Electoral Engineering: Voting Rules and Political Behavior. By Pippa Norris. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004. 390p. $70.00 cloth, $25.99 paper.

Over 20 years ago, William Riker proposed that the study of electoral systems and their consequences constituted the best-developed research program in contemporary political science. Scores of scholars followed Maurice Duverger's lead, emphasizing how institutions affect the strategic environment facing political actors and the contours of party systems. Other researchers followed Seymour Martin Lipset's and Stein Rokkan's lead, privileging social cleavages as the main features influencing party system development. Recently, scholars have attempted to reconcile or integrate the competing approaches. Pippa Norris's new book fits into this trend by evaluating the two schools of thought side by side, harnessing valuable data produced by the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems (CSES).