Transformation of the Welfare State: The Silent Surrender of Public Responsibility. By Neil Gilbert. New York: Oxford University Press, 2002. 224p. $39.95 cloth, $16.95 paper.

For more than a decade, students of social policy have debated the argument that welfare state development is a path-dependent process that makes radical change difficult (see Paul Pierson, Dismantling the Welfare State? [1994]). From this perspective, existing policy legacies create powerful constraints for policymakers seeking to enact retrenchment measures or to alter the functioning of the welfare state. As a result, most reforms tend to reinforce existing institutional patterns instead of changing them in a strong way. In recent years, authors such as Neil Gilbert have challenged this view. In Transformation of the Welfare State, he challenges Pierson's argument through a broad analysis of social policy development in the United States and Western Europe during the 1980s and 1990s.

The Power of Everyday Politics: How Vietnamese Peasants Transformed National Policy. By Benedict J. Tria Kerkvliet. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2005. 320p. $39.95.

Short of rebelling, how do powerless peasants under a domineering Stalinist state influence policy? Benedict J. Tria Kerkvliet's book offers not only a persuasive answer to this question but also a useful theoretical framework for understanding the power of “everyday politics.”

Welfare State Change: Towards a Third Way? Edited by Jane Lewis and Rebecca Surender. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004. 248p. $99.00 cloth, $35.00 paper.

We do occasionally reach moments at which important bodies of academic scholarship have crystallized into a coherent shape, and at which the political practices to which they are addressed have been with us long enough to permit the construction of generalizations of value. Those are the moments at which high-quality stock takings are often essential. We are at such a moment with the literature on the “Third Way” and on its social policy, and in Jane Lewis and Rebecca Surender's Welfare State Change we have just such a stock taking.

Institutions and the Politics of Survival in Jordan: Domestic Responses to External Challenges, 1988–2001. By Russell E. Lucas. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2005. 185p. $65.00.

As the title suggests, this work seeks to explain the staying power of the Hashemite monarchy in Jordan. To his credit, Russell Lucas eschews essentialist arguments that rely on religion or culture to explain the staying power of Arab authoritarianism. He opts instead for an institutional approach, examining “regime manipulation of domestic political institutions … to quiet discontent caused by unpopular policies” (p. 1). Lucas argues that the regime has focused what he calls throughout the analysis “survival strategies” on three centers of political and civil society: political parties, the parliament, and the press. These strategies have enjoyed varying degrees of success, and the analysis concentrates on three factors—he does not prioritize them or give an indication of how much they explain—that have influenced the success or failure of the survival strategies: “the resourceful use of constitutional rules by the regime; the reinforcement of the opposition's disunity of collective action [sic] against the survival strategy and the regime's policies, and the attention to not imposing costs on sectors of the regime coalition that could fray its unity” (p. 2).

Crafting Democracy: How Novgorod Has Coped with Rapid Social Change. By Nicolai N. Petro. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2004. 255p. $39.95.

In examining the reasons why Russia is now having problems making the transition to democracy, many scholars cite the absence of a democratic past. Seeing Russia as a country unremittingly ruled by authoritarian leaders, analysts increasingly are viewing Vladimir Putin's turn away from democracy as “natural” and part of Russians' yearning for a ruler with a “strong hand.”

Healthy Democracies: Welfare Politics in Taiwan and South Korea. By Joseph Wong. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2004. 222p. $39.95.

Popular perceptions of social policies in East Asia are terribly out of date. Besides, Japan, Korea, and Taiwan have rapidly established social programs that are comparable to those found in Western countries but are often still described as welfare laggards. While public expenditure on social programs is still low, it will rise rapidly as the population ages and programs mature. Commentators on the region are yet to fully grasp the fact that governments there are no longer as single-mindedly focused on economic growth as the stereotypes suggest.

Social Movements in India Poverty, Power and Politics. Edited by Raka Ray and Mary Fainsod Katzenstein. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2005. 320p. $34.95.

In an era of liberalization, should social movements shift strategies to mirror the state in demoting poverty alleviation as a central concern? In their edited collection on social movements and the Indian state since Independence, Raka Ray and Mary Fainsod Katzenstein examine the complex historical legacy and current conundrums confronting the strategies of social activists and their implications for the poor. While most scholars of Indian politics have focused on the state and economic elites to explain the persistence of poverty in India, Ray and Katzenstein argue that “the picture is incomplete and distorted” (p. 10), without also considering the role of organized social forces that have mobilized constituents and confronted and/or cooperated with the state in ways that have important implications for the success or failure of poverty alleviation. The editors adopt a broad conception of social movements, including labor unions, political parties, mass organizations, and nongovernmental organizations, as well as protest-oriented movements.

