The state has always held a sort of fascination for political theorists, despite the fact that consensus and clarity regarding some of its central elements, both historical and conceptual, have always eluded us. Daniel Engster has provided an intriguing look at each of these two problems: the historical development of modern state theory, and the basic conceptual building blocks of state legitimacy (legislative sovereignty, executive prerogative, regulatory powers, and rationalistic rule). With an eye toward an improved understanding of how the state, and more specifically state theory, developed, Engster revisits a number of early modern French and English theorists and actors. Such an understanding, he suggests, will shed light on “the contemporary crisis of the state” and help us “recognize some of the necessary steps for reforming and restoring legitimacy to contemporary politics” (p. 12).

Kate Langdon Forhan has written an elucidating and thought-provoking book that explores the political relevance of the writings of Christine de Pizan, a fifteenth-century French writer. She clearly establishes the purpose of the book: “My goal is to outline in a systematic and comprehensive way the political theory of Christine de Pizan, in part to address the puzzle of her thought [and] to situate her ideas within the history of political ideas in general” (p. vi). She remains true to this goal throughout the work. Forhan cogently explains why Christine de Pizan's literary accomplishments should be appreciated beyond the disciplines of women's studies and French literature and, in particular, why her work needs additional attention from political theorists. In doing so, she presents sufficient historical details to set a proper stage against which Christine de Pizan's political theory may be understood, without burying the reader in minutiae and details that not only rob an academic tome of any literary vibrancy but also hinder the reader's ability or desire to follow an author's argument.

The work of Jürgen Habermas seems to have a rather ambiguous relation to its origins in Frankfurt School critical theory. On the one hand, Habermas portrays his own work as vindicating the Frankfurt school's goal of finding a location for rational autonomy against the various forces of instrumental reasoning that treat all agency from the vantage point of means– ends reasoning. On the other hand, Habermas insists that he can only vindicate that goal by divesting himself of the Frankfurt school's preoccupation with finding a form of consciousness undistorted by reified social relations. In place of the critique of reification and false consciousness, Habermas offers us a critique of distorted communication built on academic disciplines well outside the dialectical theories of Theodor Adorno or Max Horkheimer: Specifically, he derives his theory of undistorted communication from an account of the presuppositions of speech acts derived from analytic language philosophy, and he inserts this notion into a theory of society based upon the systems theories of Talcott Parsons and Niklas Luhmann. This ambiguity has spawned the most disparate commentary. One strand of interpretation seeks to assess the relation of his theory of communicative reason to the original Frankfurt school project of criticizing reified consciousness. A completely different strand of interpretation, rooted in analytic moral philosophy, seeks to draw out the implications of his theory of communicative reason for finding a procedure to produce moral agreement. The two books under review are fine exemplars of each of these directions, although this short review can hardly do justice to the quality of argument and rigor of Joseph Heath's book.

This thoughtful and wide-ranging book addresses a problem that is as salient for modern as for ancient democracies: Given that democracy is necessarily predicated on judging the worth of public speech, how can democratic decision makers, whether legislators or jurors, know when speech is truthful? The Athenian political orator Demosthenes put the issue clearly: “Where the political constitution is based on speeches, how can it be safely administered if the speeches are false?” (Demosthenes [On the False Embassy] 19.185; Hesk, p. 164). Jon Hesk shows how that question becomes sharper with the availability of ever more sophisticated techniques of persuasion. Democrats today agonize over the problem of “spin”: manipulation of the media by professionals who are cherished by politicians for their ability to persuade voters to believe that which is advantageous to their paymasters. Hesk cites a well-chosen array of modern examples, drawn primarily from British politics. In ancient Athens, a similar concern centered on techniques of persuasion associated with professional teachers of rhetoric: the socalled sophists. As he proves, the term “sophist” was no more approbative in classical Athens than “spin-doctor” is today.

Foundings depend upon foreigners, or more precisely, founding narratives often rely on the device of the outsider who appears as if from nowhere to bring order where previously there was none, to free a people from the unjust rule of a tyrant, and to act as lawgiver to the lawless. Democracy and the Foreigner addresses the paradoxical centrality of the foreigner to the political identity of nations and peoples. Reading classic works of political theory (Rousseau, Freud), contemporary debates about multiculturalism, liberal democracy, and immigration policy (Peter Schuck and Rogers Smith, Michael Walzer, Richard Rorty), late-modern social theory (Rene Girard, Julia Kristeva, William Connolly), biblical accounts of the origins of a chosen people (Exodus and Ruth), and twentieth-century films (The Wizard of Oz, Shane, Simply Ballroom), Bonnie Honig offers a rich and original meditation on the politics of home, migration, and democratic politics.

