Jonathan Crystal's primary theoretical objective in this book is to refine our understanding of “how societal actors translate economic interests into policy preferences” (p. 2). In this respect, he is not concerned with explaining why societal actors achieve their preferences, but instead with why societal actors seek one policy rather than another to further their interests. To do so, the author examines U.S. firms' reactions to the increase in foreign direct investment in the United States during the 1980s and 1990s.

Crystal rightly notes that in the international political economy literature, the dominant way to understand societal preferences is by reference to societal actors' economic position and the relative economic returns they receive from different policy choices. Chapter 2 provides a useful overview of three such economic interest explanations—a production profile approach, a global industry perspective, and a strategic trade approach—and their expectations for a firm's likely preferences for the regulation of trade and inward foreign direct investment (IFDI). Crystal concludes that deducing expectations from a firm's economic situation is likely to provide only a partial understanding of its IFDI policy preferences since “[o]ften a number of policies (not all of them mutually compatible) would serve producer interests” (p. 2), and it is “unclear which motives or incentives will dominate a firm's calculation of its policy preferences” (p. 8). Which policy ultimately is demanded is a function of political factors: “[F]irms will seek only policies for which domestic institutions exist to channel their demands and supply the policy output; moreover, the policies must accord with widely held beliefs concerning the appropriate role of the state” (p. 155). This is the book's central analytical premise. It should be noted that the author does not seek to link specific institutional configurations or norms to demands for more or less restrictive IFDI strategies; instead, the existence or absence of a norm or institution simply affects firms' decisions “to pursue or not to pursue a particular strategy” (p. 25) to maximize their profits. He determines this effect empirically, maintaining that institutions and norms reduce the relative costs of alternative actions by providing information about their comparative feasibility and legitimacy. In this way, domestic institutions and norms are identified as “telling us how economic interests are translated into different types of policy preferences” (p. 7).

Crystal writes (p. 162) that “[t]he political approach laid out in this book represents the beginnings of a synthesis of a deductive, parsimonious, rational-choice orientation and a more accurate, context-sensitive, historical institutionalist approach. The main ideas behind such a synthesis are neither terribly complicated nor surprising.” Here are the primary strength and weakness of the book. It provides a straightforward way to make more accurate some of the more theoretically spare and useful insights regarding preference formation. However, the book's intuitive suggestions to strengthen these theories remain contextual and less precisely specified than they might have been. For example, firms are expected to demand a policy for which the prevailing institutional context promises the most favorable outcome. Yet it is not completely clear how one identifies a priori the specific institutional traits posited to affect a firm's probable success: those that channel firms' demands and supply desired policies. In addition, greater specification of these institutions and their impact for the comparative feasibility of various policies is needed since societal actors typically face a complex institutional landscape; multiple institutions resulting in different policies may serve as resources for firms to achieve their interests.

The four empirical chapters apply the argument to eight sectors that faced increasing foreign competition in the U.S. market and, by consequence, a reason to consider demanding policies dealing with IFDI. Crystal investigates the steel, consumer electronic, semiconductor, automobile, machine tool, antifriction bearing, airline, and telecommunication services industries. The breadth of empirical coverage is impressive as is the array of details regarding a litany of policy demands for each sector. In each chapter, the author derives expectations from the three economic interest approaches for the sector's preferences and explains whether and how the two political factors shed light on the IFDI policy preferences the firms advanced. To Crystal's credit, he is careful to note when the political factors do not offer significant additional insight (e.g., Chapter 3). Nonetheless, several of the other chapters, particularly those covering the semiconductor, automobile, and machine tool industries, indicate the difficulties of using only the economic approaches to make sense of the firms' demands.

One goal of the book is to explain why U.S. firms spent more time and resources demanding trade restrictions than foreign direct investment regulations. Crystal suggests that this contrast can be understood by reference to institutional and normative differences in the two arenas of U.S. foreign economic policy. The empirical chapters might have explored this comparison in more depth with respect to each sector's strategies, especially in light of the emphasis on the role of economic interests in the conclusion (pp. 145–50). There is nevertheless much of interest in the sectors' varying strategies toward IFDI, and Crystal helps to clarify their individual policy preferences. These chapters often indicate that government officials have their own ideas about how to deal with IFDI. Since the author tends to associate institutions with rules and regulations, it is unclear how state actors fit into the conception of institutions on offer. Given that policymakers enforce regulations, moreover, how do individual policymakers' preferences affect societal actors' calculations of a policy's feasibility or legitimacy? In this respect, is it the presence or absence of institutions per se or the presence or absence of sympathetic officials in these institutions?

In sum, Unwanted Company usefully draws our attention to the impact of political factors on firms' decisions to translate their desire for greater profit into preferences for supportive government action. Crystal's use of domestic institutions and norms to understand these decisions offers a promising avenue for future research, and his detailed discussions of the sectors' policy preferences regarding the regulation of inward foreign direct investment provide a valuable resource for students of U.S. foreign economic policy.