Why Intelligence and Policymakers Clash
Robert Jervis argues that friction between intelligence agencies and policymakers is an inevitable product of their conflicting missions and needs. Policymakers need political and psychological support, while intelligence generally raises doubts, points to problems, and notes uncertainties. Relations do not have to be as strained as they were under President George W. Bush, but they will always be difficult.

The Primary Purpose of Presidential Primaries
Dennis F. Thompson analyzes the capacity of presidential primaries to provide a test of the constitutional character of candidates. He argues that the primary process should be judged to be more or less democratic on the basis of the effective opportunities it gives voters to assess the democratic commitments of the candidates.

Creating Better Heuristics for the Presidential Primary: The Citizen Assembly
Heather K. Gerken and Douglas B. Rand propose creating citizen assemblies to vet presidential hopefuls in order to give low-information voters a useful heuristic for casting their votes. Their conceptual claim is that citizen assemblies should be of interest to the vast swaths of political science preoccupied with making representative democracy work. By shearing away the deliberative baggage that has long accompanied proposals like this one, the authors highlight the role that citizen assemblies can play in helping low-information voters make sensible choices.

Lilliputian in Fluid Times: New Zealand Foreign Policy after the Cold War
Paul G. Buchanan looks at the evolution of New Zealand's foreign policy after the Cold War. He argues that New Zealand's ability to “punch above its weight” in contemporary international affairs was as much a product of fortuna as it was of policymaking virtu. It was only toward the end of the 1990s that a heterodox approach mixing realist, idealist, and constructivist ideas was confirmed as the basis for New Zealand's engagement with the world.

Friends Don't Let Friends Proliferate
Scott Helfstein examines the efficacy of economic sanctions as a tool to counter nuclear proliferation. He argues that contrary to conventional wisdom, international cooperation is not a key determinant in sanction success. Instead, empirical evidence shows that sanctions have been effective at altering nuclear policies only when the sanction sender and target have had friendly relations.

Rise of the Red Engineers: The Cultural Revolution and the Origins of China's New Class, Joel Andreas
Reviewed by Thomas P. Bernstein

The Discretionary President: The Promise and Peril of Executive Power, Benjamin Kleinerman
Reviewed by Louis Fisher

Custodians of Place: Governing the Growth and Development of Cities, Max Neiman and Paul G. Lewis
Reviewed by Wilbur Rich

Enemies of Intelligence: Knowledge and Power in American National Security, Richard K. Betts
Reviewed by James Igoe Walsh

The Politics of Income Inequality in the United States, Nathan Kelly
Reviewed by Ruy Teixeira

The Rise and Fall of Communism, Archie Brown
Reviewed by Yoshiko M. Herrera

Theodore Roosevelt, the Progressive Party, and the Transformation of American Democracy, Sidney Milkis
Reviewed by Ann-Marie Szymanski

God and the Founders: Madison, Washington, and Jefferson, Vincent Phillip Munoz
Reviewed by Ellis M. West

Authoritarianism and Polarization in American Politics, Marc J. Hetherington and Jonathan D. Weiler
Reviewed by Paul R. Abramson

The Social Construction of Russia's Resurgence: Aspirations, Identity, and Security Interests, Anne L. Clunan
Reviewed by Rawi Abdelal

Intelligence for an Age of Terror, Gregory F. Treverton
Reviewed by Mark Phythian

The Presidential Pardon Power, Jeffrey Crouch
Reviewed by Jody C. Baumgartner

The Snake Dance of Asian American Activism: Community, Vision, and Power, Michael Liu, Kim Geron and Tracy Lai
Reviewed by Wendy K. Tam Cho

Law's Allure: How Law Shapes, Constrains, Saves, and Kills Politics, Gordon Silverstein
Reviewed by Michael Gerhardt

Lobbying and Policy Change: Who Wins, Who Loses, and Why, Jeffrey M. Berry, Frank R. Baumgartner, Beth L. Leech, David C. Kimball and Marie Hojnacki
Reviewed by Susan Webb Yackee

Frederick Douglass: Race and the Rebirth of American Liberalism, Peter C. Myers
Reviewed by Larry E. Hudson.

Racial Justice in the Age of Obama, Roy L. Brooks
Reviewed by Andrew Valls

Barack Obama’s America: How New Conceptions of Race, Family, and Religion Ended the Reagan Era, John Kenneth White
Reviewed by Evelyn M. Simien

Party Discipline and Parliamentary Politics, Christopher Kam
Reviewed by Christine De Clercy

Who Counts as an American? The Boundaries of National Identity, Elizabeth Theiss-Morse
Reviewed by Ronald Schmidt

Selling Welfare Reform: Work-First and the New Common Sense of Employment, Frank Ridzi
Reviewed by Rodd Freitag

The Way We Vote: The Local Dimension of American Suffrage, Alec C. Ewald
Reviewed by Mary P. McGuire

Democratic Innovations: Designing Institutions for Citizen Participation, Graham Smith
Reviewed by Maria Escobar-Lemmon

The Forensics of Election Fraud: Russia and Ukraine, Peter C. Ordeshook, Mikhail Myagkov and Dimitri Shakin
Reviewed by Robert Orttung

The Russia Balance Sheet, Anders Aslund and Andrew Kuchins
Reviewed by Dmitry Gorenburg

The New Counterinsurgency Era: Transforming the U.S. Military for Modern Wars, David H. Ucko
Reviewed by Andrea M. Lopez

Islamism, Democracy, and Liberalism in Turkey: The Case of the AKP, Ergun Özbudun and William Hale ; Democratization and the Politics of Constitution Making in Turkey, Ergun Özbudun and Ömer Faruk Gençkaya
Reviewed by Ahmet T. Kuru

Economic Liberalism and Its Rivals: The Formation of International Institutions among the Post-Soviet States, Keith A. Darden
Reviewed by Anders Åslund

Terrorism, Instability, and Democracy in Asia and Africa, Dan G. Cox, John Falconer and Brian Stackhouse
Reviewed by Binnur Ozkececi-Taner

The Next Frontier: National Development, Political Change, and the Death Penalty in Asia, Franklin E. Zimring and David T. Johnson
Reviewed by Klaus Mühlhahn

The Accidental Guerrilla: Fighting Small Wars in the Midst of a Big One, David Kilcullen
Reviewed by Kalev I. Sepp

Treaty Politics and the Rise of Executive Agreements: International Commitments in a System of Shared Powers, Jeffrey S. Peake and Glen S. Krutz
Reviewed by Matthew C. Zierler