As always, this issue of the Book Review features a wide variety of books spanning the entire gamut of political science topics, methods, and subfields. At the same time, a number of core themes recur through the books under review.

As I write this Introduction the 2008 Republican National Convention is drawing to a close. John McCain's selection of little-known Alaska Governor Sarah Palin has taken the pundits by surprise, injecting new dynamics into the Presidential contest, and furnishing proof that political life is riddled with contingency. At the same time, the selection further accentuates, and perhaps even reduces to absurdity, a theme that has been at the heart of this campaign season largely due to the Democratic party primaries and their down-to-the-wire contest between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton—the politics of difference. If the Democratic contest demonstrated that the politics of race and gender are central not simply to the Democrats but to the U.S. as a whole, the Republican convention has made it all but inevitable that for the first time in the history of the U.S. an African-American has broken the color line in Presidential politics, a woman has broken the gender line in Republican Presidential politics, and come January 2009 there will be either an African-American man or an (Alaskan American) woman in the White House as either President or Vice-President. This is extraordinary. At the same time, before this contest plays out to its conclusion—long after this introduction goes to print, and before it reaches you—there will no doubt be much tortuous discussion—and also posturing and denunciation—of the politics of race and gender and of the ways that these identities intersect with broader claims of citizenship.

In a critique of Huber and Lapinski (in this volume) I argued that their 2006 study failed to find evidence of racial priming and that this failure stands out in the recent accumulation of studies that do find racial priming. I argued further that this failure to replicate is the result of deficiencies in Huber and Lapinski's research. Huber and Lapinski (in this volume) respond by claiming that they did find evidence of racial priming among a subgroup, that their research is sound, that my research is flawed, and that the relevant literature does not comment on the differences between implicit and explicit messages . I show that 1) Huber and Lapinski's results demonstrate that their study produced null findings, 2) these null findings are caused by flaws in their study, 3) my research withstands their criticism, and 4) the relevant literature is in fact relevant and highlights the extent to which their null results are anomalous. There are, however, several points of agreement: 1) racial predispositions shape policy views, 2) these predispositions can be primed by cues and messages, and 3) these predispositions are primed by implicit racial messages. What remains at issue is the impact of explicit racial messages.

When Ways of Life Collide: Multiculturalism and Its Discontents in the Netherlands. By Paul M. Sniderman and Louk Hagendoorn. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007. 176p. $25.95.

The U.S. Army/Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Field Manual. By the U.S. Army and Marine Corps. Forward by David H. Petraeus, James F. Amos, and John A. Nagl. Introduction by Sarah Sewall. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007. 472p. $15.00.

This issue of Perspectives contains reviews of a wide range of books across the conventional subfields. One theme that links many of the books under review, and thus the reviews themselves, is the theme of trust. In short, to what extent is effective and enduring political governance reliant on the development of forms of credibility, or “credible commitment,” among citizens and between citizens and political institutions? The problem of trust has been central to political inquiry at least as far back as Hobbes and arguably Aristotle, for whom civic “friendship” was an indispensable condition of politics. And it has recently assumed particular prominence in political science, as evidenced in the reviews below.

In her timely and provocative book, Kathleen Arnold examines the super-exploitation and disenfranchisement of the “new working class”—low-income immigrants, African Americans, and women workers—and utilizes these phenomena as a catalyst for sharpening our critical understanding of American governance in our globalizing conditions. She contends that the neoliberal state is deploying deregulation and massive policing interventions simultaneously. The latter range from the exposure of welfare mothers to the rigors of workfare to the war on drugs, post-9/11 domestic security operations, mean-spirited attacks on the homeless, and the crackdown on illegal immigration. Arnold proposes a sobering diagnosis that is loosely based upon Giorgio Agamben's theory of bare life: As the state operates outside the law on a frequent and even systematic basis to reduce these target groups to a subhuman status, we are witnessing the triumph of prerogative power in American society today.

Stephen Biddle on The U.S. Army/Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Field Manual. By the U.S. Army and Marine Corps. Forward by David H. Petraeus, James F. Amos, and John A. Nagl. Introduction by Sarah Sewall. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007. 472p. $15.00.

Complying with Europe: EU Harmonisation and Soft Law in the Member States. Gerda Falkner, Oliver Treib, Miriam Hartlapp, and Simone Leiber. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005. 418p. $85.00 cloth, $37.99 paper.

