Politics, Policy, and Organizations: Frontiers in the Scientific Study of Bureaucracy. Edited by George A. Krause and Kenneth J. Meier. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2004. 352p. $65.00 cloth, $24.95 paper.

In this important book, coeditors George A. Krause and Kenneth J. Meier, along with their chapter authors, make a strong case for a theoretically informed and empirically advanced social science study of government bureaucracies. Although other social science disciplines have been rigorously studying public and private organizations for some time, the study of government bureaucracies has had a somewhat marginal position in political science. The current cadre of political scientists “scientifically” studying the bureaucracy, including many of the contributors to this volume, attests to the growing prominence of this subject in the discipline.