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Contact with the criminal justice system is greater today than at any time in our history. In this article, we argue that interactions with criminal justice are an important source of political socialization, in which the lessons that are imprinted are antagonistic to democratic participation and inspire negative orientations toward government. To test this argument, we conduct the first systematic empirical exploration of how criminal justice involvement shapes the citizenship and political voice of a growing swath of Americans. We find that custodial involvement carries with it a substantial civic penalty that is not explained by criminal propensity or socioeconomic differences alone. Given that the carceral state has become a routine site of interaction between government and citizens, institutions of criminal justice have emerged as an important force in defining citizen participation and understandings, with potentially dire consequences for democratic ideals.

Of the many endeavors in the last three decades to restate the central aspirations of liberalism, this important work is one of the most balanced, nuanced, and cogent. Part of its success lies in its willingness to stretch the boundaries of what we call liberalism, but in doing so, Spragens only brings liberal theory into better alignment with intuitions and sensibilities underlying liberal practice.

Engaging her contemporaries in debates over democratic ideals and processes, Iris M. Young offers a collection of seven essays that mitigate arguments on either side of those debates (participation vs. representation, localism vs. state, segregation vs. integration, identity vs. difference) by applying the critical ideal of inclusion. She argues that the normative legitimacy of democratic decisions rests upon the extent to which those affected by decisions are included in or have the opportunity to enter the decision making process. One might think that inclusion solves only one problem, the problem of exclusion, for democracy. However, Young extends the ideal of inclusion across manifold debates in democratic theory and speaks broadly to the less than ideal conditions under which we now practice democracy.

In 1975, after The New York Times published a devastating critique of the CIA, three government panels--the Rockefeller, Church, and Pike Committees--were formed to examine these allegations in depth. What they uncovered--assassination plots, opened mail, drug experiments against unsuspecting subjects (two of whom died from side effects)--shocked the American people and moved Senator Frank Church to call the CIA "a rogue elephant rampaging out of control." Clearly, America needs a strong, effective intelligence effort, but just as clearly, this effort must operate within the bounds of an open, democratic society. Based on hundreds of interviews with CIA officials, national security experts, and legislators, as well as a thorough culling of the archival record, America's Secret Power offers an illuminating and up-to-date picture of the Central Intelligence Agency, stressing the difficult balance between the genuine needs of national security and the protection of individual liberties. Loch Johnson, who has studied the workings of the CIA at first hand as a legislative overseer, presents a comprehensive examination of the Agency and its relations with other American institutions, including Congress and the White House (he offers particularly astute analyses of the CIA's use of journalists and academics to gather intelligence) and he illuminates the CIA's three major missions--intelligence analysis, counterintelligence, and covert action--providing vivid descriptions of their purpose and their pathologies. For example, he offers a fascinating analysis of the "Seven Sins" of intelligence work, revealing how the best intelligence reports can be distorted or ignored (in the mid-1960s, the evidence against a quick American victory in Vietnam was dismissed); how covert actions can spin out of control despite extensive safeguards, as in the Iran-Contra scandal; and how the CIA has spied on American citizens in clear violation of its charter. Further, he provides a thorough review of legislative efforts to curb these abuses, suggesting several important ways to achieve the delicate balance between national security and democratic ideals. Vividly written and meticulously documented, America's Secret Power draws the strands of a vast amount of research into a balanced critique of our intelligence networks. It is a work that stands alone in its thoroughness and objectivity, a thoughtful and sobering portrait of the contemporary CIA.

To appreciate the political theories and institutions of Asia in the proper historical perspective, it is necessary to remember that, in spite of Switzerland, universal suffrage and the initiative and referendum are essentially young phenomena in Eur-America; and that republicanism cannot be pronounced to be a historic trait of the occidental mind.On the other hand, it is apparent that the liberal political movements in Young Asia have, if at all, only very remote blood-relationship with the theories and institutions developed in its past history. The Japanese constitutional monarchy, the ideals of the Young Turk, the Chinese republic, as well as the nationalist activities in Egypt, Persia and India, are chiefly based on the modern Eur-American achievements. These sources can be briefly mentioned as: (1) the English parliament, (2) the American federation, (3) the “ideas of 1789,” (4) the idealism of Fichte and Schiller, (5) the socialism of Karl Marx and Louis Blanc, (6) the political mysticism of Joseph Mazzini, and, last but not least, (7) the philosophy and methodology of John Stuart Mill.Within these limitations it should be possible to define the rightful place of the Asians in a scientific study of comparative politics.