Volume 123 · Number 1 · Spring 2008

JASON BELLO and ROBERT Y. SHAPIRO argue that the extended campaign needed to determine the 2008 presidential candidates for the Democratic Party was not surprising, given the current delegate selection rules across the states. The 2008 campaign is a test case for whether the national party conventions themselves, not the voters, will ever again be the final deciders of the presidential candidates.

JONATHAN RYNHOLD and DOV WAXMAN posit that ideological change within the right-wing Likud party generated support for the partition of Israel that was a vital prerequisite to the Sharon government’s adoption of the Gaza disengagement plan in 2005. Although international and domestic pressures were important in determining certain elements of the withdrawal, they did not dictate the policy of disengagement.

THEODORE P. GERBER and SARAH E. MENDELSON analyze Russian public opinion about the second war in Chechnya. They show that concern over Russian military casualties and the war’s economic costs were the dominant sentiments, despite the Russian government’s monopoly on media coverage of the conflict. Moreover, they argue that the war appears to have fueled ethnic animosity toward Chechens.

DONALD R. BRAND examines the relationship between the Brownlow Report and James Landis’s The Administrative Process. He argues that both of the interlocutors in this implicit debate have valuable insights, but that both are ultimately insufficient because they are not attentive to the constitutional and political context of administration.

STAFFAN I. LINDBERG and MINION K. C. MORRISON look at voting rationales in Ghana’s 1996 and 2000 elections and find that citizens in a new democracy like Ghana are more ‘‘mature’’ democratic voters than the literature would have us to expect. While voting is no doubt patterned along ethnic and tribal lines, it appears that voting behavior is also explained at the individual level by rational policy calculations constrained by classic information problems.

ZIYA ÖNIS and SUHNAZ YILMAZ discuss the nature of the current Turkish–Greek rapprochement. They conclude that while the relations have improved, in order to reach a durable partnership and to move beyond the existing stalemate, a more proactive approach from both sides on core issues of conflict is necessary.

DOUGLAS LITTLE reviews John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt’s controversial new book, The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy. He concludes that despite their prosecutorial tone, the authors have sparked a long-overdue public debate about America’s special relationship by questioning whether domestic politics drives the United States to act against its own national security interests.

Book reviews

Reviewed by James J. Wirtz

Reviewed by Mohammed M. Hafez

Reviewed by Robert J. Lieber

Reviewed by Yael S. Aronoff

Reviewed by Alan Wolfe

Reviewed by Andrew Gelman

Reviewed by Herbert Sloan

Reviewed by Doris A. Graber

Reviewed by Amitai Etzioni

Reviewed by Norman Furniss

Reviewed by Paul Chen

Reviewed by Gary C. Bryner

Reviewed by James Goldgeier

Reviewed by Brian D'Agostino

Reviewed by Dimitris Keridis

Reviewed by Thomas Healy

Reviewed by Claire Jean Kim

Reviewed by Jody Agius Vallejo and Jennifer Lee

Reviewed by Thad Kousser

Reviewed by Brenda G. McGowan

Reviewed by Michael Musheno

Reviewed by Eric Oliver

Reviewed by Jeremy C. Pope

Reviewed by Jeffrey M. Sanders

Reviewed by Elaine B. Sharp

Reviewed by Mark M. Smith

Reviewed by Stephen Steinberg

Reviewed by Mary Summers

Reviewed by Vivien A. Schmidt

Reviewed by Dorothee Heisenberg