Elections As Instruments of Democracy: Majoritarian and Proportional Visions

Rating:
Summary: not inspiring
Review: I am a strong proponent of proportional representation and I
bought this book along with Lijphart's Patterns of Democracy.
I read Powell's book first and was very excited in the beginning,
but as the book went on I found some of his arguments not
very compelling, and I ended up skimming very quickly
the second half of the book. I am an academic, but my
field is not political science, so perhaps this book would
be more interesting to someone in the field. So far, I find
Lijphart's book to be much more interesting.

Rating:
Summary: Great Scientific Analysis of Election Systems
Review: The book does a good job of laying out how two models of democracy--majoritarian and proportional--deal with voters' intent and desires. While both political systems have their merits, this book shows how the proportional vision out-performs the majoritarian by better reflecting the populace's needs and better representation of the voter's wishes. This result may give pause to many Americans, who may believe that our majoritarian system is preferable to others, when, in fact, Proportional Representation may actually be the most democratic. One note of caution: the intended audience is clearly the Poly Sci community, so be ready for lots of tables, charts, averages and regressions.