The Network Society. By Darin Barney. Cambridge: Polity Press, 2004. 198p. $57.95 cloth, $24.95 paper.

Democracy Online. Edited by Peter M. Shane. New York: Routledge Press, 2004. 279p. $28.50 paper.

Political science has a lot to contribute to—and learn from—the study of the politics of information and communications technologies (ICTs). The two books under review illustrate these possibilities and limitations as the academic discourse on “IT” is currently configured.

United We Stand? Divide-and-Conquer Politics and the Logic of International Hostility. By Aron Belkin. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2005. 161p. $60.00 cloth.

This book presents a new thesis that attempts to explain threats to civil–military relations from a different perspective. In the process, it makes a useful, albeit limited, contribution to the civil–military relations literature.

Defensive Internationalism: Providing Public Goods in an Uncertain World. By Davis B. Bobrow and Mark A. Boyer. Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 2005. 411p. $65.00 cloth, $34.95 paper.

Davis Bobrow and Mark Boyer address a topic of considerable current importance in both scholarly and policy circles—international cooperation, particularly among advanced industrial democracies—to produce what the authors call “progress,” that is, “improvements in actual and perceived conditions in fundamental terms—physical security, economic prosperity, ecological sustainability, and cultural continuity” (p. 6), and to avoid “regression,” defined as “worsening of those conditions in one or more of those respects” (p. 6). Their stated goal is to understand (in a clever reframing of the famous Harold Lasswell [1936] quote) “who gives, what, when, and how” (p. 1), since they believe that understanding this question is key to dealing successfully with a range of current global problems.

The Scourge of War: New Extensions on an Old Problem. Edited by Paul F. Diehl. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2004. 280p. $70.00.

This volume is dedicated to J. David Singer, and it is designed to be a collective reflection on Singer's work and the Correlates of War (COW) research program that he initiated more than 40 years ago. It accomplishes much more than simply revisiting or lauding previous COW research, however. As Paul Diehl (p. xi) notes in the preface, the “collection is one in which leading scholars look back in order to move the study of international relations forward.” Because it is so successful in this challenging task, the volume deserves a wide audience.

The Coming Democracy: New Rules for Running a New World. By Ann Florini. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2005. 271p. $45.

The Democracy Makers: Human Rights and the Politics of Global Order. By Nicolas Guilhot. New York: Columbia University Press, 2005. 286p. $18.95.

Nicolas Guilhot and Ann Florini appear to have hold of rather different parts of the democratic elephant: While the two books are not in direct dialogue with each other, they do provide quite different accounts of some closely related phenomena. Guilhot regards transnational “democracy promotion” and its agents—the World Bank, the U.S. state, nongovernmental organizations, corporations, think tanks—as engaged in the propagation of a neoconservative economic and political agenda around the world. Florini is much more charitably disposed toward a putative global democracy and its proponents, and indeed maintains that unless states, corporations, NGOs, international governmental organizations, and citizens in general are integrated into activism on its behalf (as well as on behalf of other goals), global and national futures look rather bleak.

Peace Time: Cease-Fire Agreements and the Durability of Peace. By Virginia Page Fortna. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004. 264p. $57.50 cloth, $19.95 paper.

At War's End: Building Peace After Civil Conflict. By Ronald Paris. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004. 302p. $65.00 hardback, $23.99 paper.

The studies under review focus on the question of what happens once violence ends. As such, they illuminate an important segment of world politics that begins once the guns stop roaring. Though different in theoretical outlook, research orientation, and scientific contribution, the two studies supplement one another. The first, by Virginia Page Fortna, investigates the duration of cease-fires while the second, by Ronald Paris, probes the success of peacekeeping missions. Taken together, the factors both studies highlight and the conclusions they offer add to our growing knowledge on intra/interstate wars and peace in world politics.

Bringing Religion into International Relations. By Jonathan Fox and Shmuel Sandler. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004. 224p. $55.00.

With this book, Jonathan Fox and Shmuel Sandler offer the most comprehensive meditation to date on the question of religion as a factor in international relations. Stating as their central purpose a desire to “expand the boundaries of international relations theory by the inclusion of religion as a variable in the research of international politics” (p. 4), the authors provide a superbly structured overview of a topic that has been crying out for sustained engagement for some time now. While the questions asked (and many of the answers eventually posited) are by no means wholly original, Bringing Religion Into International Relations finally offers IR a systematic baseline of inquiry that subsequent scholarship on religion and international affairs can build upon or challenge.

