A Kinder, Gentler America: Melancholia and the Mythical 1950s. By Mary Caputi. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2005. 232p. $58.50 cloth, $19.50 paper.

Given the controversies that have plagued the present administration, it is little wonder that critiques of neoconservatives have been produced by scholars from all perspectives. Even Francis Fukuyama, widely reputed to be one of the great neoconservative thinkers, has released a trenchant critique of neoconservatives' ideas and policies (America at the Crossroads, 2006). In her contribution to this growing chorus, Mary Caputi argues that neoconservatives have used and abused history in creating a mythical image of America's past, an idealized narrative about American life in “the fifties” that she contrasts with the complex historical strata of the chronological 1950s. She argues that the neoconservatives have cultivated, popularized, and exploited a misleading and incomplete image of a “kinder, gentler America” to generate a peculiarly powerful melancholia that haunts us with the memory of what we (supposedly) were and what we might (erroneously wish to) be again. Only by seeing through this idealized vision of that decade can we “understand that America's true identity is not located in some mythological register of time” and thus “let go of the worries and sadness that drive the need for foundations” and moral certainties (p. 27).

Beyond Gated Politics: Reflections for the Possibility of Democracy. By Romand Coles. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2005. 376p. $75.00 cloth, $25.00 paper.

In 1859, two years after England crushed the Indian Uprising, John Stuart Mill explained why the rules of international morality do not apply to “barbarians”: “In the first place, the rules of international morality imply reciprocity. But barbarians will not reciprocate. They cannot be depended on for observing any rules. Their minds are not capable of so great an effort, nor their will sufficiently under the influence of distant motives” (“A Few Words on Intervention,” in Mill, Essays on Politics and Culture, ed. Gertrude Himmelfarb, 1962).

Pluralism. By William E. Connolly. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2005. 208p. $69.95 cloth, $19.95 paper.

Pluralism and Liberal Democracy. By Richard E. Flathman. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005. 232p. $40.00.

During the past century, thinkers have explored “pluralism” under at least five different rubrics. Political pluralism emerged in Britain, and then migrated to America, as a reaction to doctrines of plenipotentiary state power. William James counterposed metaphysical pluralism to philosophies that claimed the ability to comprehend all truth in single, unified doctrines. Isaiah Berlin drew a distinction between monism and value pluralism—the thesis that worthy goods and principles are heterogeneous and cannot be combined into a single best way of living, for individuals or communities. James Madison enjoyed a midcentury revival in the theory of interest group pluralism. Most recently, John Rawls has cited the fact of pluralism—the diversity characteristic of modern societies under circumstances of liberty—as a challenge that legitimate liberal societies must address.

Globalizing Democracy and Human Rights. By Carol C. Gould. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004. 288p. $70.00 cloth, $24.99 paper.

In her book, Carol Gould extends the argument she developed in Rethinking Democracy: Freedom and Social Cooperation in Politics, Economy and Society (1988) by addressing both the problems and potential benefits of increasing global interconnectedness. In particular, she is concerned to explore and, so far as possible, resolve the tensions between human rights and democracy, seeking in the process to reconcile a robust conception of human rights with the recognition of social and cultural diversity.

Indeterminacy and Society. By Russell Hardin. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003. 192p. $39.95 cloth, $14.95 paper.

Russell Hardin aims in this wide-ranging text to explain the sources of indeterminacy in social life, its implications for theory, and its consequences for practice. Indeterminacy marks circumstances in which individual and collective actors cannot determine the results or outcomes of their choices, not so much because of lack of power or causal ignorance (which might be remedied) but because the social world characteristically presents them with stochastic and strategic problems, and therefore forces on them stochastic and strategic choices. The two problems are distinct but often related. Stochastic problems arise whenever choice carries with it the possibility of harm; in many social and political contexts, the possibilities and the identities of those harmed may or may not be known, and these factors matter in ways Hardin discusses.

The Ethics of Care: Personal, Political, and Global. By Virginia Held. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005. 220p. $45.

In her latest book, Virginia Held elaborates on themes from previously published articles to explicate and defend the ethics of care. For those unfamiliar with this well-developed tendency of feminist thought, she reviews its evolution from the 1980s writings of Sara Ruddick, Carol Gilligan, and Nel Noddings to the more recent work of theorists including, among many others, Eva Kittay, Annette Baier, Joan Tronto, and Selma Sevenhuijsen. Held also underlines the differences between the ethics of care and dominant moral and political perspectives, including Kantian universalism, utilitarianism, liberal contract theory, and virtue theory. She proposes that care is, compared with justice, the more basic value, on the grounds that society can exist without the latter but not without the former. She recommends that men and women participate equally in care activities; that care infuse citizen as well as familial relations; and that society beat back the imperializing thrust of the market ethos and the conflict-mongering thrust of the militarized state to improve the well-being of children, the elderly, the sick and disabled, the community, culture, the environment, and deprived regions of the world.

