This is a strong example of recent work in political science that mines the boundary of comparative politics and international relations to identify the complex sources of political change. Sanjeev Khagram draws on an intensive case study of the Narmada Dam projects in India and the increasingly successful transnational protests against them to produce a more general argument about how development visions can be transformed—even by actors who seem powerless. In his broadly constructivist analysis, Khagram traces the impact of changing norms not just on visions but also on concrete global practices of development, especially the sharp drop in the number of dams completed in the last two decades of the twentieth century.

The author argues that understanding both transnational and domestic factors is necessary for explaining when and where dam opponents were able to force this change in development strategy. In terms of transnational factors, transnational norms supporting alternative development visions must come to exist. For dam projects, these included new norms pertaining to the environment, human rights, and indigenous peoples. Transnational coalitions and networks both helped to construct these norms in world politics and later reinforced them through transnational contentious politics. Finally, the norms and principles gain weight as they are institutionalized in the domestic context.

Similar kinds of arguments about the importance of transnational norms and the coalitions and networks that carry them are now common parts of international relations theory. What is less common is Khagram's insistence that these are successful in changing development ideas and practices when they are joined with two additional, primarily domestic, factors. These are the presence of local citizens' groups that can organize and sustain the mobilization of large numbers of people—in this case, in anti-dam advocacy mobilizations—and also the existence of institutions sufficiently democratic to create openings for those groups' influence on domestic decision makers.

In the theory-generating Indian case, the domestic factors actually came first. Early domestic resistance to dams in the Narmada Valley was comparatively ineffective until the transnational components were added and institutionalized. Only then did the Narmada opposition become the kind of transformative force and allegory of alternative development that it did in the 1990s. In a set of short comparative case studies, the common transnational phenomena generally came first, although this is not important in Khagram's argument, which is about the ways the transnational and domestic characteristics intersect with each other, rather than an argument about sequencing. In Brazil, which also shares the domestic conditions of sustained grassroots anti-dam mobilization and (after 1985) democratic institutions with India, there is some similar success in challenging the big-dam vision and practice of development. China, which has neither, continues to build large dams, albeit with some concessions on environmental and resettlement provisions. Indonesia and South Africa/Lesotho, each with one of the two domestic conditions, present intermediate outcomes. Brief accounts of dam experiences in the United States and Europe also appear in the book.

Finally, the international and domestic are intertwined once more in the book in that changing development norms and practices are traced in both the World Bank and domestic governments. Both are treated as complex actors whose images and practices of development may change over time, and who also have actors inside them who are sympathetic to anti-dam activists all along. The World Bank and domestic governments are also engaged in contesting development practices and norms with each other, partially in response to the pressures each is receiving from anti- and pro-dam activists.

The three empirical chapters that cover what one of them calls “dams, democracy, and development in India” (title of Chapter 2) are likely to become the definitive statement of these issues. Meticulously researched, they draw on a variety and quantity of sources and interviews that tell a compelling story not just of Narmada but of the larger picture of independent India's sustainable and unsustainable development. India's vibrant and obstructive federalism, the development of its domestic environmental institutions, and the critical role of the Supreme Court all are part of the story, offering a specifically Indian context without losing sight of the more general causal processes. The overarching argument about the crucial intersection of transnational and domestic forces seems well supported in this account, which is organized to take a series of chronological snapshots of the balance of forces and outcomes. The other cases covered in the book, with the partial exception of Brazil, serve more as suggestive sketches; they appear to fit the arguments made about them, but warrant additional research.

Theoretically, the real strength of Dams and Development is to bring together literatures from different subfields of political science and to show in theoretical and empirical detail how they might intersect. The synthesis is most creative in discussing how democracy is a condition of success, while democratization is also one possible outcome of the transnational struggles over dams. This suggests the possibility of a virtuous circle, which fits with the book's insistence on not just the possibility but the actual construction of an alternative development model based on that of anti-dam activists. The grounded theory of this book presents a rich explanation that takes account of considerable complexity. This comes at the cost of some generalizability of the book's optimism. If local activism of the kind present in India and Brazil—each unusually contentious—is really necessary to achieve much development change, for example, this is mostly an explanation of why change is not likely to happen.

One of the book's disappointments is that it takes us only to the creation in 1998 of one of the dam debate's most novel participants, the World Commission on Dams, which actually included representatives of all the forces Khagram discusses in a single body—to discuss dams and their relationship to development. Its unfolding processes, rather than just its creation, would have been a stronger conclusion to the book's arguments and a significant test of them.