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Book Review: G William Domhoff, The Myth of Liberal Ascendancy: Corporate Dominance from the Great Depression to the Great Recession

analysis of how restrictive immigration policy came to be normalised in two European countries over 3 decades. The book analyses the evolution of policy responses to irregular migration in Germany and the United Kingdom from 1973 to 1999. Vollmer takes an inductive historical approach and makes use of both discourse analysis and policy analysis to explain how these two countries, with different historical contexts, came to favour very similar policy responses to irregular migration. The first chapter provides a historical context of the policy domain of irregular migration, as well as migration to the United Kingdom and Germany after the Second World War. Chapter 2 explains the methodology and the main analytical concepts used in the book, namely, ‘frame formations’ and ‘meta-frames’. Chapters 3 and 4 present the first layer of analysis, which is a detailed examination of the evolution of both countries’ immigration policies. For each relevant policy process, Vollmer identifies the dominant ‘frame composites’ of the discourse and the ‘frame formations’ that were successfully mobilised by politicians. The fifth chapter represents the second layer by analysing how and when the three ‘metaframes’ he identifies (politics of ideologies, politics of the nation and politics of security) appear and change. Vollmer concludes by describing three hegemonic shifts in both countries that enabled converging policies: (1) the demonisation of the irregular migrant, (2) the need to act (quickly) becoming a normalised logic and (3) the normalisation of securitisation logic. The analysis reveals that the two countries have experienced converging immigration policy regimes, despite their diverging histories. Through a detailed analysis of official discourse, Vollmer convincingly demonstrates three hegemonic shifts in both countries, accounting for an increasingly restrictive policy environment. Thereby this interdisciplinary book is a very valuable contribution to political science, migration studies and European studies that demonstrates how the discourse of the ‘threat of migration’ and the securitisation of migration policy have not only dominated but also been normalised in Europe. Why European migration discourses converge, however, is less convincing and the reader would benefit from a deeper contextualisation of the discursive processes in light of socio-political developments in both Germany and the United Kingdom, as well as the potential role of Europeanisation processes.