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Book Reviews: Authoritarianism, Elections, and Democracy
Progress in political analysis is anchored in both theory and observation, and Russell J. Dalton and Christopher J. Anderson's edited volume provides a particularly vivid example that is worthy of both consideration and emulation. The focus of their collective effort is on 1) institutional and compositional variation across modern democracies, 2) the consequences that arise for the incentives and behavior of individual citizens, and 3) the implications for politics in the aggregate--the level at which politics takes on significance and meaning.
The authors are thus engaged in a frontal assault on what Heinz Eulau would have called the micro-macro problem in political analysis (Politics, Self, and Society, 1986). This problem is based on the recognition that a single level of analysis--either micro or macro--necessarily misses the point of democratic politics. The real action occurs at the intersection between individuals and their surroundings, and relevant analyses must thus address the interdependence between the two. Hence, the authors join a chorus of influential voices who have produced a series of distinguished analyses--V. O. Key in Southern Politics in State and Nation (1949); Philip Converse in "Of Time and Partisan Stability" (Comparative Political Studies 2 [July 1969]: 139-71); Warren Miller in "One-Party Politics and the Voter" (American Political Science Review 50 [September 1956]: 707-25); and Adam Przeworski and Henry Teune in The Logic of Comparative Social Inquiry (1971).
The wonderful element of big problems is that they never cease to pose new questions and, hence, new and revealing analyses. The authors of Citizens, Context, and Choice take advantage of a singularly important data-collection effort--the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems--that involves collaboration among individuals and research teams carrying out national election...