Economic Nationalism in a Globalizing World. Edited by Eric Helleiner and Andreas Pickel. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2005. 271p. $57.50 cloth, $22.95 paper.

The editors lay out three goals for this book. They wish us to question contemporary understandings of economic nationalism, to appreciate the importance of identity in shaping economic policy, and to recognize how ideas and identity can be integrated into work in international political economy (IPE). The editors and contributors go a long way toward achieving all three aims, though not with equal success. They are most successful in highlighting the importance of identity in establishing the goals of political action, including economic policymaking, and thus any reader will think more seriously about the possible contributions of constructivism to IPE.

The Enlargement of the European Union and NATO: Ordering from the Menu in Central Europe. By Wade Jacoby. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004. 287p. $70.00 cloth, $23.99 paper.

The enlargement of Europe has proven a lush garden for researchers to cultivate new approaches and theories of international and comparative politics and reengineer older approaches and theories. Many of these studies fit under the larger rubric of the “Europeanization” of the Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries and focus on the external impact of the European Union on the political and economic reforms of the new members of the EU and/or NATO. Good examples include the works of Frank Schimmelfenning and Ulrich Sedelmeier (The Europeanization of Central and Eastern Europe, 2005) and Milada Anna Vachudova (Europe Undivided: Democracy, Leverage, and Integration After Communism, 2004). Wade Jacoby's piece fits squarely into this large and excellent body of growing literature—theoretically sophisticated, methodologically sound, and well written.

Dams and Development: Transnational Struggles for Water and Power. By Sanjeev Khagram. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 2004. 270p. $45.00 cloth, $21.95 paper.

This is a strong example of recent work in political science that mines the boundary of comparative politics and international relations to identify the complex sources of political change. Sanjeev Khagram draws on an intensive case study of the Narmada Dam projects in India and the increasingly successful transnational protests against them to produce a more general argument about how development visions can be transformed—even by actors who seem powerless. In his broadly constructivist analysis, Khagram traces the impact of changing norms not just on visions but also on concrete global practices of development, especially the sharp drop in the number of dams completed in the last two decades of the twentieth century.

Dangerous Sanctuaries: Refugee Camps, Civil War, and the Dilemmas of Humanitarian Aid. By Sarah Kenyon Lischer. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2005. 204p. $35.00 cloth.

The relationship between refugee flows and the incidence of conflict has troubled security analysts and policymakers, as well as the humanitarian aid community, for some time. Although the connection has long been recognized, little systematic work has been done to pick it apart. We know that some refugee communities are conflict prone while some are not; some refugee movements appear to induce substantial regional insecurity while others do not. Why?

Ordering International Politics: Identity, Crisis, and Representational Force. By Janice Bially Mattern. New York and London: Routledge, 2005. 303p. $25.95.

Janice Bially Mattern's impressive first book comes with all barrels loaded. Although her subtitle suggests that she will take on the usual suspects, realist power-politics and neoliberal common-interest approaches, she also includes a critique of the approach closest to her own, namely, constructivism. The book can be read for the strength of its theoretical arguments alone; although the author labels this view a “post-constructivist” approach, it is perhaps better understood as a “linguistic turn.” Theoretical arguments are “tested” against the Suez crisis of 1956, in particular the breakdown and reconstitution of the so-called Special Relationship between the United States and the United Kingdom.

Agents of Atrocity: Leaders, Followers, and the Violation of Human Rights in Civil War. By Neil J. Mitchell. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004. 228p. $35.00.

Final Solutions: Mass Killing and Genocide in the Twentieth Century. By Benjamin A. Valentino. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 2004. 317p. $29.95 cloth, $18.95 paper.

In the last decade, we have made great progress in recognizing patterns in the use of state-sponsored mass murder and other life integrity violations. As a result of this body of work, policymakers now have better tools with which to predict massive human rights abuses, and fewer excuses to hide behind when confronted with potential or ongoing atrocities. Yet much more needs to be done. On the policymaking side, mass killings continue unabated, with few international actors willing to address them head-on. On the academic side, we have spent so much time and intellectual capital on the structural factors that allow, encourage, exacerbate, or inhibit atrocities that we have often neglected the role of the perpetrators themselves. The two books reviewed here take on this deficit in the literature. These important new books convincingly argue that in order to understand and address the most egregious human rights violations, we must begin with those responsible for devising and implementing these murderous policies.