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Democracy in the developing world is generally outliving expectations, but not outperforming them. Democratic collapse has happily been a far rarer event thus far in the twenty-first century than it was in the twentieth. Yet it does not exactly ring true to say that most developing country democracies are consolidating. This review essay ventures the claim that political scientists need to transcend their rightful concerns with how and why young democracies collapse or consolidate, and devote more attention to theorizing how and why they careen. It defines democratic careening as political instability sparked by intense conflict between partisan actors deploying competing visions of democratic accountability. Careening occurs when actors who argue that democracy requires substantial inclusivity of the entire populace (vertical accountability) clash with rivals who defend democracy for its constraints against excessive concentrations of unaccountable power, particularly in the political executive (horizontal accountability). These arguments are elaborated through reviews of leading theoretical works on democratic breakdown as well as detailed case studies of Thailand and Taiwan. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article reviews the book "Ordering Power: Contentious Politics and Authoritarian Leviathans in Southeast Asia," by Dan Slater.

The literature on hybrid regimes has a new and undisputed heavyweight champion. Eight years after their widely cited Journal of Democracy article first unveiled “competitive authoritarianism” as a distinctive type of hybrid regime, Steven Levitsky and Lucan Way have constructed a volume that theorizes and traces the trajectories of the countries that have fit into this category since the Cold War's end—all thirty-five of them. While the theoretical ambition of Competitive Authoritarianism stakes the book's rightful claim to the title of hybrid-regime champion, the book's voluminous empirics unmistakably place it in political science's heavyweight class. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article reviews the book "The Art of Not Being Governed: An Anarchist History of Upland Southeast Asia," by James C. Scott.

A review of the book "Imperial Alchemy: Nationalism & Political Identity in Southeast Asia," by Anthony Reid is presented.

The article reviews the book "Case Study Research: Principles and Practices," by John Gerring.

The article reviews the book "News cameras in the courtroom: A free press-fair trial debate," by Susanna Barber.

The article reviews the book "Confession of a Wall Street Analyst: A True Story of Inside Information and Corruption in the Stock Market," by Dan Reingold.

The article reviews the book "SHUTTING OUT the SUN: How Japan Created its Own Lost Generation," by Michael Zielenziger.

Reviews the book 'Communication and Litigation: Case Studies of Famous Trials,' by Janice Schuetz and Kathryn Holmes Snedaker.