Place Matters provides a deep, nuanced, and comprehensive summary of the new regionalist perspective on urban governance. Ably authored by a trio of accomplished students of urban politics, the book's thesis (p. 21) is that “where we live has a powerful effect on the choices we have and our capacity to achieve a high quality life.” That is, the often complex and fragmented jurisdictional arrangements of many American metropolises both exacerbate the social and economic ills that can be associated with urban life and delimit the range of opportunities available to all of their citizens for addressing these problems. This theme, of course, is not new. Indeed, the last two decades have seen a slow but steady emergence of the new regionalist perspective as a counterbalance to the now dominant public-choice emphasis on the virtues of jurisdictional fragmentation. Previously, the regionalist perspective was perhaps best reflected in David Rusk's Cities Without Suburbs (1993) or Anthony Downs's New Visions for Metropolitan America (1994). But neither of these books fully integrated the ideas of the new regionalist perspective into the broader range of theories about urban politics. Place Matters does so in a thorough and readily accessible manner.

For decades, the delegation problem has stoked theoretically rigorous, empirically taxing work in institutional political science. The central achievement of David Epstein and Sharyn O’Halloran's book is to posit clearly a trade-off between delegating internally and delegating externally. The authors compare delegation to the “make-or-buy” decision of the firm in industrial organization theory. It is the congressional “floor” (its median voter) that delegates, with the choice of handing policymaking to its committee system (internal) or to the executive branch (external). Either “agent” is capable of specifying statutory details or of learning about policy's probable consequences in a way that would be too costly for the floor to undertake. Yet neither has preferences identical to those of the floor, and so each confronts Congress with a classic “hold-up” problem.

It is important at the outset to counter any skeptic's expectation that Paul Gronke is trying to prove that all House races and Senate races are created equal. It is to his credit that he does not try to substantiate such a sweeping generalization. Rather, he very convincingly demonstrates that there is considerable overlap between House and Senate races in terms of competitiveness, intensity, campaign message effectiveness, quality of challengers, and level of voter information. Resisting the urge to engage in hyperbole, let me say that this is a very good book.

This edited volume begins with the premise that the American public's dislike of government is a problem; there is too much negative sentiment about government. The editors pose a number of questions, among them how to fashion reforms in order to create a “style of government that would make the people happy” (p. 1). Consistent with their important new work on “stealth democracy,” John Hibbing and Elizabeth Theiss-Morse argue that this unhappiness is not the result of policy outcomes at odds with citizen preferences, but is instead rooted in the rancorous public process of political sausage making. They take issue with the notion that more voice through deliberation should lead to greater approval of government, and suggest instead that people would feel a lot better if democratic processes minimized the influence of special interests and maximized representation of a “public interest, [that] by its very nature, is concerned with the welfare of all salt-of-the-earth Americans” (p. 249).

Offering a political scientist's view of the evolution of banking regulation in the United States, Susan Hoffmann approaches the creation of banks, savings and loans, and credit unions from the perspective of “public philosophies” about money, banking, and credit. She devotes a chapter to the early debates between Jefferson and Hamilton over the desirability of corporations over all, as well as banks specifically, then analyzes the First and Second Banks of the United States (BUS) with a chapter each. The development of vibrant state banking systems, followed by the imposition of a new national banking system in the Civil War, receives attention in its own chapter, as does the Federal Reserve Bank. She then concludes with a chapter each on the Savings and Loans (S&Ls) and building and loans, and the credit union system.

James Kuklinski has assembled a remarkably valuable set of articles addressing the general question of citizens’ political competence and political decision making. This book is the tenth installment in the distinguished series “Cambridge Studies in Political Psychology and Public Opinion.” Divided into four sections covering affect, cognition, perception, and values, the book is organized much like panel sessions at a professional meeting. Kuklinski provides an extended introduction to each section, and three articles by some of our most talented researchers form the core of each section, followed by invited commentary critiquing those articles. Absent from the collection is a summary chapter, which could have gone a considerable distance toward providing a general model of public opinion formation and functioning, but if you are looking for the most innovative, cutting-edge articles on how citizens make sense of politics, there would be no better place to begin than this work.

