The results of the investigation run counter to much of the previous electoral-systems literature, most of which is based on established democracies. In Russia, there are far more parties in the single-member component than in the PR portion of the system, even at the district level. There have also been more women elected from single-member districts, while districts with large numbers of ethnic minority residents have, on average, fewer political parties than more monoethnic seats. All these results challenge the findings of previous comparative research, and Moser sets off like a detective to discover the reasons behind Russia's deviance. The answers he finds are not only intriguing from the point of view of Russian politics, but also of considerable relevance to the study of electoral systems more generally. He explains the differences in the Russian case mainly as the result of the lack of an institutionalized party system (though the institutionalization of individual parties is often elided in the discussion with the institutionalization of the party system). As institutions that structure incentives and channel resources, parties act as intervening variables in the relationship between electoral systems and political outcomes. When parties are strong, they serve to organize and consolidate political competition; when they are weak, politics depends far more on the resources of individuals. Though others have recognized the key role of political parties in mediating the effects of electoral institution design, this study explores their role in greater detail than has been done before. The result is a highly nuanced understanding of the complexity of the interactions between electoral systems and the environment in which they operate.

On the downside, the analysis is somewhat disjointed and at times loses track of the main thread of reasoning. Another drawback is that the examination of cases other than Russia is rather haphazard. Criticism can also be made of some of the methods employed to demonstrate the central claim of the study. A number of the analyses infer individual-level behavior from comparisons of aggregate-level data (chapters 6 and 8). The ecological fallacy haunts such inferences, especially as, in several cases, they rely on correlation coefficients and standardized regression coefficients that are known to be particularly susceptible to aggregation bias.

Despite these relatively minor faults, this slim volume is an important work for any serious student of electoral systems. One of its most provocative contributions is the suggestion that the workings of electoral institutions in the established democracies with which we are familiar may be the exception, rather than the rule. The more we study electoral systems in diverse contexts, the more we may discover that Russia is not such a deviant case after all; we may even come to find that it is the established democracies of the West that are the deviant cases in a wider comparative context. This possibility indicates the need for more studies of electoral and other institutions in nonconsolidated democracies, for, as Moser (145) notes, we know very much about the effects of institutions in stable environments, in which institutions are least likely to determine the basic character of the regime, but much less about institutional effects in unstable environments, in which institutions may be a determining factor in the continuation or breakdown of the democratic process. One can only hope that this book will encourage more undertakings like it.