Justice and Democracy: Essays for Brian Barry. Edited by Keith Dowding, Robert E. Goodin, and Carole Pateman. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004. 242p. $70.00 cloth, $25.99 paper.

Getting academics to focus on a single topic can be a bit like herding cats. Present them with a theoretical problem and they tend to write about whatever they want, making only the merest nod in the direction of the problem specified. The result is that many edited volumes ostensibly devoted to a common theme wind up containing myriad papers that do little to speak to either the common theme or one another.