After a decade of market reforms, it is obvious to most observers that something has gone wrong in Russia. Some economic indicators suggest modest successes in instituting a market economy, but most of the evidence is clear that the economic and social crisis has far exceeded what might be expected in terms of a "transformation recession." Industrial and agricultural output is down substantially, capital renewal is not keeping pace with the retirement of old machinery, the nation is deindustrializing, real living standards have plum- meted, and investment capital is fleeing the country. The authors of this book conclude that "the Russian privatization program was nothing but a grandiose failure" (p. 6).

Merle Bowen investigates the politics of the changing rela- tionship between state and peasantry in Mozambique, prin- cipally through the elaboration of a case study, the Ilha Josina Machel in the southern province of Maputo. The book takes as point of departure the "developmental" period of Portuguese colonialism, from the early 1960s until the present day, although the main focus is on 1975-83. This is useful, because that period gives us a relatively clear insight into the reality of the Frelimo government's policies of socialism in the countryside, before all aspects of Mozam- bique's political economy were inundated by the war prose- cuted by Renamo with South African backing. Although there has been a marked increase of research interest in local-level studies recently, few works that take a similar approach treat this period in such detail. For all those interested in the realities of rural socialism generally, or specifically Mozambique's Frelimo period, this book will be valuable indeed.

These two books are about two powerful regional political forces in India-the Shiv Sena of Maharashtra (with a focus on the city of Mumbai) and the Dravidianist parties of Tamil Nadu. Many readers of this journal may know these places by their older names: Mumbai is Bombay, and the state of Tamil Nadu and its capital city were once known as Madras. Both books, not coincidentally, have much to say about the rise of Hindu nationalism in India, which is perhaps the most dramatic change in the Indian political landscape in recent years. That, indeed, is the central theme of Banerjee's book, which investigates the Hindu-Muslim riots in Mumbai in 1993. Banerjee argues that the politics of Hindu nationalism provides the context for the riots. In Mumbai, the major political force articulating a Hindu nationalist agenda is the Shiv Sena (literally, the warriors of Shivaji, a legendary Maharastrian Hindu hero).

Democracy is in vogue it seems. Everywhere in the world, the forces opposed to democracy seem to be in retreat, and the number of states calling themselves democracies is increas- ing. There are exceptions, of course: parts of Africa, tortured Burma, all over the Middle East, some aging Communist oligarchies, a few proud holdouts in sultanates and mountain monarchies. But they are increasingly anachronisms in the end-of-history world. Or are they? The literature is replete with controversy on the definition, durability, inevitably, and universality of democracy. Into this controversy comes a new book that takes direct aim at the literature of the past decades and provides a badly needed comparative analysis of some of the states in South Asia. Maya Chadda's goals are clear and ambitious: to bring the neglected experience of South Asia to the attention of a wider audience, in the context of the most central debates about the nature of democracy.

The Japanese party system has been in flux in recent years. In 1993, two groups defected from the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) and joined with the opposition to form a broadly based coalition government. A year later, the LDP regained power by creating a coalition government with its ideological opponent, the Japan Socialist Party (JSP). Both events shocked virtually everyone at the time. The LDP had been in power for so long-almost 40 years-that it seemed almost inconceivable that it could lose power. For just as long, the JSP had been the main opposition. By the 2000 election, a dozen parties had come and gone, the JSP's strength dropped to a very small fraction of what it was a decade earlier, and the LDP had to turn to various coalition partners to maintain its control of government. All this is quite puzzling to even close watchers of Japanese politics, because party politics, especially the role of opposition parties, has been a relatively understudied area. For those who want to make sense of how these events came to pass, Ray Christensen's Ending the LDP Hegemony will be very helpful.

Both of these books seek to explain the failure or shortcom- ings of Russia's postcommunist democratic experiment. Both are critical of much of the transition literature within political science, and both identify certain features that make the prescriptions of that literature problematic within the Rus- sian and Soviet contexts. But they anchor their criticisms in contrasting explanations of the current travails. One is rooted in the importation of inappropriate models of economic and social development under Western prodding; the other points to the weakness of Russia's nascent civil society and the opportunities lost by political leaders to strengthen it. They provide opposing views not only of the causal processes underlying failed or incomplete democratization within Rus- sia but also to some extent of the purposes of the social scientific enterprise itself.

Ruth Collier has written an important contribution to the literatures on democracy and on labor, one that should reorient much discussion and work on democratization. Collier makes a powerful case that labor has been a far more important and decisive actor in redemocratization than con- ventionally thought, and her reconceptualization of the cases on this basis yields an important new typology of regime transitions. The book casts a wide empirical net, examining the contribution of labor to the emergence of democracy in numerous countries in both the Americas and Europe.

This is a thoroughly revisionist study, in the best sense of the word. Starting from the conviction that a close look at marriage and divorce in China can open "a wide window onto what might be called the `interface' between state and society" (p. 14), Diamant sets out to capture a better sense of the quality of "everyday interactions between citizen and state" (p. 15). He uses these observations to shed light on larger questions about the degree to which citizens in differ- ent social strata may have regarded the state as legitimate or illegitimate, as well as the extent to which state interventions designed to alter power relations in both rural and urban society were effective.

Venezuelan politics attracted little attention from political scientists for thirty years after the defeat of the fidelista guerrillas in the 1960s, but there has been a surge of interest in recent years. The country retained civilian, elected govern- ment through a dark period of authoritarianism in Latin America, which seemed to make it a good candidate for deriving lessons about transitions to democracy. In the 1990s, however, the democratic system entered into crisis. Venezu- ela experienced urban riots, two unsuccessful coups, removal of a president from office before completion of his term, rising electoral abstention, collapse of the traditional parties at the heart of the system, and the election of a coup leader to the presidency. Attention shifted from what went right to what went wrong. These books help us understand the limitations of the Venezuelan democratic model.

A decade after communism's collapse, what do we have to report? For one thing, some states certainly have it easier than others. A handful of the postcommunist states located in close proximity to the West have made admirable progress in constructing viable market economies and meaningful insti- tutions of democratic representation, but a much larger group has yet to taste the fruits of what Western politicians in the 1990s called "market democracy." Among this latter group, some retain at the time of this writing a formal commitment to democracy, but others have never moved very far from the authoritarian cronyism where they started.