For those who assume that within those countries we commonly consider to be the wealthiest and most stable liberal democracies, there exists a single shape, form, and formula for democracy itself, they need to consult this bold, innovative, and informative volume. Bruce Cain, Russell Dalton, and Susan Scarrow have edited a superb collection of 11 chapters (including the introduction), written by 15 internationally renowned students of comparative political analysis (including the editors), dealing with a simple and clear set of questions, namely: 1) Has representative democracy among the most industrially advanced liberal democracies of the world undergone a series of reforms during the past 20 years or so? 2) What is the nature and form of this reform? 3) In what way, if at all, has this change affected the quality and nature of democracy in these countries?

The central thesis guiding the volume is that these most wealthy, stable, and liberal democracies are facing a “third wave” of reform to their democratic politics. Chronologically, the first wave was the rise of representative democracy, replete with elected officials and political parties serving as the primary instruments of voice and opposition to check and balance concentrated elite interests in the political system. The second wave has been the relatively recent rise of direct democracy, which has seen an increased role of the public in distinctly newer and direct forms of input into political decision making, expressed through referendums and the rise of local politics. The third wave is that of advocacy democracy, characterized by the very recent and less readily recognized growth in the channels for direct interaction between citizens and government, and the markedly intense involvement of citizens in the policy deliberation stage of policymaking. This final wave of reform does not spell the end of a definitive elite–public division within democracy. Rather, it opens the way for a significantly modified set of expectations among the public regarding access, transparency, and accountability, with important implications for public inclusion, the degree of political equality, demands for enlightened understanding of policy, an energized and active role in agenda setting and framing, and new thresholds for achieving effective participation.

The authors rely upon a rich array of impressive cross-national empirical evidence to examine the range and depth of democratic reform across the working sample of 18 large advanced industrial democracies. Empirical and quantitative analysis are presented on national election patterns (Dalton and Mark Gray, “Expanding the Electoral Marketplace”); referendum reforms (Scarrow, “Making Elections More Direct”); Parties Manifesto Project results, including saliency of democratic themes in party platforms, such as democratic discourse and inclusiveness of party electorate in key party electoral decisions (Miki Caul Kittilson and Scarrow, “Political Parties and the Rhetoric and Realities of Democratization”); electoral system change (Shaun Bowler, Elisabeth Carter, and David M. Farrell, “Changing Party Access to Elections”); freedom of information laws (Cain, Patrick Egan, and Sergio Fabbrini, “Towards More Open Democracies: The Expansion of Freedom of Information Laws”); subnational government reforms and decentralization laws (Christopher Ansell and Jane Gingrich, “Trends in Decentralization”); administrative and ombudsman legal reforms (Ansell and Gingrich, “Reforming the Administrative State”); and legal reforms (Rachel A. Cichowski and Alec Stone Sweet, “Participation, Representative Democracy, and the Courts”). While extensive, the presentation and discussion of the measures and empirical findings is clear and concise to the reader.

The introductory chapter and the final two chapters offer thorough considerations of the effect of reforms on the nature of democracy and afford the reader prescient insight into the changing nature of democracy. Mark E. Warren's essay, “A Second Transformation of Democracy,” leads the reader through the evidence supporting the third wave reforms (“advocacy democracy”), and cautiously suggests that, indeed, the reforms underway do point to a cumulative transforming effect on the very nature of democracy within advanced societies. While the patterns across the 18 democracies differ in many respects, the weight of the collective evidence clearly underscores a modified relationship between the governed and the governing, with dramatic implications for the role of individual rights and juridical politics in democracy, the role and significance of traditional political parties and interest groups, and the manifestation of evolving institutional checks and balances within the various wealthy liberal democracies.

In the concluding essay, Cain, Dalton, and Scarrow focus more on the institutional nature of reform, yet invite the reader to ask what broader implications arise with advocacy democracy. While understandably not central to their balanced and objective assessment, the likely limitations of democratic reform taking hold on a global scale can also be considered. If these 18 wealthy and stable liberal nation-states, which have now advanced toward or are indeed within the realm of advocacy democracy, are prone at times to propose the virtues of representative or even direct democracy to less economically stable, and certainly less democratically experienced nation-states, one might reasonably assume that the public within the latter countries will view the former as perhaps hypocrites. They might ask with some justification, “Should everyone not aspire toward advocacy democracy if the most liberal democracies are on their way to this, or in fact have already arrived?” Why should those nation-states whom liberal democracies have encouraged to join the ranks of democracy in general settle for the second-class status of merely representative democracy when the wealthy few have shown through the test of time and practice the advantage to their systems and public of advocacy democracy? Yet, having weighed the evidence offered in this volume, one might also reasonably ponder whether or not we really want a global environment where advocacy democracy has entirely given way to representative and direct democracy.

Of course, it is understandably beyond the scope of Democracy Transformed? to explore the cultural or historical obstacles to achieving the third wave reforms, especially for countries beyond the scope of their sample. Nonetheless, this volume and its various chapters certainly point toward a growing credibility gap between those at or near the advocacy threshold of democracy, on the one hand, and those aspiring to achieve the traditional representational democracy level, on the other. By promptly placing democratic reform among advanced industrial democracies into its proper and yet complex perspective, Dalton, Cain, and Scarrow and their various contributors have perhaps unwittingly drawn attention to a global cleavage between the “haves” of advocacy democracy and the “have-nots” of representational democracy—a cleavage that may have far wider implications than public and elites learning to adjust to complex and interdependent political relationships within stable, wealthy, liberal democracies.