Wolbrecht is generally concerned with exploring how, when, and why party issue realignments occur. More specifically, she seeks to explain the 180-degree turn of the two major parties on women's rights during 1952–92. On both counts, she succeeds admirably. A major contribution of this work is the careful explication of a theoretical framework that accounts for adoption of and change in issue position by parties. Drawing on theories of critical realignment, issue evolution, agenda setting, and congressional behavior, Wolbrecht suggests that the two parties' relative positions on any issue are determined by three factors: the issue, the party coalitions, and the party elite. She then incorporates a discussion of issue equilibrium and disruption, processes through which one can view changes in party position.

A second contribution is the thorough discussion and analysis of the broad issue of women's rights during the period under study. Wolbrecht carefully details the important players, events, societal changes, and political aspects of a movement that had profound consequences in our society. Beyond this, she moves from description to explanation through the application of her theory. She outlines a debate that began between the Democratic Party and its support for protective legislation and the Republican Party and its support for the ERA; it evolved into a debate between liberation (the Democrats and their embrace of feminism) and tradition (the Republicans and the increased influence of social conservatism).

In unraveling the changes in the debate, Wolbrecht addresses questions about the public salience of women's rights, the changing nature of the party coalitions, and the coincident changes in elite behavior. Relying on data from several sources, she demonstrates how the social and political context of the 1960s and 1970s gave women's rights greater salience among the public and political elites. The resultant disequilibrium in women's rights led to profound changes in the party coalition interests of the Democrats and Republicans and the responses of their leaders. Today, the two major parties take positions on women's rights that are very different from the past and also are very different from each other.

A third strength is the ability of the author to tackle difficult measurement questions and bring several different sources of data to bear on the central argument. The methodological aspects of the work are rigorous, appropriate, and follow from the theoretical framework that underlies her arguments. Documenting a complex transformation over 40 years is not easily accomplished, but Wolbrecht pulls together several creative sources of information to do just that. She employs survey data and content analysis of the New York Times to show the importance of increased public salience to the process of issue equilibrium disruption; material from congressional hearings and party platforms to illustrate the process of issue redefinition and agenda change; and cosponsorship of legislation, roll-call data, and interest group ratings to establish the shifting behaviors of party elites.

My one quibble is with chapter 6, where Wolbrecht attempts to show how changes in interest coalitions and the composition of party elites contributed to the transformation in issue position. “It is important to distinguish between party elites, such as members of Congress and party leaders, and the parties' coalitions of interest,” by which she means “the general array of interests associated with each political party … identifiers, voters, convention delegates, funding sources, activists, and organized allies” (p. 182). Yet, she relies on the composition of party delegations in Congress (arguably party elites) as a proxy measure of the composition of party coalitions. To that end, she offers party unity scores and geographic and ideological data on members of Congress for the years under study. In discussing the changes in party elite behavior, she also uses data on members of Congress, in this case cosponsorship of women's rights legislation as a measure of changing behaviors. Wolbrecht points out the difficulty of measuring party coalition activities, but since she makes an important distinction between coalitions and elites, her use of data on members of Congress to measure the behaviors of both leaves us without a clear sense of how external groups and actors influence party behavior.

But this is a small exception to take with a work that succeeds at many levels. It provides a strong theoretical framework in which to consider the development and change of party issue positions, and it provides a rich and detailed summary of a complex movement and set of issues. Scholars of political parties, public opinion, and gender politics will find much in this volume to like.