Notermans has written a bold and ambitious book in whichhe purports to explain the conditions under which socialdemocratic policies, and therefore the social democraticproject, have been successful in modern democracies. Thebook, which relies heavily but not exclusively on historicaldata, examines the ebb and flow of social democratic domi-nance in five countries-Germany, the Netherlands, Norway,Sweden, and Britain-since roughly the introduction of(male) universal suffrage after World War I.