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.

Judging Inequality: State Supreme Courts and the Inequality Crisis
James L. Gibson and MICHAEL J. NELSON examine the role of state high courts in producing, maintaining, or ameliorating political, legal, economic, and social inequality over the period from 1990 to 2015.

Legal Claims and Compensation in Climate-Related Disasters
Susan M. Sterett and Laura K. Mateczun argue that courts are significant in governance in climate-related disasters. Complaints about the immediate harm from fires and floods expand the range of climate-related litigation beyond landmark environmental pursuits concerning greenhouse gas emissions. They do not argue that these cases solve the problems, but that the broadened scope of cases expands the actors, timeline, and institutions identified as contributing to problems with climate-related disasters..

Thinking about Groups in Political Science: A Case for Bringing the Meso Level Back In
LOUBNA EL AMINE and KEVIN MAZUR discuss the study of groups in comparative politics and political theory. They argue for focusing on the meso-level, which comprises families, neighborhoods, and localities, and which shows groups to be neither bounded and fixed nor ever-changing and completely malleable.

The President and the Supreme Court: The Effect of the Prospect of Non-Implementation on Government Success in the Court
GORDON D. BALLINGRUD examines judicial decision-making under conditions of political pressure given through ideological hostility from other federal institutions. He finds that in case outcomes and majority opinion writing, the Court’s behavior changes when other institutions are ideologically distant from the Court’s center.

Review Essay: Pity the Poor Autocrat: Vladimir Putin, Russia's “Weak Strongman”
KATHRYN STONER assesses Timothy Frye’s Weak Strongman: The Limits of Power in Putin’s Russia within the context of an emergent comparative political science literature on rising authoritarianism and democratic recession.

Review Essay: Making America Great Again? Individualism, Community, and Enlightened Self-Interest in the United States
Michael X. Delli Carpini reviews Robert Putnam’s The Upswing. He finds Putnam’s argument—that American democracy requires a balance between individualism and communitarianism—and his evidence that this balance produced positive effects through the first 60 years of the twentieth century, insightful and convincing, but raises concerns that this “data driven narrative” silos issues of race and gender, overstates the negative consequences of the political and cultural movements of the 1960s, and downplays the importance of political struggle and power in both the “upswings” and the downswings” that Putnam documents. 

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

After Repression: How Polarization Derails Democratic Transition, Elizabeth R. Nugent
Reviewed by Gary A. Stradiotto

Ideology and International Institutions, Erik Voeten
Reviewed by Stephen C. Nelson

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

The Political Economy of Development: A Game Theoretic Approach, Robert H. Bates
Reviewed by Cesar Martinelli

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

Women as War Criminals: Gender, Agency, and Justice, Izabela Steflja and Jessica Trisko Darden
Reviewed by Shirley Graham

Advising Governments in the Westminster Tradition: Policy Advisory Systems in Australia, Britain, Canada and New Zealand, John Halligan and Jonathan Craft
Reviewed by Andrea Migone

Governing through Expertise: The Politics of Bioethics, Annabelle Littoz-Monnet
Reviewed by Benjamin Gregg

It's Not Personal: Politics and Policy in Lower Court Confirmation Hearings, Eve. M. Ringsmuth, Logan Dancey and Kjersten R. Nelson
Reviewed by Benjamin Kassow

Hidden Liberalism: Burdened Visions of Progress in Modern Iran, Hussein Banai
Reviewed by R. R. Asaadi

Political Economies of Energy Transition: Wind and Solar Power in Brazil and South Africa, Kathryn Hochstetler
Reviewed by Michaël Aklin

Clash of Powers: US-China Rivalry in Global Trade Governance, Kristen Hopewell
Reviewed by Dimitar D. Gueorguiev

Courts at War: Executive Power, Judicial Intervention, and Enemy Combatant Policies since 9/11, Gregory Burnep
Reviewed by James J.F. Forest

Managing Transition: The First Post-Uprising Phase in Tunisia and Libya, Sabina Henneberg
Reviewed by Nate Grubman

A Constitution for the Living: Imagining How Five Generations of Americans Would Rewrite the Nation's Fundamental Law, Beau Breslin
Reviewed by Alin Fumurescu

Europe's Migration Crisis: Border Deaths and Human Dignity, Vicki Squire
Reviewed by Rebecca Hamlin

Judicial Selection in the States, Herbert M. Kritzer
Reviewed by Hayley Munir

Decadent Developmentalism: The Political Economy of Democratic Brazil, Matthew M. Taylor
Reviewed by Guillermo Toral

Assault on Democracy: Communism, Fascism, and Authoritarianism during the Interwar Years, Kurt Weyland
Reviewed by Jeffrey Kopstein

Global Jihad: A Brief History, Glenn E. Robinson
Reviewed by Deina Abdelkader

Other People's Wars: The U.S. Military and the Challenge of Learning from Foreign Conflicts, Brent L. Sterling
Reviewed by Michael J. Butler

Women's Empowerment and Disempowerment in Brazil: The Rise and Fall of President Dilma Rousseff, Pedro A. G. dos Santos and Farida Jalalzai
Reviewed by Lorraine Bayard De Volo

The Comparative Politics of Immigration: Policy Choices in Germany, Canada, Switzerland, and the United States, Antje Ellermann
Reviewed by Ariane Chebel D'Appollonia

Congress in Reverse: Repeals from Reconstruction to the Present, Jordan M. Ragusa and Nathaniel A. Birkhead
Reviewed by Ruth Bloch Rubin

Presidential Elections in Iran: Islamic Idealism since the Revolution, Mahmoud Pargoo and Shahram Akbarzadeh
Reviewed by Eric Lob

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

Inward Conquest: The Political Origins of Modern Public Services, Ben W. Ansell and Johannes Lindvall
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