Imitation and Politics: Redesigning Modern Germany. By Wade Jacoby. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2001. 240p. $42.50 cloth, $17.95 paper

Abstract

Wade Jacoby's scholarly study successfully marries theory to a detailed, specialized knowledge about the history, political culture, and politics of Germany. German specialists will find plenty of insights, but Jacoby's theoretical framework—parsimonious yet central in its limitation to two crucial variables— stands out. It will stimulate all those interested in the transfer of institutions and, more generally, the transfer of democratic capitalism. For example, the decade-old transitions in Central and Eastern Europe have been referred to as “negotiated” and “imitative revolutions,” but often the implications of such pronouncements are assumed but not explored. Jacoby's study supplies important answers to questions about the conditions that are most likely to render institutional transfer effective—in Germany, Central and Eastern Europe, and elsewhere.