosenthal (The Decline of Representative Democracy, 1998) and a few articles on particular aspects of representation (such as casework), research over the last 20 years has not advanced our knowledge of representation as much as Jewell might have liked.

Black Faces in the mirror: African Americans and Their Representation in the U.S. Congress. By Katherine Tate. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003. 224p. $37.50 cloth, $18.95 paper.

This is an exceedingly useful study in helping to clarify some of the conflicting findings of researchers addressing the viability of the political representation of African Americans, in this case, within the U.S. House of Representatives. Katherine Tate begins to clarify, at the outset, the frequently used categories of “descriptive” and “substantive” representation by including Hanna Pitkin's “symbolic” representation, or descriptive representation devoid of substance, as the major conceptual focus of discussion.

Out of Touch: The Presidency and Public Opinion. By Michael J. Towle. College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2004. 176p. $37.95.

Public support is vital to the governing strategies of modern presidents. Although presidents, White House staff, and presidency scholars take this for granted during the “permanent campaign,” little is known about how administrations react to and interpret information about the public's support for the president. Michael J. Towle asks, How do presidential administrations interpret their wealth of public-opinion polling data? He observes that interpretation of these data by the Truman, Johnson, and Carter administrations varies by the president's own public standing: The more the president's public support declines, the more “out of touch” he becomes with the public.

Deepening Democracy: Global Governance and Political Reform in Latin America. By Francis Adams. Westport, CT: Praeger, 2003. 184p. $64.95 cloth, $24.95 paper.

The Quiet Revolution: Decentralization and the Rise of Political Participation in Latin American Cities. By Tim Campbell. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2003. 216p. $24.95.

The terms employed by the authors of these two books may be different, as are their titles, but the phenomena they identify are amazingly similar and the periods they examine are practically identical. What Francis Adams identifies as a “remarkable political transformation” and Tim Campbell calls a “quiet revolution” are the steps toward democratization and decentralization that have marked Latin American politics and society in the last two decades. Taking as their point of departure the political reforms of the state since the late 1980s, the empowerment of civil society through decentralization, and the fact of democratic transition itself, both authors paint a picture of progress and hope for a region of the world that not very long ago seemed mired in the throes of authoritarian governance and economic crisis attributed to nondemocratic, overcentralized, and inefficient state practices.

The Myth of Civil Society: Social Capital and Democratic Consolidation in Spain and Brazil. By Omar G. Encarnación. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003. 244p. $55.00.

When a Google search for “civil society promotion” turns up 847,000 potentially relevant links, it is time for a provocative book like this one. Omar Encarnación takes on the prevailing wisdom that “a strong civil society lies behind successful democracies while a weak civil society is the root of failed or flawed democracies” (p. 3), arguing not only that strong civil societies fail to ensure democratic consolidation but also that democracies can be successfully consolidated without any civil society to speak of. Indeed, “a flourishing civil society can actually be a hindrance to democratization” (p. 5). Encarnación is not the only scholar to raise doubts about the efficacy of civil society to promote a host of social benefits, but he is one of the few to do so in the context of the newly democratizing nations, where civil society promotion has perhaps the most currency today.

Megaprojects and Risk: An Anatomy of Ambition. By Bent Flyvbjerg, Nils Bruzelius, and Werner Rothengatter. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003. 218p. $55.00 cloth, $20.00 paper.

Multibillion dollar infrastructural projects, or megaprojects such as the Channel Tunnel, the Øresund bridge between Denmark and Sweden, the Hong Kong and Denver airports, or many high-speed rail links in Europe, continue to be built in record numbers despite poor performance and colossal losses. Why? The authors provide ample evidence to substantiate their claim that such projects are systematically misrepresented in public and private deliberations because many of the participants in the process have incentives to underestimate costs, overestimate revenues, undervalue environmental impact, and overvalue economic development effects.

Democracy in Latin America 1760–1900: Volume 1, Civic Selfhood and Public Life in Mexico and Peru. By Carlos A. Forment. Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2003. 488p. $35.00.

Carlos Forment has produced a highly original, intriguing, and thoroughly researched exploration of civic behavior in Latin America from the mid-1700s through 1900. He presents the provocative argument, contrary to much past research, that citizen democracy, “understood in Tocquevillian terms as a daily practice and form of life rooted in social equality, mutual recognition, and political liberty, was by the mid-nineteenth century rooted in the region” (p. xi). This book cites numerous examples and scholarship from many parts of Latin America, but Forment provides detailed evidence from Mexico and Peru. As he argues in his introduction, Latin American forms of democracy are characterized by four qualities. First, democracy is disjointed because those forms that do exist are found among individual citizens, and not between citizens and governmental institutions, which essentially imposed an authoritarian structure on society. Second, he believes that the practice of democracy is one-sided, given his evidence that it is practiced in civil society rather than in political or public life. Third, it is highly fragmented, given the failures in Latin America to meld social equality and cultural/ethnic differences. Fourth, he claims that Catholicism provided the language of public life, and that Latin Americans used it to create new democratic meanings from traditional religious terms, which he labels “Civic Catholicism.”

Incomplete Democracy: Political Democratization in Chile and Latin America. By Manuel Antonio Garreton. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2003. 224p. $59.95 cloth, $24.95 paper.

The Consortium in Latin American Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Duke University deserves gratitude for launching this series on “Latin America in Translation.” This translation clearly presents the complex analyses of a profound thinker, one who excels at elucidating the subtleties, contradictions, and paradoxes of today's democracies. Previously one of the pioneers of studying transitions from authoritarian rule, Garreton now focuses on the constraints on the successor regimes. His trenchant observations will interest political theorists as well as comparativists and Latin Americanists. He devotes the first half of the book to a broad treatment of current Latin American politics and the second half to a study of the crucial case of Chile. This powerful combination of the general and the particular renders this publication valuable for graduate courses, although it is too sophisticated for most undergraduates.

Political Economy of Energy in the Southern Cone. By Anil Hira. Westport, CT: Praeger, 2003. 128p. $59.95.

What role does the state play in the age of neoliberal economics? How autonomous is the government from both domestic and international forces in the privatization, regulation, and integration of the electricity sector? Anil Hira addresses these important questions in his detailed analysis of the evolution of energy policy in the Southern Cone. The book is divided into five chapters that include an introduction, a chapter outlining the author's theoretical framework, one analyzing the domestic efforts to liberalize energy markets, one addressing regional integration, and a concluding chapter with suggestions for improving regulations in the energy sector. He concludes that the state continues to play an important role in shaping energy policy throughout the region, and the role of the state, either through state-owned enterprises or through regulation of the energy market, continues to exert an enormous influence over pricing, reliability, and investment. Furthermore, Hira argues that regional integration, which requires interstate cooperation, is essential in order to enhance the ability of Southern Cone economies to compete in the global marketplace.

Sex and the State: Abortion, Divorce, and the Family Under Latin American Dictatorships and Democracies. By Mala Htun. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003. 232p. $60.00 cloth, $22.00 paper.

Under military rule from the 1960s to the 1980s and increasingly since the transitions to democracy in the 1980s and 1990s, second-wave feminists have mobilized for gender equality and to effect legal reforms in Latin America. Despite this activism and despite the steady stream of high-quality publications on gender and politics in Latin America, there has been very little comparative research on gender-related public policy reform in Latin America. Mala Htun's book on gender and public policymaking under democracy and dictatorship is an important scholarly contribution, filling many of the gaps in the literature on public policy and feminist activism in Latin America.