Political Obligations. By George Klosko. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005. 276p. $74.00.

Do citizens have even a prima facie moral obligation to obey the law of a reasonably just state? Most contemporary political theorists think not. George Klosko disagrees with these philosophical anarchists, and in this book he explains why. In the first, longer section, he builds upon his earlier work, The Principle of Fairness and Political Obligation (1992, new ed. 2004), to produce a new, multistranded argument for the existence of a moral obligation to obey the law. In the last four chapters, Klosko examines, empirically, what constitutional courts in three liberal states, and a selection of ordinary people in the United States, have to say about the nature and foundations of political obligations.

A World Beyond Politics? A Defense of the Nation-State. By Pierre Manent. Translated by Marc LePain. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006. $35.00.

Has the world outgrown politics? The conviction that it has, according to the French political philosopher Pierre Manent, is what animates sophisticated European thought today. The self-understandings of the creature, the parent, and, above all, the citizen have increasingly been displaced by that of the individual. And what an individual is is determined by the individual, and whatever he or she decides for him- or herself is dignified and deserves our respect. The idea of dignity is being liberated from any particular human content, from any particular conception of human goodness or morality. That means, among other things, that the idea of human rights has been liberated from any conception of civic or national obligation. So the idea of compulsory national military service is an affront to the individual's dignity, and in the name of human dignity the Europeans increasingly seem even to believe that they can unilaterally become pro-choice on war.

Manliness. By Harvey C. Mansfield. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006. 304p. $27.50.

Harvey Mansfield gives the book to us, in the first instance, as a response to feminism. Feminism, he argues, has sought to erase all differences between the genders, a project which must ultimately fail, for those differences are founded in nature. Feminism has succeeded, however, in diminishing the value and suppressing the practice of the virtue of manliness. The author sets himself the task of restoring that virtue.

Beyond the First Amendment: The Politics of Free Speech and Pluralism. By Samuel P. Nelson. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005. 240p. $50.00.

In this ambitious and fertile book, Samuel Nelson proposes to reconceptualize the theory of freedom of speech independently of American constitutional law. The effort offers insights into the limitations of constitutionally founded free speech theories and an intriguing proposed alternative, which Nelson dubs the “pluralist” framework. His framework seems especially suited for honoring justifications for freedom of speech other than the search for truth or democratic debate and for addressing restrictions on speech by authorities other than government (e.g., private employers).

Machiavelli's Liberal Republican Legacy. Edited by Paul A. Rahe. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005. 388p. $75.00.

This collection of original essays by a distinguished team of political theorists and historians may well be, as John McCormick proclaims on the book's dust jacket, “the best and most accessible source for the ‘Straussian’ perspective on Machiavelli's influence over modern political thought.” But unfortunately, no explicit effort is made in Machiavelli's Liberal Republican Legacy (hereafter MLRL) to review the fundamental principles of Leo Strauss's hermeneutical strategy or even his basic “thoughts on Machiavelli.” Indeed, Strauss's name is only mentioned once (p. lvi) in passing in the text, and his perspective, while it fundamentally guides the plot of the book, is so muted, so submerged, so “esoteric” that one needs to be something of a Straussian to detect it.

The Concept of Constituency: Political Representation, Democratic Legitimacy, and Institutional Design. By Andrew Rehfeld. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005. 280p. $75.00.

Most democratic theorists do not spend much time defining, let alone discussing, the concept of constituency. They assume that what is crucial to democratic institutions is the manner in which votes are distributed (equally and justly), not how democratic institutions define and draw electoral constituencies. Andrew Rehfeld's insightful and important book challenges these assumptions. For Rehfeld, democratic theorists need to think about constituency because constituencies are “the quintessential institution of official exclusion”: How democratic institutions define constituencies determines whose interests are catered to and whose interests are ignored.

Democracy Past and Future. By Pierre Rosanvallon. Edited by Samuel Moyn. New York: Columbia University Press, 2006. 312p. $40.00.

One of France's leading political theorists and historians, Pierre Rosanvallon played a key role in what came to be known as the Second Left, and has spent most of his distinguished academic career rethinking the history of democracy in France. Under the guidance of Claude Lefort and François Furet, Rosanvallon learned to transcend intellectual fashions, reviving interest in a study of “the political” that moves beyond the mere functioning of politics.

Congress, the Press, and Political Accountability. By R. Douglas Arnold. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004. 296p. $52.50 cloth, $22.95 paper.