Over the course of the past year, we have had many opportunities to reflect on the nature of citizenship. Defining and contesting citizenship is a high-stakes enterprise, and in light of the current climate, Engin F. Isin's Being Political is a timely intervention into these debates. It is a series of genealogies that describe citizenship as alterity in cities, chronologically spanning urban spaces from the Athenian polis through the present-day cosmopolis. Taking his methodological cue from Michel Foucault, Isin's genealogies seek to break up the continuous narratives of citizenship imagined by the victors of history—that democratic citizenship in the United States, for example, is the direct descendant of Athenian democracy—and reveal the disparate forms that citizenship and its others have taken over time. By exposing these discontinuous narratives of citizenship, Isin demonstrates how the fiction of the unified city serves the interests of dominant groups by suppressing the agonistic character of this space.

I would not be surprised—indeed, I would be gratified—if some professor built a course in political philosophy around one, or several, of the books in the Nomos series, yearly collections since 1958 based on papers given at the annual meeting of the American Society for Political and Legal Philosophy. These collections deal with current topical themes in politics and political philosophy. The articles in the collections are reliably rigorous yet accessible, well crafted, learned, provocative, and well selected. Stephen Macedo and Yael Tamir's collection, Moral and Political Education is no different. I am not sure, however, how well this collection would fit, without substantial empirical supplementation, as the core for a course in political theory. Political theory differs, to my mind, from political philosophy by the amount of attention theorists give to the real world of politics. In this book, insufficient attention is given to political reality.

These two books represent an evolution in the ethic of care literature by taking up the challenge of how to combine care and politics. Fiona MacKay argues that women's full inclusion into democratic politics requires the use of a political ethic of care to reshape the nature of representative institutions, at a variety of levels of governance, from local to transnational. Nel Noddings argues that the care ethic practiced in ideal homes should be taken into the state to redirect public policy. In developing the arguments, both stress women's experiences of caring for others and both counterpose care and justice. Their theoretical discussions of the ethic of care cover familiar ground, with Noddings's maternalist version and MacKay's nonmaternalist formulation. Where both books depart from the literature is in their uncritical embrace of the state as a policymaking engine or as the site for representative institutions. While Noddings uses the ethic of care to argue for a series of compassionate public policies, ranging from housing for the homeless to education in caring, her analysis does not engage with feminist discussions of care and the welfare state. The appeal of Starting at Home is that Noddings places the raising of caring human beings at the center of a policy agenda. Love and Politics is much more compelling for political scientists, because MacKay offers a political analysis of how moments of democratization, such as Scotland's devolution process, could advance a redefining of politics in a more woman-friendly, caring direction. The juxtaposition of the two books suggests that the success of Noddings's humanistic vision rests on a complicated political project: the creation of a family and woman-friendly practice of democratic politics shaped by women's equal political agency and a political ethic of care.

Scholars of contemporary Islam in thrall to ideas of globalization are constantly surprised at what Peter Mandaville calls “transnational Muslim politics” and others call “diasporic Islam”: the assumption that a village or tribal society is now truly international. They point to the transformations taking place in society and the consequences therein. Some of the political turbulence is attributed to the rapid changes taking place in these societies. Like Mandaville, they are inclined to cite examples of individuals (like the scholar Mohammed Arkoun) who are born in one part of the traditional Muslim world (North Africa) and live and work in Europe (France, in the case of Arkoun) to show the impact of ideas across borders.

Reviewing these books in tandem is like comparing chalk with cheese. Both Allan Megill and Randy Martin claim to center their arguments on Marx, but only Megill makes good on the claim. Indeed, what needs saying right off the bat is that Megill's Karl Marx which sheds considerable light on Marx, is by far the better book. Martin's On Your Marx by contrast, casts very little light on Marx (or anyone else). Calling attention, in one of his happier turns of phrase, to “the tinniness with which rightist clarions of triumph now sound” (p. 13), Martin says but does not show that “(h)istory has not erased Marx, but vindicated him” (p. xiv), and that Marx remains “indispensable as a point of reference” (p. xv).

Peter Meilaender has written one of the only single-author books on the ethics of immigration policy, and perhaps the only one that defends the position that “states are entitled, within certain wide limits, to craft immigration policies as they see fit” (p. 1). Most normative work on immigration, as he notes, supports the position that states are more ethically constrained in making immigration policy, much of it arguing for an “open borders” policy. As such, his book may serve as a useful point of reference in the debate over immigration policy.

