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Electoral Systems and Party Systems: A Study of Twenty-Seven Democracies, 1945-1990. By Arend Lijphart. New York: Oxford University Press, 1994. 209p. $29.95.
This new book by Arend Lijphart combines the virtues of being both an invaluable reference source and simultaneously a new advancement in the comparative analysis of electoral systems. Called by the author himself a "collaborated project with as its product, a single-authored book," Electoral Systems and Party Systems has benefited from the indepth knowledge of "experts on each of the twenty-seven countries" and gives the most extensive, detailed, and accurate account so far of rules of legislative elections and cases of institutional change for such a broad collection of stable democracies (pp. 1, 8). Information is presented in a very compact form in the text of the book, numerous tables, and appendices. In addition, the author makes his full data set available to those interested in replication and alternative research. Undoubtedly, the book will become a standard reference in the field. However, the value of Lijphart's book as a source of reference should not obscure its important input to the methodology of institutional analysis.
At least in three major ways, this new book contributes to the studies of electoral institutions. First of all, it offers a reasonable definition of a single institutional measure, effective threshold for legislative representation, to describe and classify all existing electoral systems. Second, the author adds the rules of Euro-elections to the conventional collection of the rules of legislative elections in stable democracies. This addition not only increases the number of cases under consideration but also opens an opportunity for extensive controlled comparisons where consequences of institutional change can be observed directly--within the same country-specific...