Electoral Systems and Political Transformation in Post-Communist Europe by Sarah BirchReview by: Marek RybarThe Slavonic and East European Review, Vol. 83, No. 1 (Jan., 2005), pp. 153-155Published by: the Modern Humanities Research Association and University College London, School ofSlavonic and East European StudiesStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4214072 .

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REVIEWS 153

lie. They are critical of the failure of the United States to do more to promote democracy and economic reform, particularly in I99I-92. The fact that acrimony over such issues as NATO enlargement or Kosovo did not result in a return to the Cold War is taken to show that 'history has vindicated those Wilsonians in all three U.S. administrations who believed that Russian transformation was a U.S. security interest' (p. 365).

'Realists' might respond that Moscow's acquiescent attitude reflected consciousness of its weakness. The authors themselves remark on the 'breathtaking speed' of Russia's decline as a major power (p. 359); where Khrushchev once dreamt of overtaking the West, Putin now aspires to catch up with Portugal. As is pointed out, there was a lag in Washington's perception of this, and in his first term Clinton had no higher foreign policy priority than the support of El'tsin. But later in the decade Russia received much less attention, and less consideration was given to the wishes of its leaders. In other respects, too, the story told here seems to vindicate a 'realist' perspective. The valuable statistics (and tables) on aid not only show how small the American effort was in comparison to that of Europe (especially Germany) but also how much more aid was provided for security purposes (the dismantling of Soviet nuclear and chemical weapons) than for economic assistance or democracy promotion. This reflected the priorities of Congress, which of course has to appropriate the funds. Whatever latitude of choice the United States enjoys with respect to its external environment, there are significant internal constraints on policymakers' ability to chart the nation's course. In this case, the influence of domestic lobbies is apparent over NATO enlargement, the distribution of aid between Russia and the Newly Independent States (especially Ukraine) and the amount that went in the form of food.

Finally, there is the question of how much influence on Russian internal developments the United States could have had a subject on which the authors seem in two minds (p. 40). The dream that propaganda and foreign aid can produce an American-style democracy in Russia dates back at least to I9I 7. The authors are evidently close to Russian reformers who shared this aspiration, but history suggests that in both countries most people have always had other priorities.

St Catharine's College, Cambridge JOHN A. THOMPSON

Birch, Sarah. Electoral Systems and Political Transformation in Post-Communist Europe. One Europe or Several? Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke and New York, 2003. xii + 2 I2 pp. Notes. Tables. Appendices. Bibliography. Index. ?45.00?

THIS is an important and well-written contribution to the fast-growing literature on electoral systems and party politics in the new democracies of Eastern Europe. The main aim of the book is to explore the influence of electoral systems on the degree of inclusion of citizens into political processes and to establish the patterns of impact of electoral systems on party system institutionalization. Included in the study are lower house parliamentary elections between i990 and 2002 in twenty states of East-Central Europe

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154 SEER, 83, I, 2005

(ECE); only Azerbaijan, Belarus and Yugoslavia before 2000 were left out on the basis of not being democratic enough by international standards. The book convincingly demonstrates its main hypothesis, namely that electoral systems have a systematic impact on how representative structures function even in the period shortly after regime change. The first part serves as an introduction to the general discussion about the origins of electoral institutions in ECE. In the second part the relationship between electoral rules and inclusion of voters into political processes is explored. The third part deals with questions of how electoral institutions influence the size and shape of party systems and its overall stability and change. The analysis is supplemented with a summary of electoral results in all countries under consideration.

Even though the relationship between electoral systems and party competi- tion is notoriously complex, the author argues that in establishing electoral institutions, politicians in ECE in many cases took a long-term view and did not necessarily choose the electoral rules that would enhance their individual or party chances. Moreover, despite rather frequent tampering with various aspects of electoral systems (e.g. gradual increases in electoral thresholds), generally the electoral institutions show considerable stability and persistence. Unlike the single member district (SMD) majority systems used in the Communist period, all new democracies use electoral systems with important (or only) proportional representation components. In addition, in many countries electoral systems are specified in the constitutions, a practice rather unusual in Western Europe.

