Embodying Democracy: Electoral System Design in Post-Communist Europe by S. Birch F. Millard , M. Popescu K. Williams (review)

Abstract

REVIEWS 775 ruled out force in relation to Western Europe, state violence leading to multiple deathswas used againstseparatistsin Tbilisi, Baku,Vilnius and Riga. Gorbachev does not deny his role in sending troops to BakuinJanuary I990, but saysthat the violence against demonstratorsin Tbilisi in March i989 and the killingsin Vilnius in January i99i took place without his knowledge. He does not mention the killingsin Riga, also inJanuary I99I, and Mlynar does not askhim about this, or indeed aboutthe whole campaignwhich Gorbachev launched against Lithuania afterthe Supreme Soviet declared independence in March I990. Aside from the lack of democracy, Gorbachev sees many benefitsas having flown from the Soviet system. People did believe in socialistvalues, definedby Gorbachev as 'freedom, equality, justice, and solidarity' (p. I55). They respected labour, took pride in the industrializationof the country and were prepared to make sacrificesfor future benefit. The population became more educated and lived better. Mlynaraddsthat the existence of Soviet societyput pressureon capitalism,in the interestsof the workers;the welfarestate 'would hardly have happened without the "Soviet threat"' (p. I52). The justice of this comment is shown by the witheringaway of partsof the welfarestate, the lack of funding for state education and the privatizationof public services in West Europeancountriesin the wake of the demise of the Soviet Union. The new introductionsby Brown and by Gorbachev himself usefullyplace the conversationsin context. While the book originallyappeared in Czech in I995, it is symptomatic of Gorbachev's loss of influence in Russia that no Russian edition has appeared yet. Despite the wave of sympathy for him immediately after the death of his wife Raisa, he is stillblamed for the chaos perceived as resulting from his attempt to reform the system, and for the collapse of the Union he fought so hardto preserve. School ofSlavonic andEastEuropean Studies PETER J. S. DUNCAN University College London Birch, S.; Millard, F., Popescu, M. and Williams, K. Embodying Democracy: Electoral System Designin Post-Communist Europe. One Europe or Several? Palgrave,Basingstokeand New York,2002. xiii + 24I pp. Tables. Notes. Bibliography.Glossary.Index. C47.50. ELECTORAL system design may not be a subjectto send the pulses racing and may be mocked in some circles as the preserve of nerdy academics, but as Sarah Birch, FrancesMillard, Marina Popescu and Kieran Williams demonstratein their excellent new book, not only was the initial choice of electoral systemcentral to political debate in I989- I99I post-Communist Europe, but those choices and subsequent amendments have done much to shape politics in the region in the following decade. Birch et al. cover much ground in their tightly argued book. After an opening overview chapter, the authorsdevote around twenty-fivepages each to Poland, Hungary, the Czech and Slovak Republics, Romania, Bulgaria, Russia, and Ukraine, before a concluding chapter brings together the book's main discoveries and arguments. Central to Embodying Democracy is the 776 SEER, 8i, 4, 2003 distinction drawn between two separate stages of electoral design: the first, which coincides with the initial impetus to democratization, and the second, which follows free elections. The relative importance of various ingredients which went into the decision-makingpot (historicalfactors,foreigninfluences, contextual factors, interest-basedcalculations)the authors argue, differedin the two stages. Wisely, Birch et al. avoid the pitfallof imposing a rigid structurefor all the chapters recognizing, rather, the diversityof design and the variations in the degrees and frequency of change as each chapter devotes itself to the salient issues, debates and changes in the country under inspection. The chapter on Hungary (one of the best in the book), for example, concentrates on the I989 Round-table agreement. The authors show that the fiendishly complicated Hungarian electoral system adopted in I989 with its two votes, three levels (I76 single-member constituencies, twenty multi-member constituencies and a national list)and the differentrulesfor the two roundsof the single-member elections 'were a result of a succession of compromises and trade-offs in circumstancesof ad hocjudgments or partyadvantage'(p. 49). The book is rich in detail and replete with numerous tables. Embodying Democracy, alongside the project's website (www.essex.ac.uk/elections) will prove to be an invaluableresource.Alongside each chapter'sclearlytabulated changes in electoral law for the respective countries, there are tables, for example, giving all...