does not explore the applicability of this model to the public policy process: policy creation and implementation might one day benefit from an opening of the “source code,” the information inputs and processes that feed policy formulation, to more “eyeballs” ~ paraphrasing Eric Raymond’s language in his essay The Cathedral and the Bazaar, Cambridge MA: O’Reilly, 1999! with the goal of bringing broader per- spectives to policy and, ideally, a commensurate reduction in program flaws and failure. In sum, this book is a capable treatment of an extremely complex topic. It introduces open source software to a non-specialist audience and situates it within the relevant social science concepts. MARK ZSCHOCH Simon Fraser University Nature and History in American Political Development: A Debate James W. Ceaser; with responses from Jack N. Rakove, Nancy L. Rosenblum, Rogers M. Smith Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 2006, pp. viii, 197 DOI: 10.10170S0008423907070278 James Ceaser gave the first Tocqueville Memorial Lecture on American Politics sponsored by the Center for American Political Studies at Harvard in 2004. This volume contains an expanded version of his lecture, the three responses by, res- pectively, a historian, a political theorist, and a political scientist, and Ceaser’s rejoinder or, in the case of Rosenblum, rebuttal to each. There are two things going on in this volume: a scholarly debate on how to approach the elusive question of the role of ideas in politics and a rather acrimonious argument over Ceaser’s motivation. Ceaser argues that throughout American history politicians have used “foun- dational” ideas or concepts to justify their actions and that such ideas are more fundamental than the “traditions of thought” or “public philosophy” concepts previously used to explain the role of ideas. “A pyramid of idea types can be established with foundational ideas at the base” ~5!. He cites three such founda- tional concepts, nature, history, and religion, but then, curiously, deals only with the first two. ~He later pleads limited space but the omission makes all three respon- dents suspicious.! By “nature” Ceaser means the argument from “natural right” used by the Founders and revived by Lincoln. History takes different forms; thus the sacred history of the Puritans is displaced by customary history—the “rights of Englishmen”—which is displaced, Ceaser argues, by natural right in the Revolutionary era. Later, different forms of “philosophy of history,” the argu- ment that history is progressing towards a specific kind of end, become dominant. Ceaser goes through American history giving examples of foundational arguments used by politicians, paying most attention to the Founders, Lincoln, and the Progressives. Ceaser’s thesis is a useful one that breaks new ground in the study of political ideas, but he claims too much for it and he presents it in such a way as to undercut it. Under pressure from the respondents, he concedes that he does not show a causal link between foundational ideas and political actions, that foundational ideas are used for a variety of purposes in politics and that they are the principal mode of justifica- tion only in some periods, particularly in times of change. He also provides, but only in his final comments and without integrating it with the rest of his argument, an interesting sketch of the different modes in which religion has functioned as a foun- dational concept. The problem with Ceaser’s presentation of his thesis is his “normative take,” his obvious preference for nature over any form of history as the only foundation 252 Recensions / Reviews