This book provides a welcome addition to the ever-growing comparative scholarship on gender politics and the state. Editors Jude Howell and Diane Mulligan bring together a group of experts with the ideal blend of country expertise and understanding about comparative analysis and theoretical issues to systematically map out and operationalize the concept of “civil society” in a cross-national study of the interface between women's organizations and the state. Howell raises the central analytical problem of the book in the introduction. While the concept of civil society has great promise for understanding how, why, and to what extent women organize and seek to influence the state, comparative gender and politics analysts have shied away from using the term; comparativists and political theorists have basically ignored the quite obviously gendered aspects of civil society. As this edited volume convincingly asserts, intersecting the study of civil society with comparative gender research moves the two areas much further along by compelling “researchers to gauge their understanding of empirical civil societies, to question the assumptions about the relationship between democratization, civil society and gender equality and to query the idea of civil society and feminism as universally valid concepts” (p. 246).

The authors of the eight country/regional chapters and one chapter on an international organization address the “gulf between gender studies and civil society studies” (p. xiv) by structuring their analyses around three series of questions that focus on one aspect of the highly complex concept of civil society—“an exploration of women's participation and activism in the theatres of civil societies” (p. 7). The three questions are as follows: 1) How do women organize and to what degree do the “political environment” and “the nature of the state” shape the patterns of that organization? 2) To what extent, how, and why do women and their groups seek to influence the state? 3) Do women's organizations differ from other groups in civil society? These questions are raised in the introduction, assessed to varying degrees in the analyses of each chapter, and then reexamined in the conclusion. The issue of the analytical and practical implications of gendering the concept of civil society is also dealt with in the introduction and conclusion chapters.

Three of the eight chapters focus on regions of the world—East/Central Europe, sub-Saharan Africa, and the Middle East; five focus on individual countries—China, Indonesia, Chile, Mexico, and the United States. An eighth chapter, by Marlie Glasius, brings in an explicitly international dimension by examining women's movement organization around the formulation and adoption of the Statute for an International Criminal Court in 1998. The development of women's mobilization beginning in the 1970s and continuing through 2000 is traced in most chapters. Authors use both primary and secondary sources and provide quite extensive bibliographies on women's organization and gender equality policy.

The regional chapters focus on specific countries, emphasizing the cross-national diversity as well as the regional patterns. Barbara Einhorn and Charlie Sever present the variegated experiences of women's organization under the transformation to democracy in the state socialist countries of East/Central Europe, with specific case studies of Poland and the former Yugoslavia. Aili Mari Tripp traces the distinctiveness of women's collective action in the democratization process in sub-Saharan African countries, with specific national variations. Nadje S. Al-Ali assesses the impact of Middle Eastern autocracy, the rise of Islamic fundamentalism, and the prevalence of anticolonial sentiment in women's organization in light of the “huge difference in the historical conditions and contemporary contexts of women's movements in the Middle East” (p. 99).

The country-based chapters develop more focused arguments about the diversity in women's organization and their policy activities. Howell discusses the ever-increasing mobilization of women through the All-China Women's Federation in the context of liberalization and the 1995 International Women's Conference in Beijing. Marcela Riós-Tobar argues that women's movements were actually disempowered as gender equality issues were institutionalized in the consolidation of democracy in Chile. Diane Mulligan shows how women's organization was affected by the transition to democracy in Indonesia and the rise of Islamic fundamentalism through the lens of the regulation of women's sexuality in the debate over a dangdut dance. Laurel Weldon takes a quantitative approach to analyzing women's organization around domestic violence issues in all 50 states in the late 1990s. Linda Stevenson uses a public policy analysis framework to assess the impact of feminist civil society on gender policy in Mexico.

Gender and Civil Society is an exemplar of comparative gender and politics scholarship. It takes a central concept that has been neglected by feminist and nonfeminist analysts alike, maps it out in a new way that addresses the gender gaps, and then operationalizes it in a series of case analyses that are both empirically and theoretically rich, providing propositions that can be tested in future studies. As such, the book directly responds to recent calls made by comparative gender scholars to better operationalize and test theories in well-designed empirical studies. The editors have set up a study that speaks not only to works that use the concept of civil society but also to scholarship that has focused on the state and women's movement in a comparative perspective. Unlike many studies of social movements that neglect the state, this one makes the all-important link to state activities both in terms of women's descriptive representation—their presence within the state in women's policy agencies and public offices—and women's substantive representation—the inclusion of gender equality issues in public debates and policy outcomes.

What is truly quite distinctive about this project is that it studies the nexus between state and society in a cross-systemic manner—countries/regions from a good portion of the world are covered by experts; only one case study focuses on a Western country. The outcome is that, arguably for the first time, theory building about civil society, gender, and the state takes seriously into account the vast diversity of countries outside of the West. This study also contributes to the growing literature on transnational gender issues that looks to the development of “transnational feminist advocacy networks” as both a recent phenomenon and a driving force in women's organization and gender equality policy formation at the national and subnational levels. Most of the national-level chapters and the international case study highlight the presence of transnational advocacy networks and the importance of influences from outside of the nation-state, like the United Nations, and the diffusion of Western feminist ideas. The issue of local-level politics is also raised by pointing to the importance of women's mobilization in local arenas when the concept of civil society is introduced in many of the case analyses. The chapter on the United States explicitly brings out a more subnational focus by assessing women's mobilization across the 50 states.

For those looking for a neat operational definition of civil society that can be used in empirical analysis, it is not in this book. At the end, the question still remains about whether the concept of civil society is too large and ill defined to be used in comparative theory-building studies that seek to test the very propositions of the study. The introduction does show how the question of women's organization relates to civil society; there is no discussion about why examining women's mobilization allows for a better elaboration of civil society in terms of some of the critiques of its gender blindness. Although Weldon and Stevenson provide operational definitions, neither these specific definitions nor the other authors' implied definitions are taken up in a concluding discussion about defining civil society for analytical purposes. Given the importance of clearly defining concepts for use in comparative analysis, particularly when gender issues are being studied, it seems that the editors missed an opportunity to provide some practical advice, based on the contributors' collective wisdom, to researchers about using the concept in empirical cross-national analysis.

In closing, this book is a “must-read” for experts of gender, the state, and public policy and for newcomers to that field. Its theory-building focus has an immediate appeal for comparative gender and politics scholars and their students. The clear and approachable style provides easy access to all of the potential constituencies in the various cross-cutting literatures touched upon by the book. A focus on strategies in many of the chapters alongside rich empirical analysis has the potential to appeal to a more practitioner-oriented audience as well. Indeed, Howell points out up front in the introduction that practitioners and activists involved with programs that promote civil society can take lessons from the book. Given the relatively systematic and current analyses of women's organizations, the state, and policy over time and across a wide range of countries and regions, this book should be considered for course adoption at the undergraduate level—provided the publisher decides to produce a paperback version, a decision this volume unquestionably warrants by its clarity, analytical and theoretical richness, and accessibility.