I am grateful to Leslie Anderson for her thoughtful and enthusiastic review of my book. She lucidly highlights the key argument of the book—that the plurality rule is problematic for democracy, whereas the runoff rule (also called ballotage after its name in France) is advantageous—and finds my qualitative and quantitative evidence “convincing.” I am pleased that she finds my analyses of the impact of plurality or runoff in the 17 Latin American countries “very useful.” Cross-national and cross-regional research is challenging, but in both our books, Anderson and I overcame the obstacles, and I too am confident that we have achieved a turning point in the study of Latin American politics.

Anderson’s one concern is that I neglect the impact of political history and culture. She finds the weight of political culture heavier than I do. Anderson asks: “Is it not possible that any set of rules would work reasonably well in Costa Rica?” My reply is: “No.” Before the 1970 plurality election of Salvador Allende [overthrown three years later in the most traumatic military coup in Latin America’s history], Chile’s democracy was also widely perceived to be too strong to fail. Another Latin American nation with a stellar democratic history, Uruguay, adopted runoff in 1997 amid intense fears of an “Allende-like situation” in the upcoming election. In a salient current example, democracy in the United States is endangered in part due to electoral rules (especially the Electoral College and the use of plurality by the states for the selection of the Electoral College).

I do agree with Anderson’s specific point that “contextual factors that strengthen democracy . . .then also increase the chances that ballotage becomes the electoral rule, which then strengthens democracy further.” In other words, I agree that, at critical moments during the third wave, a country’s political actors’ commitment to democracy was important to the adoption of runoff and that, accordingly, there is dual causality for the trends in levels of democracy. Anderson’s example of the rejection of majority runoff by Argentina’s Peronist party, with its enduring authoritarian proclivities, is particularly apt. Still, as she points out, my book’s argument is about the effects of runoff; it is a rebuttal of a scholarly conventional wisdom that opposed runoff due to its presumed effects.

Anderson’s suggestions for further research are important. I, too, am intrigued by the case of runoff in France and would have liked to explore it. In particular, given widespread concern about the increased number of political parties under runoff, I am intrigued by France’s scheduling of its legislative election after the runoff—a rule that appears to have reduced the number of political parties and executive–legislative conflict. And I agree, too, that comparative analysis of electoral rules for the legislature would be valuable. Further, since I finished the book, ranked-choice voting is more frequently discussed, and much more research about this rule is necessary.

I thank Anderson for her insightful engagement with Electoral Rules and Democracy in Latin America. I am delighted by her praise of the book and hope that together in the not-too-distant future, we can discuss the agenda for further research on electoral rules worldwide.