practices are so easily divorced from any set of definite beliefs. The troubling thoughtis that this is exactly what has made it so successful in North America.

Northrop Frye Center, Toronto Paul Groarke

Violent Democracy. By Daniel Ross. Pp. 183, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press,2004, $36.95.

Democracy, to the extent that it exists, perches precariously on the back of Hobbes’leviathan. This may seem a strange claim given that many conceive of democracy asthe inherently peaceful antithesis to authoritarian conceptions of sovereignty. Butaccording to Daniel Ross, these latter conceptions of democracy obscure the truenature of democracies, and in the process mask democracy’s true grounding andcontinual fragility.Modern democracies rely upon mythic stories of their creation to obscure the

violence inherent in their foundation. According to these myths democracies arisefrom a rejection of violent tyrranicide. The coercive sovereignty of the monarch isrejected in favor of the popular sovereignty of ‘the people’. In reality, the founding ofa democracy is never so innocent. First, this founding entails the construction of ‘apeople’. To exist, the democracy must decide who counts as a person, and who countsas a member of this particular people. The founding also entails the definition of aborder. This people must be physically separated and protected from other peoplewho do not belong. The founding thus requires a destructive rejection of the socialorder that pre-existed the democracy. Previous territorial jurisdictions, native‘peoples’, and traditional social structures are wiped away with the creation ofdemocracies. Finally, the democracy requires a sovereign founder. This founder maybe a foreign power, nationalist leader, or some subset of the posited ‘people’. It isnever ‘the people’ themselves. ‘The people’ do not exist prior to the declaration of thedemocracy. Thus, all democracy depends in its founding upon a sovereign act thatprecedes and establishes the people who will be sovereign.However successful their myth deluded existences, inevitably, democracies are

always insecure and afflicted by the ghosts of their own violence. Since ‘the people’ ofthe democracy are constructed in the process of the founding of the democracy, thelegitimacy of the democracy cannot, on its own terms, be a matter of history.Legitimacy must depend upon these people accepting the declaration of the foundingsovereign and constantly reasserting the fact of their existence as this people withinthese borders. There is no guarantee of such acceptance. Democracy is always apromise to be fulfilled in the next moment when the people may or may not legitimizeit by identifying with it.Nor do democracies ever leave behind their hidden dependence on non-democratic

sovereignty. To maintain the borders, identity, and functioning of democratic societies,democracies occasionally need the intervention of non-democratic structures. ThusAustralia allows its Governor General to depose its Prime Minister in a case ofbureaucratic standoff and America allows its Supreme Court to make a case specificruling that determines a purportedly democratic election. In times of war too democraciesdepend upon non-democratic systems of authority for efficient and effective action. Hereexecutive/military sovereignty is always in tension with popular sovereignty.To deny the need for these structures is to deny the true situation of democracy.

Democracies, in order to endure as ‘this people’, must have recourse to suchstructures. Democracy always rides on the back of the leviathan. But if democracydepends on the leviathan it also is always threatened by the leviathan. Every exertionof non-democratic sovereignty within a democracy offers the possible rise of simple

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tyranny cloaked in democratic guise. Without a realistic appraisal of the violence atthe heart of democracy, democracies are bound to underestimate the ease of their owntransformation into fascism. The indefinitely extended ‘war on terror’, Ross fears,offers an occasion for such a transformation. The grasp for power to suspend the lawon the part of the American executive represents new and dangerous appearance ofthe leviathan. The American Supreme Court or Congress may yet fence the leviathan,but no one ought to underestimate its reality on the grounds that it could not grow outof a democracy.Such is the main line of argument in Violent Democracy. This argument is explored

and explicated through Ross’ often provocative treatment of recent developments inAustralian and American politics and law. The status of Australian aboriginal persons,the proper reaction to border protection, the grounding of American neo-conservativepolitical philosophy, the justification of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and thedesignation and treatment of enemy combatants are all subjects broached in this work.Ross’ claims are not uncontroversial. His own perspective on legitimacy and morality isgrounded in a Hobbesian individualism that ought to be deconstructed as thoroughly asthe simplistic view of democracy he is attacking. His view of war as an instance of thelawless state of nature among nations also ought to be challenged in the light of theusefulness of contemporary laws of war and the significance of the just war tradition as awhole. Further, his particular interpretations of the motives and character of particularpolitical actions are open to critique. Still, Ross offers here an intriguing framework forthinking about democracy, and has presents a chilling narrative that highlights realdangers in the contemporary political scene.

Hendrix College, Conway Arkansas, USA Kevin Carnahan

To Rwanda and Back: Liberation Spirituality and Reconciliation. By Mary Grey. Pp. 228,London, Darton, Longman and Todd, 2007, d12.95.

In December 2005, Mary Grey visited Rwanda at the invitation of the Faith andOrder Commission of the World Council of Churches. The experience was powerfuland inspired her to write about liberation spirituality and reconciliation in theRwandan genocide. The book born of her experience bears Grey’s direct andcompassionate writing. She addresses the pain of the atrocity without resorting totrite explanations. The book is accessible and anyone who is interested in a theologicalperspective of the impossible challenge of explaining genocide will find To Rwandaand Back very appealing.The concept of genocide is not easy to grasp. The sheer number of people who die in

genocide is mind boggling. In To Rwanda and Back, Mary Grey writes about thehorrific events in Rwanda in 1994, and without relying on theories of theodicy, sheaddresses the complexity of understanding the trauma. She also unswervingly tacklesthe complicity of the church in the Rwandan genocide. Although Grey is RomanCatholic, she does not deal with the genocide from a strictly Roman perspective. Shedraws on a number of examples, including Gandhi, environmental theology, Judaism,Sufism, and her work with Dalits in India. Throughout her examples, Grey’s focusremains Jesus’ emphasis of non-violent and Christian reconciliation.The book is organized into seven chapters and an introduction. In the introduction,

Grey vividly describes the context of her visit and a little of the background, butchapter one includes sufficient detail of genocide so that someone who is onlyperipherally aware of the events in Rwanda in 1994 will better understand the contextof the book. Chapter one also addresses the importance of remembering whathappened. In chapters two and three, she continues to use stories from the genocide to

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