Volume - Number -

Barbara Walter’s Script for Civil War in America: A Review Essay
Jack Snyder reviews Barbara Walter's How Civil Wars Start and How to Stop Them.  Walter argues that modern civil wars take the form of guerrilla warfare and organized terrorism.  They are started mainly by declining ethnic groups in polarized partial democracies. Her contention that the contemporary United States is heading in this direction has a surface plausibility, but requires strong qualifications.

Negotiating Unilateralism in the Executive Branch: A Review Essay
DIANE HEITH reviews By Executive Order: Bureaucratic Management and the Limits of Presidential Power by Andrew Rudalevige. She finds that Rudalevige’s exhaustive dive into newly discovered archival documents presents opportunities for revisioning executive order formation, from its traditional top-down formulation. However, she questions the time bound nature of the conclusions drawn for influencing unilateral behavior in a polarized environment. 

Can Social Movements Save American Democracy? A Review Essay
Robert C. Lieberman examines the contrasting roles of political parties and social movements in both supporting and undermining American democracy. He suggests that parties and movements are more complementary that is typically understood and that both might be necessary to confront the contemporary crisis of democracy in the United States.

Volume 137 - Number 3 - Fall 2022

Assessing Futures Intelligence: Looking Back on Global Trends 2025
James J. Wirtz and ROGER Z. GEORGE offer an assessment of the forecasts contained in Global Trends 2025: A Transformed World, an unclassified report produced by the National Intelligence Council. They identify several analytical biases that shaped this effort at futures intelligence and one critical factor that is not adequately considered in U.S. futures estimates in general and Global Trends 2025 in particular.

Changing Their Minds? Donald Trump and Presidential Leadership, George C. Edwards III
Reviewed by Douglas L. Kriner

Where Great Powers Meet: America and China in Southeast Asia, David Shambaugh
Reviewed by Bonny Lin

Fighting the First Wave: Why the Coronavirus Was Tackled So Differently across the Globe, Peter Baldwin
Reviewed by Scott Greer

Volume 137 - Number 2 - Summer 2022

State Building in Crisis Governance: Donald Trump and COVID-19
NICHOLAS F. JACOBS, DESMOND KING, and Sidney M. Milkis look at the final year of the Donald Trump presidency, and the administration’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic. They argue that Trump’s actions fit a rationale, partisan strategy endemic to executive-centered partisanship. Consequently, Trump and the Republican Party failed to suffer the repudiation that punished previous presidents when adjudged failed crisis leaders.

Thucydides's Trap? Historical Interpretation, Logic of Inquiry, and the Future of Sino-American Relations, Steve Chan
Reviewed by Andrew Scobell

Creating the Desired Citizen: Ideology, State and Islam in Turkey, Ihsan Yilmaz
Reviewed by Ahmet T. Kuru

Averting Catastrophe: Decision Theory for COVID-19, Climate Change, and Potential Disasters of All Kinds, Cass R. Sunstein
Reviewed by Timothy W. Kneeland

Ukraine's Nuclear Disarmament: A History, Yuri Kostenko
Reviewed by Bennett Ramberg

The Muslim Brotherhood in Jordan, Joas Wagemakers
Reviewed by Sean Yom

Inward Conquest: The Political Origins of Modern Public Services, Ben W. Ansell
Reviewed by Ahmed Shafiqul Huque

Toxic Politics: China's Environmental Health Crisis and its Challenge to the Chinese State, Yanzhong Huang
Reviewed by Yifei Li

Volume 137 - Number 1 - Spring 2022

How Populism Dies: Political Weaknesses of Personalistic Plebiscitarian Leadership
Kurt Weyland examines the weaknesses of populist leadership. He argues that populist leaders are prone to errors and misdeeds, have difficulty dealing with other political forces, and face institutional and external constraints. Consequently, he concludes, they damage and suffocate democracy not as easily and frequently as recent observers have feared.

How Can Presidents and the Executive Branch Preserve and Protect American Democracy? A Review Essay
Meena Bose reviews Phantoms of a Beleaguered Republic: The  Deep State and the Unitary Executive by Stephen Skowronek, John A. Dearborn, and Desmond King. She finds that their study of the “dueling concepts,” or “phantoms,” of the “deep state” and “unitary executive” in American politics presents a trenchant assessment of the challenges of presidential governance today. She questions whether their recommendations for stronger party leadership and more collaborative decision making will address the problems that are so thoughtfully presented in this profound analysis of the American political system.  

The Autocratic Middle Class: How State Dependency Reduces the Demand for Democracy, Bryn Rosenfeld
Reviewed by Natalie Wenzell Letsa

Elections, Protest, and Authoritarian Regime Stability: Russia 2008–2020, Regina Smyth
Reviewed by Graeme Robertson

The Real Psychology of the Trump Presidency, Stanley Renshon
Reviewed by William G. Mayer

Volume 136 - Number 4 - Winter 2021-22

The Geopolitical Consequences of COVID-19: Assessing Hawkish Mass Opinion in China
Joshua Byun, D.G. Kim, and Sichen Li examine the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the Chinese public’s foreign policy attitudes. Drawing on original surveys fielded in China during the first six months of the global pandemic, they find that ordinary Chinese citizens are optimistic about China’s future global position, and that this optimism corresponds with the widespread perception that the COVID-19 pandemic is accelerating China’s rise relative to the United States.

How to Cure the Ills of Contemporary American Democracy? A Review Essay
Morris Fiorina reviews Lee Drutman’s book, Breaking the Two Party Doom Loop: The Case for Multiparty Democracy. While he agrees with much of Drutman’s diagnosis of what has gone wrong with American politics, Fiorina is skeptical that the reforms proposed in Drutman’s Save American Democracy Act could be adopted, and would have as positive an impact as Drutman believes in the unlikely event that they are adopted.

His Very Best: Jimmy Carter, a Life, Jonathan Alter
Reviewed by Thomas J. Balcerski

Immigration and the American Ethos, Morris Levy
Reviewed by Viviana Rivera-Burgos

Hope and Scorn: Eggheads, Experts, and Elites in American Politics, Michael J. Brown
Reviewed by Angus Burgin