For the Sake of Argument: Practical Reasoning, Character, and the Ethics of Belief. By Eugene Garver. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2004. 264p. $55.00 cloth, $22.50 paper.

Does reason advance democratic values, or is it a manifestation of the will to power, used by elites to justify coercion? Eugene Garver seeks a middle way through this question by claiming that certain uses of reason oppress, but others do not. Practical reason can build democratic community, but only if it is carefully delineated from manipulative sophistry and an excessively theoretical reason that seeks logical rigor to the detriment of decent practices. Garver makes rhetoric a central case of practical reason to argue his point. This is understandable, given his previous work on Aristotelian rhetoric and the history of prudence.

Imagining the American Polity: Political Science and the Discourse of Democracy. By John G. Gunnell. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2004. 289p. $40.00.

John Gunnell laments the ignorance of our own past in political science and is determined to get us to understand the richness of earlier generations of political scientists and theorists who focused on the American incarnation of democracy. The key task of this book is to examine the discipline's understanding of democracy, with a focus on the conversations surrounding conceptions of the state, liberalism, and, especially, pluralism. On this, Gunnell offers a comprehensive and enlightening history of some of the central defining discourses of political science and political theory, interwoven with discussions of how this history relates to the development of political science as a discipline.

Critical Resistance: From Poststructuralism to Post-Critique. By David Couzens Hoy. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2004. 288p. $35.00.

This book examines the value of different so-called poststructuralist philosophical approaches to normative justification and political resistance. The label “poststructuralist” is a contended one, and David Couzens Hoy provides a useful discussion of it. He includes discussions of Friedrich Nietzsche as the most important precursor to poststructuralism, of the poststructuralists Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, and Ernesto Laclau, and of Pierre Bourdieu, Emmanuel Levinas, and Slavoj Žižek, who, according to Hoy, are not poststructuralists. As such, the book discusses a variety of poststructuralist and related approaches and provides a good introduction to the potential problems with these approaches with regard to normative justification of resistance to domination.

Bound by Recognition. By Patchen Markell. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003. 320p. $59.50 cloth, $19.95 paper.

Mainstream views of justice have typically concerned themselves with the distribution of goods such as money, power, opportunity, and liberty. In recent years, however, the traditionally neglected good of recognition has become a major focus of attention in contemporary politics and political theory. Stirred by a growing awareness of the pluralistic character of modern societies, many people now believe that recognition is something that is owed as a matter of justice. Just as poverty and a denial of liberty can have catastrophic implications for a person's well-being and self-development, misrecognition and nonrecognition can demean and insult an individual, leaving him or her with a crippling feeling of inferiority. In response to perceived failures of recognition, identity-related groups have called for significant changes in public policies and institutions: Political debates about everything from the college curriculum to laws regulating marriage, to language rights and race-conscious districting, to institutions of self-government for indigenous peoples and national minorities have been framed as “struggles for recognition.”

Citizenship and Education in Liberal–Democratic Societies: Teaching for Cosmopolitan Values and Collective Identities. Edited by Kevin McDonough and Walter Feinberg. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003. 464p. $60.00.

What is the purpose of public education in liberal-democratic societies? Is it to promote a national identity, to champion certain values, or to encourage a respect for difference? Are such goals suitable to the increasing cultural diversification of nations and the ongoing globalization of the world? And how should liberals respond when parents demand that children be exempt from classes that conflict with their beliefs or fight for state-supported religious education on the basis of group rights? These are just some of the questions taken up in this rich collection of essays. Citizenship and Education in Liberal-Democratic Societies brings together prominent political philosophers and educational theorists to discuss some of the most contentious educational policy issues confronting liberal-democratic states today. With a philosophical rigor often missing from such debates, the authors in this collection provide insight into the complex legal and moral issues at stake, locate the debates in historical and philosophical context, and present ethical arguments and curricular recommendations that advance dialogue. Read together, these essays defend the liberal state against charges that public education undermines parental authority and threatens cultural integrity, and they make a strong case for state involvement in education.

Enlightenment Against Empire. By Sankar Muthu. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003. 348p. $19.95.

In this rich and elegantly written book, Sankar Muthu breaks the now-stereotypical association of Enlightenment political thought with an arrogant universalism that was implicitly or explicitly allied to imperialism. He suggests than an important strand of eighteenth-century political thought generated, and was intended to generate, a searching critique of the conquest of the world by European states. Indeed, far from being uniquely aligned with imperialism, eighteenth-century political thought was distinctive for generating such an opposition. Neither the two centuries that preceded it nor the century that followed saw such a systematic stand against imperialism from European philosophers.

Plato Through Homer: Poetry and Philosophy in the Cosmological Dialogues. By Zdravko Planinc. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2003. 152p. $37.50.

This is the kind of book that gives great pleasure to a reviewer. Not only does it reward the act of taking time away from one's own reading agenda to evaluate an unknown and undiscovered text, but it warrants a strong recommendation that others do the same. This review will provide a summary of the refreshingly simple and provocativeargument of Zdravko Planinc's Plato Through Homer, and a short explanation as to why this small volume is worthy of our attention.

