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).