The democratic transitions in Eastern Europe have inspired a host of research that utilizes these changes as a laboratory for examining the enduring question of how democracies can become or remain stable. In Becoming Party Politicians, Louise Davidson-Schmich provides a unique contribution to this work by examining the behavior of East German state legislatures since unification. Davidson-Schmich uses the unusual case of East Germany much to her advantage. Robert Rohrschneider and others have used the division of Germany after World War II as a means of examining how mass and elite public opinion was influenced by the experience of communism, but Davidson-Schmich wishes to know how legislators' political behavior is constrained when democratic institutions—specifically political parties—act at odds with their socialized opinions and preferences. Most of the work on institutions in postcommunist countries focuses on the factors influencing the development of those institutions, and East Germany is usually excluded from such analyses because unification immediately installed a stable national policymaking process and a ready-made party system. Davidson-Schmich uses this fact as an advantage: Rather than asking how stable institutions can develop during democratic transition and consolidation, she asks what postcommunist countries would be like if stable political institutions suddenly appeared. Hence, her interest is not in how the East German past transforms current politics but how present political institutions limit the influence of the East German past.

To examine this question, Davidson-Schmich turns her attention to the five new state legislatures created in East Germany by unification. She begins by laying out two alternative models of legislators' behavior. The first—a socialization thesis—is based on the already extensive literature that shows that East German legislators bring with them opinions colored by their past including a greater distrust of political parties, stronger support for direct democratic institutions and policies that reduce economic inequality, and a higher level of political intolerance than their West German counterparts. The alternative—an institutional approach—argues that legislators' behavior is severely moderated by the institutional incentives in the German state for party discipline and control, representative democracy, and policies of political tolerance. To answer whether socialization or institutions drive East German state legislative behavior, she provides a wealth of data on legislators' voting records in the state parliaments (Landstage), the adoption of direct democratic institutions in state constitutions, and policies for civil union rights for same-sex couples.

The book is most impressive in the quality and quantity of evidence that Davidson-Schmich brings to bear on these questions. To talk about party discipline, for example, she codes the official biographies of all the state legislators to examine the degree to which they move into official party positions. Because it is difficult to explore party discipline in German legislatures where roll-call votes constitute a small biased minority of votes, she codes plenary session transcripts to get information of the degree of dissent within majority parties and governing coalitions from the government's positions on all substantive votes. The book also provides extensive quotes from these sessions and a number of in-depth interviews with party leaders and legislators that provide poignant illustrations of how these institutions constrain individual legislators. Moreover, her analyses of the adoption of direct democratic institutions and same-sex civil unions provides the best English language description I have seen of these issues in the German context.

Davidson-Schmich's data suggest uniformly the constraining role that institutions have on legislatures' behavior and policy. Chapter 2 argues that East Germans have quickly become professional politicians by showing that different cohorts of legislators (measured by whether they entered the legislature at unification or in later legislative periods) have sought party offices and other positions that will reassure their reelection in a party-dominated world. Davidson-Schmich argues in Chapter 3 that disciplined parties have taken hold in East German state legislatures despite initial rejections of party discipline as historically associated with the Socialist Unity Party, the old East German Communist party. Her data indicate that majority parties in East Germany are increasingly disciplined and that opposition parties have less and less influence on the policies and proposed legislation by governing parties. Chapters 4 (on direct democratic institutions in state constitutions) and 5 (on same-sex policies) switch the level of analysis to the legislature, arguing that as a whole East German state legislatures showed little differences from their Western counterparts in the types of policies they adopted. On the whole, Davidson-Schmich makes a very persuasive argument for institutions; however, it is in these later chapters that her arguments are least effective. Partially the problem is one of level of analysis: In switching to legislatures as the unit of analysis, she loses the ability to show that individuals with specific preferences are influenced by institutions to act against these preferences. In the case of same-sex unions, which relies heavily on qualitative analysis of the policies, I read her data somewhat differently, noting that two of the five East German state legislatures introduced polices that were considerably more intolerant than their western counterparts. Despite these issues, though, Davidson-Schmich's book is on the whole persuasive in large part because she takes the time to consider alternative hypotheses when appropriate and to lay out in clear detail the mechanisms by which she expects institutions to make a difference. Even though one can sometimes get lost in the detail, she is a careful researcher.

In sum, Becoming Party Politicians is a creative attempt to weigh the power of institutions against the power of socialization. Though this book will not be the definitive word on this debate, it is a sound attempt to uncover the power institutions could bring to new democracies using an inspired research design and highly original data. For German scholars the book is a must because it provides a wealth of information and a worthy example of how to use the German case to gain leverage on the important questions of the discipline. Scholars concerned about the future of democratic institutions in postcommunist countries should consider her argument as well; although few countries will have institutions thrust upon them, Davidson-Schmich's work suggests that once established such institutions have considerable power over the individuals within them.