Jan Leighley's examination of racial and ethnic minority mobilization is an important contribution toward understanding issues the American polity faces as its population becomes increasingly diverse. She points to the rapid shift in population composition in a number of states in which whites will no longer be the majority, and she considers the political implications of these changes for democratic institutions, for the groups which are part of this changing electorate and for the political science literature which has based its theoretical findings on research on Anglos. Leighley explores the mobilization of groups, how American political institutions have responded to and how they mobilize racial and ethnic groups, and she reviews several different types of literatures’ analyses of political participation and mobilization as she offers a rational choice interpretation of the subject. This is a complex book, which helps increase our understanding of the variety of issues, methodological, conceptual, and measurement based, which scholars must address in order to broaden knowledge in this area.

The field of Asian American politics is not uncharted terrain in American politics research, but it is certainly underexplored. The relative lack of scholarly attention, however, is likely to change, since Asian Americans are the fastest growing group in the United States and have occupied this position for the last several decades. They thus comprise a large potential electoral base, which is largely uncultivated. Although much of the literature on the topic is written from the vantage point of electoral politics, Asian American politics does not actually fit well into this paradigm. Instead, Asian American politics is multifaceted and is, moreover, complicated by a multiethnic base.

The National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) was signed into law on New Year's Day, 1970. It was a fitting beginning for a decade that produced more environmental legislation than any previous decade in American history. After 1980, environmental law became ensnarled in the partisanship of Washington. The last major environmental law was the Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990.

The field of disability studies is growing in size, sophistication, and sweep, with its own research association and a few interdisciplinary programs scattered around the country. As with its predecessors and to some extent models, black studies and womens’ studies, disability studies is partly concerned with taking the perspective of a previously marginalized subject seriously. But besides uncovering what has been ignored, researchers in disability studies, perhaps even more than their colleagues in ethnic and gender studies, must confront and recast what has been studied before: whole fields of research that have developed particular ways of seeing people with disabilities.

Although the cover design of the book emphasizes the (perceived) phrase “identity politics,” the true title of the text broadly documents the journey of the lesbian and gay movements through two important components represented by this phrase. The journey from struggles for social sexual identity to struggles for social political rights within the liberal democratic tradition marks a maturation of the movements. While there have been many works dealing with the former (sexual identity), this book is a timely assessment of the current strategies used by a decentralized movement in an attempt to gain equal political rights. In brief, it documents and evaluates the progress and potential of the lesbian and gay movements as social-political forces for change.

The nineteenth-century, Protestant-led common school movement against Catholic schools, the campaign against foreign language instruction in public schools, and other xenophobic efforts to “Americanize” public education in the early twentieth century provide the historical background for Rob Reich's discussion of contemporary multicultural education in the United States. His goal is to construct a liberal theory of multicultural education that hangs together philosophically and makes practical sense in a pluralistic society whose professed liberal democratic principles are belied by this history of nativism and discrimination.

Within the past five years, the scholarly literature on the U.S. Senate has been immeasurably enriched by the appearance of a half-dozen books that are noteworthy, not merely for the quality of the research involved but for the perspective they share. Directing their attention to different features of the institution, all emphasize what is truly distinctive about the Senate. In spite of powerful evidence that the hardedged partisanship that has long been a feature of the House has made strong inroads in the Senate, and in the face of evidence provided by Barbara Sinclair's Unorthodox Lawmaking (1997) and others that Senate leadership, at least in the postcommittee phase of legislation, has gotten more muscular in the manner of party leaders in the House, the two chambers are in no danger of becoming indistinguishable one from the other anytime soon.

