How Congress Evolves: Social Bases of Institutional Change. By Nelson W. Polsby. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004. 257p. $29.95.

A new work on Congress by one of the most prominent scholars of American government in the past half century is a major event. In this book, Nelson Polsby revisits the U.S. House, a subject on which he authored two major articles in the late 1960s (“The Institutionalization of the U.S. House of Representatives,” American Political Science Review 62 [March 1968]: 144–68; and Nelson W. Polsby, Miriam Gallaher, and Barry S. Rundquist, “The Growth of the Seniority System in the U.S. House of Representatives,” American Political Science Review 63 [September 1969]: 707–807). Observing the contemporary House in this volume, Polsby finds a chamber transformed. The “permanent” Democratic majority has been broken, the “solidly” Democratic South now sends a Republican majority to the House, committee chairs are subordinate to the party leadership, and levels of party voting are at their highest since the 1890s.

The Presidency and Women: Promise, Performance and Illusion.

The Politics of Quasi-Government: Hybrid Organizations and the Dynamics of Bureaucratic Control. By Jonathan G. S. Koppell. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003. 239p. $60.00.

Do policymakers surrender popular sovereignty by granting public authority to semiprivate institutions? Jonathan Koppell compares hybrid organizations and government agencies in three policy areas—housing, export promotion, and international market development—and concludes that although hybrid organizations are more difficult to control, they are not inimical to democracy.

Straddling the Border: Immigration Policy and the INS. By Lisa Magaña. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2003. 132p. $37.50 cloth, $16.95 paper.

In this book, Lisa Magaña provides a concise and thoughtful analysis of the immigration policy process from inside the bureaucratic agency formerly responsible for its implementation, the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS). Using a combination of interviews with high- and low-level INS representatives and immigration advocates, government policy evaluations, immigrant surveys, and intensive field study, Magaña shows the disconnect that often exists between congressional immigration mandates and their actual implementation in INS district offices.

Economics, Bureaucracy, and Race: How Keynesians Misguided the War on Poverty. By Judith Russell. New York: Columbia University Press, 2004. 244p. $62.50 cloth, $24.50 paper.

The question Judith Russell asks in her book is why the War on Poverty did not include an assault on adult unemployment. The Economic Opportunity Act (EOA) of 1964, the centerpiece of the War, chiefly provided service and education programs for children and youth. Russell believes that only “jobs programs” for adults could have cured poverty. With them, the emerging problem of black joblessness might have been forestalled. Without them, she asserts, the War failed, leading to a conservative era where poverty persists.

Managing National Security Policy: The President and the Process.

Gay Rights and American Law.

Confronting Right-Wing Extremism and Terrorism in the USA. By George Michael. New York: Routledge, 2003. 256p. $104.95.

“Right-wing extremist” is a label that covers a lot of territory (radical Second Amendmentists, antitax and antigovernment extremists, radical Christians, in addition to a variety of white supremacist groups: Ku Klux Klan, neo-Nazi, skinhead), but it is a term that perhaps became unavoidable, at least as a practical matter, after Timothy McVeigh bombed a federal government building in Oklahoma City in 1995, killing 168. This is a book written in the post–Oklahoma City period and is not primarily informed by post-9/11 concerns. It is largely descriptive and historical. Although it does make use of interest-group theory at points, this work is not organized around any specific social scientific theory-building agenda. George Michael provides a detailed survey of right-wing extremist groups and their activities (to include terrorism), as well as an account of the efforts of both the government and a wide array of private interest groups to resist and undermine their efforts. Perhaps most notable and interesting are 20 interviews Michael conducted with actors on all sides of this struggle (including William Pierce, chairman of the neo-Nazi National Alliance, and author of the novel The Turner Diaries, which served as a blueprint for McVeigh).

Pathways to Prohibition: Radicals, Moderates, and Social Movement Outcomes. By Ann-Marie E. Szymanski. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2003. 344p. $89.95 cloth, $24.95 paper.

In this book, Ann-Marie Szymanski achieves what may have been an unintended goal: She demonstrates that the success of a social movement that seeks transformative public policy depends on both the development of flexible, highly adaptative strategies for local reforms and the emergence of opportune conditions for the consolidation of local successes into national—in this case, constitutional—reform. Her study of Prohibition politics and organizational strategies crafted over time brings together insights from new institutionalists who explain how the unique interests of governmental agencies and “states” shape policy outcomes, as well as from political scientists whose studies on the relationships between ideologies, political strategies, and small group dynamics have generated varied pressures for policy reform. If the social movement theorists pay attention to this study, they will enlarge their perspectives, build more sophisticated models, do more comprehensive research, and explain more fully and accurately how social movements actually generate successful political reforms.

Taking Sustainability Seriously: Economic Development, the Environment, and Quality of Life in American Cities.

Talking about Politics: Informal Groups and Social Identity in American Life. By Katherine Cramer Walsh. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003. 264p. $57.00 cloth, $19.00 paper.

Casual conversations that take place among groups of acquaintances can have significant implications for political identity formation. The core thesis of this impressive study by Katherine Cramer Walsh maintains that small groups work collectively to create social contexts that influence members' understanding of politics. Individuals develop perspective through their identification and experiences with a group. She argues that people's ability to engage in “oppositional processing” by juxtaposing their own social position to that of others shapes their political outlook. Race, not political ideology, is the most salient influence on political judgment.

Chasing the Wind: Regulating Air Pollution in the Common Law State. By Noga Morag-Levine. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003. 264p. $35.00.

This book covers an impressive array of topics: the contrasting styles of air pollution regulation in the United States and Europe; the English common law of “noxious vapours” from 1611 to 1900; the origin of the highly effective British Alkali Inspectorate; the development of the common law of nuisance in Pennsylvania from 1869 to 1970; American regulation of “smoke” and “odors” over the past century; and a detailed examination of contemporary regulation of odor at foundries in four American cities. The author is to be commended for the extensive research packed into nine dense chapters.

The Two Majorities and the Puzzle of Modern American Politics.

White Nationalism, Black Interests: Conservative Public Policy and the Black Community. By Ronald W. Walters. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2003. 360p. $49.95 cloth, $26.95 paper.

Ronald W. Walters dislikes the direction that race relations have taken in the present-day United States. In his book, he portrays race relations as a war between the radical conservative wing of the Republican Party and blacks. It goes without saying which group has been losing. It is a story told quite starkly with few nuances or nagging caveats—as the title suggests. The reader feels immediately the depth of Walters's anguish, and the strength of his argument builds as he lays out example after example.

Unfair Housing: How National Policy Shapes Community Action. By Mara S. Sidney. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2003. 200p. $35.00 cloth, $16.95 paper.

In this well-written book, Mara Sidney skillfully utilizes the “policy design” approach developed by Anne Schneider and Helen Ingram (Policy Design for Democracy, 1997) to elucidate the relationship between national policy decisions and local political struggles surrounding the implementation of the Fair Housing Act of 1968 and the Community Reinvestment Act of 1977. The 1968 Act made housing discrimination against individuals because of race, creed, color, and national origin illegal. The 1977 Act was aimed at preventing credit discrimination (redlining) against geographical areas within cities. Sidney argues that the type of local groups that emerge to influence enforcement, and the strategies they utilize, are shaped by the resources built into the legislation's policy design, as well as by local political conditions. Case studies of two cities—Minneapolis and Denver—illustrate the impact of policy design in different local circumstances.