In this book, Ann-Marie Szymanski achieves what may have been an unintended goal: She demonstrates that the success of a social movement that seeks transformative public policy depends on both the development of flexible, highly adaptative strategies for local reforms and the emergence of opportune conditions for the consolidation of local successes into national—in this case, constitutional—reform. Her study of Prohibition politics and organizational strategies crafted over time brings together insights from new institutionalists who explain how the unique interests of governmental agencies and “states” shape policy outcomes, as well as from political scientists whose studies on the relationships between ideologies, political strategies, and small group dynamics have generated varied pressures for policy reform. If the social movement theorists pay attention to this study, they will enlarge their perspectives, build more sophisticated models, do more comprehensive research, and explain more fully and accurately how social movements actually generate successful political reforms.

Szymanski convincingly demonstrates that support of the “local option” and presentation of the same as the foundation of a “moderate” approach to the regulation of the sale and consumption of alcohol explains the creation of a grassroots base strong enough to assure the passage and ratification of the Eighteenth Amendment. She admits that the movement's leaders developed “local gradualism partly in response to recent modifications of the political system, namely the devolution of the state legislatures' liquor licensing power to the localities, and the judiciary's growing acceptance of these licensing regimes.” (pp. 5–6). She astutely notes, however, that state legislatures' devolution of such power to local governments and judicial toleration of the same began after moderate prohibitionists strenuously promoted the local option. Thus, the adage that in the United States “all politics is local” may owe much to the efforts of moderate prohibitionists. The republican character of small cities, towns, and rural counties crystallized in the late nineteenth century. Whether one's hometown was once “dry” as opposed to “wet” matters much in local histories. Indeed, the national center of the Anti-Saloon League was situated in Westerville, Ohio, a suburb of Columbus that still prides itself on being “dry.”

Despite the repeal of Prohibition, the mass mobilizations to limit or abolish the sale of “spirits” constitute the legacy of the first successful popular efforts to amend the Constitution. This movement had roots in the abolition movement whose leaders also recognized that local organization mattered. Abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison deliberately began his mobilization of support in the villages and small towns of New England. Once there was a base of support outside the cities, he brought the message to Boston, New York, and Philadelphia. A similar strategy was used to mobilize Chinese peasants in the 1920s and 1930s, a step considered as critical to the success of the Maoist revolution.

Szymanski invites scholars—as well as contemporary leaders of social movements—to pay more attention to local politics. Reform leaders who craft reform strategies that are locally based ensure that their movement possesses the widest boundaries from the start. Long-run success may prove elusive as it did with Prohibition, but the influence of the cadres and clusters of leaders who led the effort can be immeasurable. The Prohibition movement and its organized opposition developed networks and hierarchies of businesses, labor organizations, religious congregations, and political parties the outlines of which can still be detected today.

Szymanski's findings could serve as a resource for scholars who want to know the roots of republican traditions in the United States, especially regarding debates on the legalization of marijuana, the establishment of drug testing in secondary schools, and related community “standards.” To scholars who might want to pursue such a research agenda, I offer my chief dispute with Szymanski: I consider her use of the labels that reformers used to identify themselves and their opponents overly confining and restrictive. Moreover, in American politics, the labels “radical” and “moderate” constitute political weaponry. From the campaign to ratify the Constitution to the current presidential campaign of 2004, groups and candidates who successfully promote themselves as “moderates” succeed far more often than those who portray themselves as ideologically correct.

In Pathways to Prohibition, Szymanski sets the “radical” supporters of prohibitionist aims off against the “moderates” who promoted local gradualism. But the reformers committed to Prohibition were more diversely motivated. Certainly those who created the Prohibitionist Party wanted consistent rules across their states and the nation. Rather than “radical,” they were utopian idealists whose shared desire to purify the citizenry—person-by-person—took on an obsessive character. According to Rogers Smith's multiple traditions framework, the Prohibitionists were republican Americanists: Not every American could ever become a true American—white, Anglo-Saxon Protestant and obedient—but each could be and should be taught and expected to behave as if he or she were one.

At the same time, other supporters of prohibitionist aims seem to have been drawn to a long-term goal that might well never be fully achieved. As the president of the Women's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) from 1879 to the mid-1890s, Frances Willard aimed primarily to activate the political participation of traditional women so that the polity would become less male dominated. She used the extremist, idealistic rhetoric of the Prohibitionists as a means to mobilize women. But she remained committed to the ethic of temperance: She urged her followers to accept reform goals that fell well short of Prohibition. Thus, Willard pursued a strategy that aimed for the truly radical goal of winning women full political inclusion, but her approach lacked the single-minded idealism of the Prohibitionists.

By using the value-laden political labels chosen by the local option reformers to describe themselves, Szymanski falls into the trap of advocating or vindicating their approach and rejecting that of the Prohibitionists. Unfortunately, what gets lost in all this is a sense of how together both the pragmatic localists and the idealistic Prohibitionists effectively thwarted the wets. In so doing, they shut out alternative social reform agendas that called for saving small farms, improving wages, making workplaces safer, and refashioning public buildings and spaces for more vigorous and robust sharing of community resources.

Relabeling the Prohibitionists as idealistic and localism proponents as pragmatic would not require Szymanski to alter her explication of the different pathways to Prohibition. She presents trenchant analysis of the different pathways, and each chapter offers key insights on the relationship between social movements and constitutional reform (as well as the transformation of a social movement into a political reform movement). She thereby opens up exciting possibilities for new, fuller, fairer, and sober studies on the effectiveness of contemporary social movements, such as the environmentalists, the Christian right, and many others. Her observations on the uses of local gradualism already made by some contemporary groups are inspiring.