Because no country in ECE adopted compulsory voting, various aspects of electoral institutions and other political variables (e.g. closeness of political competition or support for the left parties) may influence levels of citizens' participation in elections. However, while the former has a significant positive impact on electoral participation, with proportional representation list-based systems encouraging higher participation, no significant impact was detected in the latter. The author explains this by pointing to low party identification and generally high uncertainty surrounding political competition. As for levels of inclusion, i.e. whether an individual vote contributed to the election of a representative or not, mixed electoral systems are shown to be the most inclusive of all electoral systems used in ECE. This is a somewhat surprising finding, as it is generally believed that mixed systems are in this respect somewhere in between SMD systems and proportional representation systems; it is also of normative interest for all involved in electoral institutional engineering. SMD systems have a reductive effect on the number of parliamentary parties. However, this relationship is unproblematic only in established post-Communist states; in many new states, especially in the former Soviet Union, it has had a more fragmenting effect, since a relatively large number of parties were able to elect a small number of representatives. As the author points out, the size and shape of a party system is also influenced by whether voters can cast a personal vote or not. In the former case the number of parliamentary parties tends to be higher. Put more generally, the existence of 'politician-enabling' features of electoral systems has important consequences for party system size and shape. Party systems' instability in ECE, a well-established fact noted by many observers, is caused by both

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REVIEWS I55

changes in the electorate and at the level of party elites. The book focuses more on the electorate, distinguishing between electoral volatility, measured here with regard to switches between parties contesting two consecutive elections, and party replacement, measured as the proportion of the electorate attracted by new formations. Though 'novelty' is sometimes difficult to establish, given the frequent splits and mergers of political parties, volatility and replacement are conceptually very useful categories. Party replacement scores are shown to be considerably higher in the former Soviet Union, a fact explained by a more patrimonial legacy transformed into personalistic links between voters and politicians. As a consequence, some parties serve as personal vehicles of individual candidates, contributing to a higher incidence of party system instability and reduced organizational continuity. The lack of evidence for a 'cartelization thesis', i.e. the fact that the success of the newcomers is not related to state financing of established parties and other party finance variables, is another important finding of the book.

Sarah Birch has written an accessible yet empirically rich and theoretically informed book that is a must for anyone interested in electoral processes and party politics (not only) in Eastern Europe.

Department of Political Science MAREK RYBAR Comenius University, Bratislava

Millard, Frances. Elections, Parties and Representation in Post-Communist Europe. Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke and New York, 2004. xxiii + 350 pp. List of party acronyms. Tables. Notes. Bibliography. Index. ?55.??.

ELECTIONS, parties and representation have been central themes of research examining the politics of Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) over the past decade and a half. Such accounts, however, have tended to focus on one of these three components of the now not-quite-so-young democracies of the region. In contrast, in Elections, Parties and Representation in Post-Communist Europe, Frances Millard examines not only what types of political parties have emerged, how they have developed and why these parties have proved successful or unsuccessful at the ballot box, but she also explores the interaction between voters and the electoral mechanism, and why some social groups are better represented than others in the parliaments of the region.

There is much to applaud in Millard's monograph. Her account is furnished with detailed empirical evidence of both the qualitative and quantitative variety. Unlike some other political science accounts of CEE, she only uses number crunching where appropriate and necessary, ensuring that the details of the individual cases are brought into the analysis to provide a full and rounded explanation of political outcomes.

Surveying party politics in the past fifteen years, she notes that those parties which have been successful at the ballot box over a number of elections, such as Liberal Democracy in Slovenia, the Civic Democratic Party in the Czech Republic and the Hungarian Socialists, have 'based their appeal to the electorate on ideological-programmatic grounds' (p. I I I), which accords with van Beyme's observations of Western Europe. Nonetheless, the region has

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