Douglas A. Ollivant 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.

Let me begin by thanking Kathleen R. Arnold for her comments and Jeffrey Isaac for the invitation to participate in this exchange. Clearly, Kathleen and I are both indebted to the Marxist and Foucauldian traditions. For my part, however, I find the Gramscian insistence on the historically specific, complex, and contradictory character of every historical bloc and hegemonic institution more compelling than the social theories that envision the social structure as a closed totality (Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri) or construct state power in an ahistorical and one-dimensional manner (Giorgio Agamben). Contemporary welfare reform, for example, resembles the racially exclusionary “substitute father” rule of Aid to Families with Dependent Children. But welfare reform, with its workfare requirement, child support enforcement, family cap, fatherhood programming, abstinence education, and marriage promotion dimensions, is also somewhat unique. The Gramscian paradigm encourages us to be skeptical when it appears as if the state in a late-modern developed society is becoming either a simple instrument of capital that is obediently shrinking into irrelevance, or an omnipotent machine whose seamless coherence and unbroken continuity leaves democratic forces absolutely no strategic opportunity for constructing a counterhegemonic bloc and fighting back.

Cooperation Without Trust? By Karen S. Cook, Russell Hardin, and Margaret Levi. New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2005. 256p. $32.50.

Rationality and the Ideology of Disconnection. By Michael Taylor. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006. 238p. $75.00 cloth, $26.99 paper.

The two books under review differ sharply on the fruitfulness of rational choice theory. Karen Cook, Russell Hardin, and Margaret Levi posit that even trust is best understood as a product of rational, materialist calculations. On their “encapsulated interest” view, trust “exists when one party to [a] relation believes the other party has incentive to act in his or her interest or to take his or her interests to heart” (p. 2). But can incentives truly whisper to the heart? Michael Taylor decries the baleful consequences, both intellectual and practical, that stem from assimilating all reasoned decision making to the numerical weighing of material incentives and ignoring the role of heartfelt personal and moral commitments.

Punishment and Political Order. By Keally McBride. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2007. 194p. $55.00 cloth, $19.95 paper.

What part does punishment play in the constitution of political order, and under what circumstances does punishment reinforce or undermine that order? In recent decades, suggests Keally McBride, this question has too often been ceded by students of political science to sociologists, legal scholars, and criminologists. In this discerning collection of essays, McBride seeks to reclaim this turf by asking, first, how certain pathbreaking texts have responded to the dilemmas generated when political orders, real or imagined, inflict suffering in response to misdeeds and, second, how we might make, specifically, political sense of controversies engendered by contemporary practices of punishment, especially but not exclusively in the United States.

In his book, Corey Brettschneider defends a “substantive” conception of democracy—a “value theory of democracy”—against purely procedural accounts of democracy. Whereas “proceduralists” seek to define democracy strictly through reference to the (majoritarian) means by which decisions are rendered, Brettschneider fears that this leaves democracy rootless, at risk of producing undemocratic outcomes. His effort at solving the problem of “democratic autophagy”—the argument that democracy will consume itself through its own procedures, as I term it in Democracy and Legal Change—is twofold. First, he specifies the values that democratic rights should reflect and preserve. Second, he argues that even nonmajoritarian institutions, such as judicial review, act in a democratic fashion insofar as they help us to ensure that our laws actually do cohere with these values. The former effort is remarkably successful. In my view, however, the latter claim is less persuasive, partially because of the difficulty inherent in translating abstract substantive commitments into law.

Melissa Schwartzberg intelligently raises the important question of how we might move from the ideal of the value theory democracy, to which she is sympathetic, to its institutionalization. I share the concern she voices about the extent to which democratic contractualism can be directly applied in democratic institutions, but I differ with the conclusion she draws in response to this concern.

Constitutional Democracy: Creating and Maintaining a Just Political Order. By Walter F. Murphy. Baltimore: The John Hopkins University Press, 2006. 568p. $55.00.

This fine book brings to bear Walter Murphy's manifold gifts: breadth of knowledge about political systems around the world and throughout history, keen critical learning about ancient and modern political thought, deep understanding of constitutional law, and a clear and clever style. It is thus a perfect place for relative novices to get an overview of the search for the best possible political system for sustaining Murphy's highest value, “respect for the great and equal dignity of all human beings” (p. 341). “Constitutional democracy” is for him this best possible system. At the same time, graduate students preparing for field exams in political or constitutional theory can find in Murphy's references and footnotes an excellent bibliography for their studies.

Multiculturalism Without Culture. By Anne Phillips. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007. 216p. $29.95.

Justice, Gender, and the Politics of Multiculturalism. By Sarah Song. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007. 212p. $85.00 cloth, $29.99 paper.

These latest contributions to the multiculturalism literature have much to recommend them, and—in light of their many affinities—they are particularly rewarding to read as a pair. Both Sarah Song and Anne Phillips start with the same preoccupation, namely, the apparent tension between the importance of respecting cultural diversity on the one hand, and the feminist project of achieving gender equality, on the other. Both are absolutely committed to the latter, of course, but both are also concerned that the feminist backlash against multiculturalism—posed most forcefully and famously by Susan Moller Okin—might have been carried too far. Accordingly, both aim to recover and reconstruct what is worthwhile from the multiculturalism program in a manner that can be reconciled with a commitment to gender equality.

This book provocatively inquires into whether some aspects of law should be regarded as beyond the purview of democratic procedures. On Melissa Schwartzberg's account, “entrenchment,”—her term for those aspects of law thought not to be susceptible to revision by democratic majorities or to constitutional amendment by supramajoritarian procedures—damages democracy, despite its prevalence in modern history. She argues that entrenchment risks sedimenting law and deadening active democratic participation because it places crucial issues beyond debate. In resisting entrenchment, she aligns herself with Jürgen Habermas's project of invigorating democratic constitutionalism as a “living project.”

Thanks to Corey Brettschneider for his generous and perceptively critical review of my work and to Jeff Isaac for inviting us to discuss these issues.

The Demands of Liberty: Civil Society in France Since the Revolution. By Pierre Rosanvallon. Translated by Arthur Goldhammer. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007. 368p. $35.00.

Pierre Rosanvallon thinks about democracy in historical terms, and his investigations of French political experience since the revolution of 1789 hold lessons for democratic thought and practice outside his native country. His latest book to be translated into English adds to a growing reception of his rewarding thought. Though a jazzed-up retitling of the more homely original (literally translated as The French Political Model), this work describes both the strictures placed upon democracy by the French tradition of political centralization and the demands made upon the French state in the name of the free, solidaristic, and mediatory field of civil society.