Confronting the Weakest Link: Aiding Political Parties in New Democracies. By Thomas Carothers. Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2006. 272p. $57.95 cloth, $22.95 paper.

Thomas Carothers is a leading voice in the investigation of the success and failure of democratic transitions. Writing from the viewpoint of a practitioner, Carothers provides a unique perspective on the scholarly discussion of democratic transition and the actions of democracy assistance organizations. His previous insights into the weakness of the “transition paradigm” or modal framework that scholars use to study democratic transitions underscored important flaws: the expectation of linear democratic development, the lack of attention to state building, and the focus on democracy as the only potential outcome of the process. While most of these flaws have been extensively addressed in the second wave of literature on postcommunist transitions and other regions, it is undeniable that much of the early work suffered from a sort of groupthink that drew overly optimistic predictions about the success of regime transitions.