As its title suggests, this study argues that U.S. immigration policy has been fundamentally shaped by national sovereignty. In so doing, Cheryl Shanks usefully reminds us that immigration is one of those policy domains—like foreign policy—that is inescapably and fundamentally regime shaping. At the same time, she seeks to demonstrate that “to preserve or enhance sovereignty is a policy choice” (p. 2), albeit one whose determinants change over time. Indeed, the bulk of this work is an historical analysis of the Congressional Record, scrutinizing how U.S. sovereignty has been conceived of differently over the last century and how this has influenced immigration policy. This effort leads Shanks to the provocative conclusion that “immigration policy has become more restrictive as trade policy has become less protectionist” (p. 253); more specifically, that as we have become less concerned with racial and ideological admission criteria, we have become more concerned with total numbers of immigrants and their “quality,” in terms of human capital. For Shanks, the point is that the tension between maintaining sovereignty and fostering involvement in an open and dynamic world economy is central to understanding contemporary immigration policy.

Of all the major issues on the American policy agenda, the media and the public arguably assign the most responsibility to presidents for the condition of the economy. It is entirely another question whether or not presidents can, in meaningful ways, directly affect markets in a system of separated institutions sharing power, and with the presence of a powerful and independent decision-making body (the Federal Reserve Board). Yet given the responsibility (blame or credit) assigned to presidents for the macroeconomy, it is important for scholars to understand their activities and efforts on the economy. In this latest book from the emerging presidency series edited by James Pfiffner, Constantine Spiliotes dives into this vital matter by developing and testing a theoretical framework of presidential decision making on the economy.

The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act (PRWOA) of 1996 has been widely hailed as one of the most important pieces of legislation in recent U.S. history. Among its many provisions, the act transformed Aid to Families with Dependent Children from a budgetary entitlement to a block grant, imposed lifetime limits on benefits, and gave state governments more flexibility in designing welfare programs. Some scholars, notably Kent Weaver, have analyzed the process of enacting PRWOA at the national level. Other scholars have cited the act as further evidence that women, racial minorities, and the poor are treated particularly badly by public policy. In recent years, probably the single largest category of studies has attempted to measure the impact of PRWOA on welfare caseloads and poverty rates.

Much has been written about racial residential segregation in American society and its effect on race relations and the quality of life for African Americans (e.g., see Douglas S. Massey and Nancy A. Denton, American Apartheid 1993). While residential segregation remains a prominent and disturbing feature of urban America, there are signs of increasing residential integration. In light of this growing trend, Race and Place addresses the key question: How does residential context affect the attitudes and perceptions of both blacks and whites about race? The answer, according to Susan Welch, Lee Sigelman, Timothy Bledsoe, and Michael Combs, depends to a large extent on racial patterns of neighborhoods. The study of race and residence has not, to date, accounted for the myriad ways that neighborhood context affects racial attitudes. This well-written book is an impressive work that will help fill the void. Its detailed analysis is sure to be of enormous interest to every serious student of racial and urban politics.

This is an unabashedly theoretical book motivated by a recent empirical puzzle. To wit, why did certain post-Soviet states strongly reorient their trade and monetary relations away from Russia after 1991, while others either clearly chose not to do so or engaged in heated yet ultimately indecisive political debates about the “proper” direction for their foreign economic policies? Rawi Abdelal provides a provocative answer to this question: “What societies want depends upon who they think they are” (p. 1). His book effectively challenges dominant realist and liberal theories of international political economy, and promotes a new “Nationalist” theoretical perspective to better explain the foreign economic policies of postimperial states.

Students of Brazil, of various disciplinary and theoretical persuasions, have long sought to explain the seeming inability of the country's political leadership to transcend patronage politics and develop coherent policies suitable for transforming the country's enormous potential into sustained economic growth and greater social equity. The Deadlock of Democracy in Brazil by Barry Ames, is the most recent major work in this tradition. Grounded in rational choice principles, the book's core argument is that political institutions—namely, open-list proportional representation in districts of high magnitude, coupled with federalism and the executive's long-standing reliance on patronage and pork—are at the heart of Brazil's governability problems. The proliferation of veto players, the continued weakness of political parties, legislative obstructionism, and corruption are among the most pernicious effects of the system.

Academic writing about the democratic transition in Russia remains heavily politicized, as was writing about the Soviet Union. Authors line themselves up as critics and defenders of the reform project of the incumbent leader—Mikhail Gorbachev, Boris Yeltsin, and now Vladimir Putin.