Norma Claire Moruzzi's recent book contributes significantly to the emergent and increasingly sophisticated literature on Hannah Arendt. Entitled Speaking Through the Mask Moruzzi's text filters a careful reading of Arendt through an innovative lens that combines Kristevan psychoanalysis and Joan Rivière's concept of social identity as masquerade. This filter, clearly hospitable to the language of performativity, works to read Arendt against herself, and to query the sharp Arendtian distinction between the categories of the social and the political—that is, between an embodied, immanent social identity and the freedom of a political life that can reach beyond such immanence. Embodied reality need not be deprived of political engagement, the author argues, but can serve as the vehicle through which private individuals enter meaningfully into the public sphere.

In Prejudicial Appearances a primary essay on the nature of American antidiscrimination law by Robert Post is followed by four responsive essays. Post's essay effectively analyzes the way that the ostensible goals of antidiscrimination law fail to gibe with the law's actual application. According to Post, it is generally understood that the intention of antidiscrimination law is to render certain characteristics, such as gender and race, as a practical matter, invisible to those making hiring and other employment decisions. The law embraces the goal of “functional rationality.” Employers must not be allowed to rely irrationally upon prejudice in their decision-making process. Rather, they must, as President Clinton averred about gays and lesbians in the military, be judged by what they do and not by who they are. Post describes this as “the dominant conception” of antidiscrimination law.

“Every man, I suppose, has his political opinions,” Michael Oakeshott once asserted, “but a political philosopher has something more, and more significant, than political opinions: he has an analysis of political activity, a comprehensive view of the nature of political life, and it is this … which is profitable for a later and different age to study” (Oakeshott, “Thomas Hobbes,” Scrutiny 4 [1935–36]: 265). Terry Nardin seems inspired by Oakeshott to take this attitude a step further, as if to say a political philosopher may have an analysis of political activity, but a philosopher has something more significant, a comprehensive view of human experience, and it is this that is profitable for a later age to study. Thus, the title of Nardin's book, The Philosophy of Michael Oakeshott holds the nugget of his thesis: Michael Oakeshott was a philosopher, and it is as a philosopher, not a political theorist or a moralist or a historian of ideas, that we must first come to know him.

Theodor Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Alexis de Tocqueville are commonly known for their critique of liberal democracy. However, in a fascinating new study, Morton Schoolman marshals novel readings of each theorist to argue for the value of a democratic polity in creating and sustaining what he terms “aesthetic individuality,” an ethical disposition toward the other that values difference as a resource in the ongoing project of forming the self.

James Young wants political theorists to attend to Henry Adams (1838–1918), and they should. In certain ways, Adams is easy to admire. He is a splendid writer; he wrote a good deal, and nearly every sentence is perfect. He was a witty and urbane professor of history at Harvard and later he was a wry and wise Washington insider with powerful aesthetic faculties. As his America rapidly changed, he tried to master the new forms of knowledge needed to understand it.

James Adams provides a compelling and innovative book on elections and political party competition in France, Great Britain, and the United States. It unites theoretical modeling and data analysis to help us understand how parties in multiparty democracies compete when citizens both are partisan and care about the issue positions of the parties.

Political science is slowly catching up with the initiative process. Direct citizen decision making on laws has long been a feature of many American states, particularly those in the West. Although there has been a steady increase in the number of ballot measures that have qualified since the 1960s, including measures like California's Proposition 13 that ushered in the “tax revolt” of the early Reagan era, use of initiatives in the states reached a new peak in the 1990s. In that decade, there were nearly four hundred initiatives on state ballots—far more than during any other decade.

Political scientists constantly debate the value of public participation in policymaking. In philosophical terms, the debate seems onesided —participation is, on balance, a good thing in a system that calls itself a democracy. In more practical terms, however, the jury is still out, probably because scholars and participants alike have long vested in public participation almost impossible hopes and dreams. Not only is it supposed to keep government honest and open; participation also is supposed to produce more informed and thus “better” decisions, and in the process build greater civic capacity, trust, and legitimacy. Given the degree to which these expectations go unfulfilled, it is small wonder that three decades later, we still ask: Does participation make a difference?

There is no shortage of research that purports to tell us something new about globalization and its varied impacts on domestic politics and international relations today. Moreover, students mining this literature continue to find a broad spectrum of opinion on globalization, from those offering a strong state thesis that seemingly willfully ignores the many interdependent relationships states are entangled in today, to those embracing a weak state thesis that accepts the erosion of state sovereignty as a given. Edward Cohen's new book avoids these analytical traps, as he navigates through both popular and academic debates on globalization to produce a well-rounded and useful picture of a prosperous and hegemonic United States nonetheless increasingly agitated and divided internally over trade, immigration, and language policy at the end of the twentieth century.