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First World Nationalisms: Class and Ethnic Politics in Northern Ireland and Quebec Katherine O'Sullivan See Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986, pp. x, 215

Although much is covered in this book, there remain important omissions. The history, though extensive, is rather mechanical, so that it is hard to get a feel from Higgins' account for why Canadian institutions and practices developed as they did. Few comparisons are made with Britain or the United States, let alone with other countries, so it is hard for the student to understand what is distinctive about the Canadian experience and how it fits into the general pattern in the liberal democracies. A comparative frame of reference would have been particularly useful in analyzing contemporary electoral politics, interest group activity, intergovernmental relations, and so forth. Canada cannot be understood in isolation. Nor can one deal with politics and government at the local level without attending more carefully to the things that local governments do. The student gets little sense from Higgins' account of how urban planning or municipal budgeting or school board policy-making actually works: what interests are affected, what issues are raised, what effects decisions have. The animating issues in local politics tend to be reduced to the conflict between "reformers" and business-oriented "boosters." As a result, the student is left with an overly simplified picture of local politics—one that merges too easily with the reformers' own ideological perceptions. Despite Higgins' efforts to bring his book up to date, it still has a 1970s feel about it. A whole chapter is devoted to local government reorganization—of which there has been little for a decade. Half a chapter is devoted to the "contemporary" reform movement, which seems to have petered out. No attention is given to the issues of the 1980s: for example, fiscal restraint, privatization, and the new boosterism. These may be transient concerns, as Higgins implies, but they deserve analysis nonetheless. Their predominance reveals much about the character of local politics. One of Higgins' aims in this book was to broaden his range of analysis, to include other local authorities besides the municipalities, and to deal with rural or small-town Canada as well as the urban areas. However, this is still a book about urban municipalities. School boards are mentioned in various contexts, but are not analyzed in relation to municipalities. Non-urban municipalities are barely considered. These lacunae reflect the state of the literature in Canada: almost all Canadian writing about local politics deals with urban municipalities. One hopes that Higgins' efforts to take notice of the rest of the local state in Canada will stimulate further research. Inevitably one is struck by what a text does not do, rather than what it does. The fact remains that Higgins has provided as good an introduction as anyone to his subject. His book is the right place for students to begin their study of local and urban politics in Canada.