NATO in the “New Europe”: The Politics of International Socialization After the Cold War. Alexandra I. Gheciu. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2005. 368p. $60.00.

Europeanization and Regionalization in the EU's Enlargement to Central and Eastern Europe: The Myth of Conditionality. James Hughes, Gwendolyn Sasse, and Claire Gordon. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005. 248p. $79.95.

The Idea of a European Superstate: Public Justification and European Integration. Glyn Morgan. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005. 204p. $45.00.

Europe Undivided: Democracy, Leverage, and Integration after Communism. Milada Anna Vachudova. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005. 352p. $99.00 cloth, $37.95 paper.

Law and Governance in Postnational Europe: Compliance beyond the Nation-State. Edited by Michael Zürn and Christian Joerges. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005. 312p. $75.00.Beate Sissenich is Assistant Professor of Political Science at Indiana University. She wishes to thank Jeffrey Isaac for insightful comments and suggestions on previous versions of this essay.

Anna Marie Smith and I have similar concerns about the poor, racism and sexism. Yet we view political theory in different ways. Smith has focused on one set of programs and gives the reader a richly detailed view of recent welfare laws. In contrast, I have tried to do something very different. First, I use Giorgio Agamben's ideas as a foil, drawing upon Hannah Arendt and Michel Foucault to supplement this reading, and I investigate the ideas of John Locke (rather than Thomas Hobbes) to understand sovereignty today. By looking at Locke, we can understand how representative government based on the rule of law and equality can coexist with prerogative power used systematically and domestically. Instead of a top-down view of power, I argue that modern power is characterized by the dispersal of sovereignty and, importantly, prerogative power (the legal suspension of the law). Thus, even as national borders have become more open (both with economic globalization and post-Clausewitzean forms of war), state sovereignty has not necessarily declined. In fact, the use of prerogative power increasingly characterizes late-modern power even as neoliberal rhetoric gives the opposite impression.

Citizenship Under Fire: Democratic Education in Times of Conflict. By Sigal R. Ben-Porath. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006. 174p. $32.95.

In this volume, Sigal R. Ben-Porath brings several important and useful perspectives to bear on civic education. Her observations are prompted by the special situation created by the U.S. war on terrorism, as well as the unique perspective she is able to offer due to her Israeli background. Both the American and Middle East conflicts are open-ended and often muddled, so that, as Ben-Porath credibly notes, her unique experience with both situations lends her an advantage as she draws lessons for education for citizenship in the modern age. Citizenship Under Fire, then, offers a fresh approach to the all-important question of education for democracy.

Stathis N. Kalyvas on The U.S. Army/Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Field Manual. By the U.S. Army and Marine Corps. Forward by David H. Petraeus, James F. Amos, and John A. Nagl. Introduction by Sarah Sewall. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007. 472p. $15.00.

The Myth of the Rational Voter: Why Democracies Choose Bad Policies. By Bryan Caplan. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007. 280p. $29.95.

Bryan Caplan's book could only have been written by an economist. This has a good side and a bad side. On the good side, Caplan makes an important contribution to the public-opinion literature by analyzing the American people's economic views—an area overlooked by most previous researchers. And he asks a crucial question: Are the public's economic views wrong?

In her book, Anna Marie Smith meticulously analyzes the racial and gendered dimensions of the U.S. welfare state and the ways in which it punishes the unmarried and imposes hetero-normative standards on all types of poor families. Smith's aim is to “expand the disciplinary limits of feminist political theory” (p. 6) by drawing on case law, public policy, and social theory. She exposes highly undemocratic practices directed at poor women and men, as well as what amounts to a eugenic project seeking to limit poor people's reproduction. Significantly, individuals of color are targeted by the state for eugenic control and moral policing. In particular, Smith points out how welfare reform and the implementation of “paternafare”—a program that forces poor women to identify biological fathers so that the state can pursue these “deadbeat dads”—do not help the one group who even conservatives agree are “innocent”—children. Very rarely are any party's circumstances elevated by this system, and most often “payers” are forced into deeper poverty. Furthermore, the state's hetero-normative stance marginalizes lesbians, gays, bisexuals, and transgendered individuals (LGBTs) in a legal system in which their rights are already deeply compromised.

Wendy Brown on The U.S. Army/Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Field Manual. By the U.S. Army and Marine Corps. Forward by David H. Petraeus, James F. Amos, and John A. Nagl. Introduction by Sarah Sewall. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007. 472p. $15.00.