Multiparty Democracy: Elections and Legislative Politics. By Norman Schofield and Itai Sened. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006. 248p. $70.00 cloth, $24.99 paper.

The elegant median voter result of the Downsian model of electoral competition—which suggests that in order to maximize votes, parties move towards the ideological center—does not entirely translate into multiparty systems. To begin with, as Charles Plott (“A Notion of Equilibrium and Its Possibility under Majority Rule,” American Economic Review 57 [no. 4, 1967]: 787–806) shows, an equilibrium generally does not exist in multidimensional spaces. Moreover, Gary Cox (“Centripetal and Centrifugal Incentives in Electoral Systems,” American Journal of Political Science 34 [no. 4, 1987]: 903–35) demonstrates that if an equilibrium does exist in multicandidate contests, then they must be noncentrist. But multiparty politics are even more complex, as one must consider which coalition will govern following the election and what policy it will implement. These considerations may in turn affect the voters' strategies and the parties' choice of platforms.

From the Corn Laws to Free Trade: Interests, Ideas, and Institutions in Historical Perspective. By Cheryl Schonhardt-Bailey. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2006. 440p. $47.50.

In this work, Cheryl Schonhardt-Bailey presents the culmination of her more than two decades–long study of the politics of the 1846 repeal of Britain's Corn Laws. Conceiving changes in the “three Is”—interests, ideas, and institutions—as the three central components of an explanation of this policy change, she presents a series of chapter-length studies focused on each of these elements. She further divides the chapters into “demand” and “supply” sections—with the former tending to emphasize the role of shifting interests, and the latter primarily devoted to discussions of ideology as revealed by parliamentary speeches. Like many who have preceded her, Schonhardt-Bailey studies very closely the proceedings in the House of Commons, but she breaks new ground by also studying the approval of repeal in the House of Lords. (That the latter chamber, dominated in 1846 by the landed aristocracy, would nonetheless not block repeal is even more remarkable than Prime Minister Robert Peel's success in the House of Commons.) She also examines the relationship between the discussion of repeal in local newspapers and the floor votes of members of Parliament (MPs)—a particularly apposite topic given the close relationship between these newspapers and the political parties of the day, and the lack at that time of any national news media.

The European Union Decides. Edited by Robert Thomson, Frans N. Stokman, Christopher H. Achen and Thomas König. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006. 394p. $110.00 cloth, $39.99 paper.

As a new and rapidly evolving polity, with clear formalized rules and a great deal of publicly available data, the European Union presents a fascinating object of study for political scientists. Until recently, it was often treated as sui generis, the preserve of dedicated Euro-watchers. Most attention was focused on grand events—treaties, judicial cases, and individual cases of specific interest. But increasingly, the general tools of political science are being brought to bear on the EU and its activities, including humdrum ones.

America's Kingdom: Mythmaking on the Saudi Oil Frontier. By Robert Vitalis. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2005. 392p. $29.95.

Though formally a work of comparative politics, Robert Vitalis's book occupies the small niche of interesting if impressionistic social science works that includes Mike Davis's City of Quartz (1990) and James Scott's Seeing Like a State (1998). Insights abound, but this book is not designed to test a corpus of theory. The focus is Aramco's operations in Saudi Arabia, from their inception to the mid-1960s. Using corporate source documents in Saudi archives, Vitalis has created a window into the structural racism that pervaded Aramco's operations in Saudi Arabia in its early years.

Structuring the State: The Formation of Italy and Germany and the Puzzle of Federalism. By Daniel Ziblatt. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006. 288p. $42.00.

Federal “solutions” are bandied about by armchair constitutional designers, their purported benefits for Iraq or elsewhere debated on talk shows and in academic conferences. At times, the support for federalism seems based on its apparent middling position between unitary government and partition; it is a compromise. But is federalism feasible? Federation is not easy to pull off, and Daniel Ziblatt's book, written about two cases of state formation in the mid-nineteenth century, should be read by all who advocate federalism in transitioning states today because it provides us with a careful analysis of the potential for fractured states to embrace federal unification.