The title of Sharon Wright Austin's new book is intended to be ironic. As the author persuasively demonstrates, there has been no transformation of politics in the Mississippi Delta, and the area's wealthy white elite continues to dominate politics there. The lack of significant change is disappointing, as the Delta's poverty rate is more than three times the national average, and four counties in the area have higher infant mortality rates than some Third World countries.

When poverty and hunger in America were “discovered” in the 1960s, the despair in the Mississippi Delta moved forward, front and center, into the American consciousness. Senators Robert Kennedy and Joseph Clark toured the area, followed later by physicians who documented shocking levels of malnutrition. Hearings were held in Washington, and the secretary of agriculture was publicly berated for allowing hunger to fester in a country with such agricultural riches.

Wright Austin's book is an attempt to find out what has happened in the Delta since that time. With the Voting Rights Act and the creation of various economic development programs, one might have hoped for political empowerment and economic advancement by blacks in this heavily African American area of Mississippi. In depressing detail, the author proves that neither has emerged since the 1960s. There have been slight advances, politically and economically, but blacks in the Delta remain justifiably frustrated at the lack of progress.

The Transformation of Plantation Politics is an eloquent and powerful book. Wright Austin has amassed a great deal of data on income, education, and elections in 11 core and seven peripheral Delta counties. She also interviewed political elites in the area and her historical research appears surefooted. Her most important finding is that a sharp rise in the number of black officeholders has done little to help African Americans in the Delta. On the surface, African American candidates have done well since the Voting Rights Act enfranchised a population largely prevented from voting. There were only 57 black elected officials in Mississippi in 1970; by 2000 the number had risen to 897.

Wright Austin determines that this success at the ballot box is a false prosperity. She notes that “[e]ven in counties with black voting-age populations of 40% and above, African American contenders have won few county and countywide elections” (p. 105). The local offices that blacks have won, such as seats on the city council, have brought them limited influence. Since they could no longer keep blacks from voting, the “plantation bloc practiced ingenious methods” to dilute black voting strength (p. 102). These tactics included instituting more at-large elections, gerrymandering districts, and changing elected offices to appointed ones. In the Delta today, power lies at the county level and African Americans have fared poorly in winning county supervisory elections. In the small towns that dot the Delta, African Americans may hold office but those offices possess little authority.

Two theoretical frameworks guide Wright Austin. The first is community power, and she asks which of four theories (pluralist, elitist, regime, and incorporation) best explain political development in the Mississippi Delta. Not surprisingly, she finds elitist theory to be an apt guide to the power structure of the area, but she also finds incorporation theory to be useful. Drawing on Rufus P. Browning, Dale R. Marshall, and David H. Tabb's Protest Is Not Enough (1984), Wright Austin offers her most interesting analysis on the theoretical side. Unlike the 10 northern California cities in Protest Is Not Enough, where the elections of minorities to city councils catalyzed minority–white coalitions, the election of African Americans to city councils in the Delta has done little to generate biracial coalitions. Wright Austin makes it clear that incorporation is a complicated process, not yet fully mapped out, and that tipping points in local politics may prove illusory.

The author's second theoretical framework is social capital theory. She argues that “bridging” social capital—linkages between blacks and whites—is sorely missing in the Delta and that this has contributed significantly to the problems that African Americans have experienced in trying to move forward in the political and economic realms. Her views are certainly logical and make a great deal of sense but, that said, her data are not ideally suited to allow her to go beyond broad generalizations. Most social capital research has utilized surveys of attitudes and behavior and measurements of organizational populations, memberships, and interaction. Lacking such data, Wright Austin draws instead on her interviews with local leaders and on small case studies of politics in the Delta.

There are some glimmers of hope. Wright Austin finds that race relations are improving and that the need for economic development in the Delta may nurture more cooperation in the future. African Americans have become more successful in organizing community groups, and a handful of community development corporations have scored some small victories. At the same time, her sobering analysis suggests that progress will continue to be slow. The Transformation of Plantation Politics has much to teach us, and scholars of the politics of the South, race relations, and urban politics will find this excellent work to be particularly valuable.