The Cultural Defense. By Alison Dundes Renteln. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004. 416p. $45.00.

While there is a burgeoning scholarly literature on such topics as cultural pluralism, ethnic diversity, and the politics of recognition, there has been relatively little systematic attention given to ways that courts can embrace or thwart the maintenance of cultural traditions. Yet, as is often the case, court cases provide concrete examples of conflicts that capture the attention of the popular press and the public. If polygamy is part of a religious or cultural tradition, can state and federal laws forbid it within the United States? If a recent immigrant to the United States belongs to a tradition that permits an “honor killing” to punish the improper sexual behavior of a female relative, to what extent is that immigrant legally culpable? Many of the cases discussed in the book present extraordinarily difficult conflicts between cultural traditions. The author should be praised for presenting them unflinchingly.

Machiavelli, Hobbes, and the Formation of a Liberal Republicanism in England. By Vickie B. Sullivan. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004. 284p. $75.00.

In this important and insightful book Vickie B. Sullivan offers an impressive and ambitious examination of the philosophical roots and historical development of liberal democratic theory in early-modern England. In the Introduction, Sullivan frames her analysis in the context of the various contours of the debate about the character of early-modern thought between the advocates of classical republicanism, on the one hand, and the proponents of the liberal school, on the other. The opening chapters on Machiavelli and Hobbes, respectively, provide a provocative interpretive lens through which to evaluate and critique the prevailing liberal and republican paradigms. The lion's share of the book deals in five successive chapters with the way in which English republicans from the civil war era through the early Hanoverian period—including Marchamont Nedham, James Harrington, Henry Neville, Algernon Sidney, and the coauthors of Cato's Letters, John Trenchard and Thomas Gordon—modified, balanced, and ultimately synthesized the Machiavellian republican and Hobbesian liberal elements of their complex philosophical inheritance. With the final consummation of this synthesis in the commercial republic of Cato's Letters, Sullivan argues, a distinctively modern form of liberal republicanism was born.

Overruled?: Legislative Overrides, Pluralism, and Contemporary Court–Congress Relations. By Jeb Barnes. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2004. 219p. $50.00.

Students of the interaction between the judicial and elected branches of government typically assume that each branch can understand the other's intentions and capabilities. In classic separation-of-power models, justices do not craft opinions they know will be overridden, and Congress does not pass laws likely to be struck down or interpreted in a manner hostile to Congress's interests. In reality, the assumption of complete information is tenuous: The transmission of information between the branches is less than perfect. Members of Congress lack the capacity to perfectly anticipate future judicial decisions, and courts cannot anticipate how elected officials will respond. Hence, congressional goals are regularly thwarted by the courts, and on occasion, judicial attempts at policymaking are overruled by Congress.

Real Democracy: The New England Town Meeting and How It Works. By Frank M. Bryan. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003. 312p. $49.00 cloth, $19.00 paper.

This book joins a small number of empirical studies about direct democracy and, specifically, the town meeting. Frank M. Bryan is author, coauthor, or editor of 11 books, including Politics in the Rural States (1981) and The Vermont Papers: Recreating Democracy on a Human Scale (1989). Here, he unveils an incredible set of discoveries that fills a major gap in the literature on democracy and the town meeting. Other prominent scholars who have tackled some of these salient issues are Joseph Zimmerman (The New England Town Meeting, 1999) and Jane J. Mansbridge (Beyond Adversary Democracy, 1980), both of whose works are referenced extensively in Real Democracy.

The Politics of Child Support in America. By Jocelyn Elise Crowley. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003. 217p. $65.00 cloth, $23.00 paper.

Jocelyn Crowley argues that child support policy is an example of innovation through entrepreneurial activity over time. Relying on secondary and original sources, she identifies four different sets of entrepreneurs—social workers, conservatives, women legislators/women's groups, and fathers' rights groups. Crowley claims that over the long term, policies continuously evolve and actors enter, exit, and reenter the political arena. Policy entrepreneurs are the central actors who create policy change. She defines policy entrepreneurs as people who are alert to new opportunities, persist in advocating their ideas, and employ rhetorical ingenuity to frame their ideas in novel ways (p. 8). Groups, as well as individuals, have these entrepreneurial characteristics. Changes in child support policy, in the author's view, can be explained by changes in the domination of the political arena of different entrepreneurial groups.

On Deaf Ears: The Limits of the Bully Pulpit. By George C. Edwards, III. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003. 320p. $35.00.

The funeral of Ronald Reagan marked a celebration not only of the president's political accomplishments but also of the idea that the core of presidential leadership is mastery of the bully pulpit. Published shortly after Reagan was laid to rest, Bill Clinton's autobiography also reflects our modern preoccupation with rhetorical leadership. Clinton credits many of his political victories—most notably fending off an impeachment charge—to the power of rhetorical appeals. He also attributes many of his failures to an inability to communicate effectively. George Edwards thinks that Reagan, Clinton, and the conventional wisdom they exemplify are just plain wrong. In a thorough and forcefully articulated study, Edwards argues that public opinion is never altered by presidential speech. Efforts to advance a president's political agenda through rhetorical appeals over the heads of Congress to the people are futile wastes of time and energy.

