General answers to these important questions continue to be sparse. Many “models” have been proposed, but they have rarely been substantiated systematically with empirical evidence. And while studies of individual countries and issues abound, broadly comparative analyses have been rare since the pathbreaking works by Stephan Haggard, Robert Kaufman, and Joan Nelson from the first half of the 1990s.

Susan Stokes's two books help to fill this important gap by analyzing presidential decisions to enact market reforms, by proposing and testing a novel scheme for interpreting the popular response to these draconian programs, and by evaluating the relationship of chief executives and common citizens in light of theories of representation. Mandates and Democracy focuses on an aspect of market reform that is particularly problematic for democratic theory, namely, the enactment of “neoliberalism by surprise” in several Latin American countries: Politicians who had campaigned with nonneoliberal slogans dramatically shifted their stance after winning the election and imposed orthodox shock programs upon taking office. In betraying their electoral mandates, did these leaders—especially Argentina's Carlos Menem, Peru's Alberto Fujimori, and Venezuela's Carlos Andrés Pérez—act out of selfish motives and fail to represent the citizenry's interests?

Contrary to these widespread suspicions, Stokes advances a more nuanced and sophisticated interpretation. Applying models designed by Joseph Harrington, she argues that citizens are often uncertain about the likely outcomes of their preferred policies and therefore modify their preferences as evidence of actual policy results becomes available. This malleability of popular preferences provided room for maneuvering to political leaders, whose access to technical expertise led them to anticipate that the non-neoliberal policies initially preferred by the populace would have disastrous results; by contrast, neoliberal measures that were more costly in the short run and therefore unpalatable to the citizenry were likely to yield much more beneficial outcomes—and this better performance would induce many people to endorse the chief executive's policy course in the next election. Given credibility problems, political leaders could not convince the citizenry of the superiority of neoliberal policies ex ante, and undertaking this effort would have endangered their electoral prospects. Therefore, well-intentioned leaders dissimulated, promising in the campaign to execute the non-neoliberal policies initially preferred by voters; but after winning, they embraced market reform and trusted that superior economic performance would vindicate this policy switch. While disregarding expressed popular preferences, these leaders actually sought to advance the voters’ best interests and thus acted as true representatives. Stokes sets the stage for this model by analyzing electoral campaigns and economic policy approaches in Chapter 2; then she explicates the model and tests its central implications in Chapter 3 and examines the popular response to market reform in Chapter 5, finding considerable yet not unqualified empirical support.

Public Support for Market Reforms complements this novel analysis by probing the reasons for the surprisingly strong popular approval of costly neoliberal programs in a wide range of nations. In predicting that the transitional losses caused by market reforms would trigger opposition, simple economic voting arguments cannot account for this endorsement. In an innovative introduction, Stokes therefore outlines alternative interpretive schemes with which many people assessed orthodox shock programs. In particular, an intertemporal frame can lead citizens to accept short-term pain in the hope of long-term gain; and an exonerative or antidotal frame can make people blame the preceding government for current problems and accept the bitter pill of market reform. The remaining chapters test through competent statistical analysis how citizens framed different economic problems and evaluated governments’ economic policies in Spain (José María Maravall and Adam Przeworski), East Germany (Christopher Anderson and Yuliya Tverdova), Poland (Przeworski), Mexico (Jorge Buendía), Peru (Stokes), and Argentina (Fabián Echegaray and Carlos Elordi). The findings are mixed as people applied an intertemporal frame to wage and GDP growth while responding to rising unemployment as simple economic voting arguments predict; results for inflation differ by country (pp. 25–27, 62–64, 92–99, 114–15, 123–25, 156–57, 172, 204–5).

The two volumes advance scholarly understanding of market reforms and their political ramifications in important ways. Above all, Stokes goes decisively beyond the simple assumptions embodied in many theories, ranging from economic-structural arguments with their single-minded emphasis on material interests to conventional rational-choice models that use straightforward self-interests as their starting point. By contrast, the two books convincingly demonstrate the importance of beliefs, which deeply shape the definition of actors’ preferences and give rise to complex schemes for interpreting experience. In this way, Stokes and her contributors paint a much more realistic image of political decision making. Actors do not simply execute “given” interests, but have to cope with considerable uncertainty, even concerning their own preferences. Therefore, there is room for framing and even manipulation, and calculations of likely costs and benefits are complex.

