Books received.

THE YEARBOOK OF EUROPEAN ENVIRONMENTAL LAW: VOLUME 4

Edited by T.F.M. Etty and H. Somsen. Great Clarendon Street Oxford OX2 6DP United Kingdom: Oxford University Press, December 2004. (44 1865) 556-767. www.oup.com. ISBN: 0-19-926786-3. 881 pp. $250.00/87.50 [pounds sterling] Hardback.

The Yearbook of European Environmental Law brings together topical analyses of contemporary European Environmental Law. Leading European and American academics provide in-depth scholarly articles covering a wide range of challenging issues. The Yearbook contains an easily accessible Annual Survey providing legal practitioners, academics, and policy-makers with detailed and important information on current and future European environmental law. Established reporters clearly and critically examine national responses to this increasingly complex body of European law. In addition the Yearbook features summaries and full texts of preparatory commission documents, green books, and other discussion papers, as well as a selection of reviews of books.

Editor in chief T.F.M. Etty is a Researcher at the Centre for Environmental Law, University of Amsterdam.

Editor in chief H. Somsen is a Professor at the University of Amsterdam.

Current survey editor T.F.M. Etty is a Researcher at the Centre for Environmental Law, University of Amsterdam. Book review editor J. Scott is a Lecturer at the University of Cambridge.

Book review editor M. Lee is a Lecturer at the Kings's College.

Documents editor L. Kramer is an Honorary Professor at the University of Bremen.

DELIBERATIVE ENVIRONMENTAL POLITICS: DEMOCRACY AND ECOLOGICAL RATIONALITY

Walter F. Baber and Robert V. Bartlett. 55 Hayward St., Cambridge, Massachusetts 02142: MIT Press, October 2005. (800) 405-1619. www.mitpress.mit.edu. ISBN 0-262-52444-9. 288 pp. $24.00 Paperback.

In Deliberative Environmental Politics, Walter Baber and Robert Bartlett link political theory with the practice of environmental politics, arguing that the "deliberative turn" in democratic theory presents an opportunity to move beyond the policy stalemates of interest-group liberalism and offers a foundation for reconciling rationality, strong democracy, and demanding environmentalism. Deliberative democracy, which presumes that the essence of democracy is deliberation--thoughtful and discursive public participation in decision making--rather than voting, interest aggregation, or rights, has the potential to produce more environmentally sound policy decisions and a more ecologically rational form of environmental governance.

Baber and Bartlett defend deliberative democracy's relevance to environmental politics in the twenty-first century against criticisms from other theorists. They critically examine three major models for deliberative democracy--those of John Rawls, Jurgen Habermas, and advocates of full liberalism such as Amy Gutmann, Dennis Thompson, and James Bohman--and analyze the implications of each of these approaches for ecologically rational environmental politics as well as for institutions, citizens, experts, and social movements. In order to establish that democracy is ecologically sustainable and that environmental protection can become a norm of culture rather...