The likely endogeneity between democracy and trade is addressed with an instrumental variables strategy in this article about whether international trade fosters democracy. The authors use a measure of natural openness to obtain estimates of the causal impact of openness on democratization in three separate samples spanning the last 130 years. A positive impact of openness on democracy is apparent in the data over the long run. The post–World War II results suggest that with a rise in trade with other countries equal to a one standard deviation increase, countries such as Indonesia, Russia, and Venezuela could eventually become as democratic as the U.S., Great Britain, or France. There is some variation in the impact of openness by region that may be because trade seems to have a positive impact only when the capital-to-labor ratio is sufficiently high. This is consistent with the idea that openness promotes democracy when it strengthens the economic fortunes of the middle class.

Why do some Muslim women adopt fundamentalist Islamic value systems that promote gender-based inequalities while others do not? This article considers the economic determinants of fundamentalist beliefs in the Muslim world, as women look to either marriage or employment to achieve financial security. Using cross-national public opinion data from eighteen countries with significant Muslim populations, the authors apply a latent class model to characterize respondents according to their views on gender norms, political Islam, and personal religiosity. Among women, lack of economic opportunity is a stronger predictor of fundamentalist belief systems than socioeconomic class. Cross-nationally, fundamentalism among women is most prevalent in poor countries and in those with a large male-female wage gap. These findings have important implications for the promotion of women's rights, the rise of political Islam, and the development of democracy in the Muslim world.

Recent cross-national studies have returned their attention to the structural determinants of political regimes, highlighting in particular the factor of “landholding inequality” as a decisive barrier to democratization. This article provides thefirstsystematic test of such hypotheses at the microlevel and proposes a new account of authoritarianism's durability by examining the crucial case of pre-World War I Prussia. The article analyzes the results of a roll-call vote on a watershed piece of legislation that was defeated on the eve of World War I-legislation that would have democratized suffrage rules in Germany's largest state. When examined systematically, this historically and theoretically important vote reveals two surprising lessons: first, landholding inequality undercuts the prospects of democratization even holding income inequality constant. Second, the nature of elite competition and electoral considerations, shaped by the institutional configuration of nondemocratic regimes, can also thwart democratization, even when socioeconomic conditions may appear to make a society ripe for regime change.

Recent events in Europe and Latin America have triggered serious debate over federalism. In response, political scientists have turned to the new institutionalism literature in the attempt to understand both the causes and the consequences of federal institutions. Continuing a long tradition in the scholarship on federalism, each of the books under review defines the term differently, reflecting a lack of conceptual agreement that may complicate the development of more robust theories.

Despite these conceptual differences, and their focus on very different time periods, the four books under review are alike in the emphasis they place on bargaining between national and subnational politicians. While this interest in bargaining clearly demonstrates the continuing impact of William Riker's work, much of the new research challenges parts of the Rikerian framework. As a measure of their quality, these four books will significantly shape the course of the emerging literature on comparative federalism, but future work should pay greater attention to interests, ideas, and international factors.