By taking the malleability of citizen preferences seriously, Stokes also develops a much more nuanced and convincing interpretation of the meaning of neoliberal policy switches for democratic representation. Diverging from the undifferentiated condemnation of these betrayals of campaign promises as “undemocratic,” she shows that political leaders may well act in the best interest of the citizenry by unexpectedly embracing policies that they regard as significantly more promising than the measures initially preferred by voters. Her emphasis on retrospective electoral accountability in Chapters 3 and 5 and on the need for political leaders to educate the citizenry in Chapter 6 usefully distinguishes her interpretation from problematic “false consciousness” arguments. Thus, Stokes makes an important contribution by bringing the normative concerns of political theory to bear on issues of comparative politics.

Stokes and her contributors advance their arguments in a systematic and theoretically sophisticated fashion and marshal an impressive amount of empirical evidence. The statistical investigations, especially central in Public Support for Market Reforms are skillful, and Stokes analyzes the evidence produced by her field research in a subtle and careful way. She also uses interesting insights from formal models to guide her empirical analysis. Last but not least, she does justice to competing interpretations, acknowledging their contributions yet showing their limitations (e.g., pp. 52–53, 76–77, 89).

Yet despite their many strengths, the two books also have some limitations. Above all, they are stronger in interpretation and testing than in causal explanation. For instance, while analyzing the reasons for candidates’ choice of campaign programs in Chapter 2, Mandates and Democracy lacks a strong general explanation of its main subject, policy switches to neoliberalism (pp. 43–45, 97–98). All winning candidates faced pressures from “markets”—the causal factor stressed in the case studies; why did some give in, whereas others resisted? The sparseness of a causal explanation is even more obvious in Public Support for Market Reforms. The mixed statistical findings, which vary considerably by issue and country, call for a systematic theoretical exploration of the conditions under which people apply each frame. But Stokes barely addresses this question (pp. 18–19); a conclusion that could have tackled this important task is missing.

The empirical analysis also has some problems. In particular, the binary classification of campaign appeals and governmental policies applied in Mandates and Democracy disregards many important distinctions (for instance, between radical market reformer Menem and moderate market consolidator Patricio Aylwin of Chile), while aggrandizing other differences (for instance, between the campaign programs of Pérez and Bolivia's Víctor Paz Estenssoro, both of whom provided “some hints … that [they] would pursue austerity policies and liberal reforms,” p. 113, n. 3; on Pérez, see pp. 54, 74). In general, the sample of cases is quite diverse (including, e.g., election and reelection campaigns); the assumption of causal homogeneity that underlies statistical analysis is therefore questionable. By glossing over substantial differences among neoliberal programs (e.g., between Fujimori's shock program and the gradual market reforms pursued by Brazil's Fernando Henrique Cardoso), binary classification also mars some of Stokes's qualitative interpretations and evaluations. While under the constraints facing Latin America in the late 1980s, neoliberalism may have been superior to a non-neoliberal approach, but that does not necessarily mean that the radical market reforms pursued in Argentina and Peru were the best possible option for turning the economy around and for representing voter interests. As Argentina's collapse suggests, a more cautious neoliberal program (as enacted in Brazil) may have been preferable. By failing to consider the variety of market reform programs, Stokes appears to endorse the specific policy course pursued by her protagonists as the only reasonable choice—a problematic conclusion.

Despite these quibbles, the two volumes significantly advance the study of market reforms. In particular, they push the door wide open for researchers to analyze the origins of presidents’ and citizens’ beliefs and the conditions under which different interpretive frames are adopted. Through her impressive contributions and the research agenda she outlines (see Mandates and Democracy pp. 190–96), Stokes leads scholars toward the analysis of crucial cognitive and ideational phenomena and thus breaks new ground for comparative politics.