The relationship between members of Congress and local media outlets has long been understudied by political scientists. This failure to fully explore one of the critical links between citizens and their representatives has left us with an incomplete understanding of how, or even whether, the local news media facilitate representation and accountability. R. Douglas Arnold's new book takes a significant step toward addressing this gap with an ambitious and rich study of the local news media's role in providing (or not providing) the information necessary for citizens to hold their elected officials accountable. While Arnold notes that citizens may receive information about their House members from various sources, he argues that local newspapers are unique among these information providers because, ideally, they act as independent monitors as well as forums for the airing of diverse opinions. Ultimately, however, he finds that many newspapers fall far short of this ideal by failing to produce adequate congressional coverage.

Campaigning for Hearts and Minds: How Emotional Appeals in Political Ads Work. By Ted Brader. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006. 280p. $60.00 cloth, $24.00 paper.

This book examines the effects of emotions aroused by televised ads in political campaigns. Its psychological theorizing about emotion goes beyond the now-familiar portrait of a “cold-hearted citizen” borrowed from cognitive psychology and rational choice theories. But it also goes beyond the tradition in political behavior research on party identification, candidate evaluations, online processing, and the like of treating affect simply in terms of positive or negative valence. Rather, this research takes seriously the unique features of qualitatively different emotions, building off the “affective intelligence” model of George E. Marcus and colleagues.

Electoral Politics Is Not Enough: Racial and Ethnic Minorities and Urban Politics. By Peter F. Burns. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2006. 192p. $60.00 cloth, $21.95 paper.

In their 1984 book Protest Is Not Enough: The Struggle of Blacks and Hispanics for Equality in City Politics, Rufus Browning, Dale Marshall, and David Tabb argued that political incorporation of ethnic and racial minorities through an electoral coalition with white liberals was the key for minority access to power in urban areas of the United States. By means of conventional coalition politics, African Americans and Latinos could get what they wanted from government.

Setting the Agenda: Responsible Party Government in the U.S. House of Representatives. By Gary W. Cox and Mathew D. McCubbins. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005. 336p. $70.00 cloth, $24.99 paper.

In this volume, Gary W. Cox and Mathew D. McCubbins elaborate on the “cartel” theory of parties in the U.S. Congress that was first set forth in their earlier book, Legislative Leviathan (1993), and present a substantial body of new evidence in support of this theory. The central thesis of the new book is that a form of party government has been present continuously in the House of Representatives since the adoption of the Reed Rules in the 1890s.

The Future of Organized Labor in American Politics. By Peter L. Francia. New York: Columbia University Press, 2006. 216p. $42.00.

As the spiraling decline of organized labor continues unabated, the U.S. labor movement is becoming more insignificant to workers. In 2004, union density in the private sector declined to a postwar nadir below 10%. As membership drops, so does union capacity to mobilize members in the electoral sphere. But since 1995, when John Sweeney and the New Voice slate toppled Lane Kirkland as president of the AFL-CIO, Peter L. Francia argues, labor unions are more effective politically than ever. This belief is rooted in Francia's quantitative research of congressional elections in the Sweeney era from 1994 to 2002.

In Defense of Negativity: Attack Ads in Presidential Campaigns. By John G. Geer. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006. 218p. $47.50 cloth, $19.00 paper.

This book begins with a series of quotes from scholars and media pundits arguing that negative political advertisements are uncivil, mean-spirited, emotion-laden distortions of the truth, which not only smear their target but also mislead voters and undermine the political process itself; in short, they are the scourge of democracy. Or so the conventional wisdom goes. But John Geer asks us to reject the starting assumption that attack ads are bad. In fact, he argues that democracy requires candidates to attack each other. His argument is simple but powerful: All advertisements, by their very nature, exaggerate the truth. But this point applies equally to negative and positive ads. We cannot expect political candidates to fairly discuss their weaknesses along with their strengths. That is the role of the opposition, and it can only be done by offering criticisms of the opposing candidate or party. The real questions, then, are 1) whether negative ads perform their role effectively, or instead distort and confuse the vote choices citizens must make; and 2) whether attack ads, in performing a role that seems to be required of them, nonetheless undermine the democratic political system of which they are a crucial part.

The American Constitution and the Debate over Originalism. By Dennis J. Goldford. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005. 305p. $75.00 cloth, $29.99 paper.

The most common way to think about questions of constitutional interpretation is in terms of the debate between originalism and living constitutionalism. Both sides in that debate assert their fidelity to the true meaning of “the text” by talking about something else, the original understanding of the ratifiers or contemporary societal norms. Dennis Goldford wants to restructure that discussion; he wants to open up the black box of “the text” and make it the subject of the discussion. This, he insists, is the only way to resolve the “Madisonian dilemma” of reconciling democratic values with the idea of a binding constitution.