Projections of Power: Framing News, Public Opinion, and U.S. Foreign Policy. By Robert M. Entman. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003. 200p. $16.00.

Which news frames prevail in the coverage of U.S. foreign policy? Robert Entman introduces a “cascading activation” model to explain news framing—“the process of selecting and enhancing some aspects of a perceived reality, and enhancing the salience of an interpretation and evaluation of that reality” (p. 5). According to the cascade model, news frames flow hierarchically, from the White House to Washington elites to the media—although they may also flow directly from the administration to the media—and then to the public. Whereas the “indexing” model holds that news reflects the homogeneity of Washington elites, Entman's model has political communication going both ways: Presidential administrations and Washington elites (congressmen, ex-government officials, lobbyists, academic experts) are guided and constrained by the news (actual or anticipated), just as news organizations tailor the news according to public opinion (actual or anticipated). Because different news frames activate different thoughts and feelings at each stage of the process (p. 9), some frames succeed better than others.

Choosing Your Battles: American Civil–Military Relations and the Use of Force. By Peter D. Feaver and Christopher Gelpi. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004. 236p. $37.50.

The book addresses two practical and timely research concerns: the existence and significance of differences between civilian and military opinions on the commitment and nature of military force. Quantitative (mostly survey data from the Triangle Institute for Security Studies) and qualitative (case studies) data are used to systematically measure opinions about military operations among the civilian and military elites and the public, and to correlate these with national security decisions from 1819 to 1992. The authors anticipate most questions that could be raised about their methods and identify caveats and research questions yet to be addressed. Choosing Your Battles makes both scholarly contributions and intuitive sense.

The Financiers of Congressional Elections: Investors, Ideologues, and Intimates. By Peter L. Francia, John C. Green, Paul S. Herrnson, Lynda W. Powell, and Clyde Wilcox. New York: Columbia University Press, 2003. 205p. $59.50 cloth, $22.50 paper.

This book begins with a simple but important premise: “When political activists have distinctive views and special access to policymakers, representation and democracy may become distorted” (p. 18). Building on previous research showing that such representational “distortion” is particularly large in the case of campaign contributors, Peter Francia, John C. Green, Paul S. Herrnson, Lynda Powell, and Clyde Wilcox collect and analyze an ocean of new survey data on the characteristics, motives, participation, and activities of significant donors (those who contributed more than $200 to at least one congressional candidate in 1996). The authors reach the “troubling” conclusion that significant donors do, in fact, “have a greater voice both in elections and the policymaking process than do most other Americans…. The degree to which donors hold diverse views on policy and possess different motives for giving serves to mitigate but not eliminate this distortion” (p. 162).

Barbershops, Bibles, and BET: Everyday Talk and Black Political Thought. By Melissa Victoria Harris-Lacewell. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004. 336p. $35.00.

The central claims of this book are that the conversations ordinary black folk have with each other matter politically, and that there is a diverse range of ideological perspectives endorsed by African Americans. The author, Melissa Harris-Lacewell, supports these contentions by means of survey research, experimental studies, and ethnographic research. This comprehensive approach represents a significant accomplishment and, in combination with the theoretical contributions of the text, makes the book an invaluable addition to the African American politics canon.

Polling to Govern: Public Opinion and Presidential Leadership. By Diane J. Heith. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2003. 216p. $50.00 cloth, $19.95 paper.

Those who are troubled by the ubiquity of public opinion polls, particularly members of the press and public, often complain that polling has turned political leaders into followers, afraid to champion policies unless they are already broadly popular. Bill Clinton was often accused of conducting a poll-driven presidency, particularly after his party lost control of Congress. Similarly, George W. Bush's key political adviser, Karl Rove, is seen by many as the architect of a strategy in which nearly all of his boss's actions are taken with at least one eye on reelection.

Politics, Policy, and Organization: Frontiers in the Scientific Study of Bureaucracy. Edited by George A. Krause and Kenneth J. Meier. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2003. 352p. $65.

This text consists of papers originally presented at the Fifth Public Management Conference meeting at Texas A&M University in December, 1999. The editors in the introductory chapter aptly define the challenges facing contributors: “We know little about how bureaucratic (a) agencies make decisions … (b) structures affect responsiveness and performance … (c) agencies resolve goal conflict on a day-to-day basis, (d) external performance criteria affect bureaucracies and (e) organizations socialize their members” (p. 15).

The Front-Loading Problem in Presidential Nominations. By William G. Mayer and Andrew E. Busch. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 2004. 226p. $49.95 cloth, $22.95 paper.

The authors are right, but … Front-loading has skewed the nomination process. It has given states holding early caucuses and primaries an advantage. They have more influence on the final outcome, more attention from the candidates and the news media, more economic benefit from the spending of the campaigns and the organizations that cover them, and more citizen involvement and higher voting turnout.