It was something of a truism that within the political institutions of the Soviet bloc states, women and power were found in inverse proportion to each other. While women occupied roughly 30% of the seats within the faux-parliamentary bodies of the communist region, true power was never located in those institutions. Instead, political power was found at the Communist Party's zenith, where women were seen rarely, if at all.

The collapse of Communist Party–run dictatorships across Eastern Europe presented scholars with an opportunity to test various political science theories derived largely from the study of Western democracies. The editors of this volume are concerned primarily with testing theories of representation. In particular, they seek to explain the causes of women's low representation in postcommunist parliaments. The 18 contributors hail from across Europe and the United States, and present case studies on Germany, Lithuania, Hungary, Ukraine, Russia (including a chapter on regional elections), Macedonia, Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovenia, Croatia, and Bulgaria.

While the authors do not deny that the postcommunist region features several “legacy” characteristics that could depress women's representation (such as seeing women in parliament as Communist Party–sponsored tokens), they largely agree that the paucity of women in parliaments there stems from institutional sources. These include electoral rules, such as the use of proportional representation (PR) versus a majoritarian system, and party rules, such as the use of quotas. However, the authors do not suggest that institutional rules are the only thing promoting or preventing women's equal representation. They portray women's representation as being determined by supply and demand: Supply is governed by the number of women wishing to run for office, and demand is determined by the voters, on the one hand, and by party “gatekeepers,” on the other. Meanwhile, many sociocultural and economic calculations and preconditions factor into the choices made by potential female candidates, party gatekeepers, and voters. Suffice it to say that women's underrepresentation is overdetermined (and not only in postcommunist Europe).

Several findings hold across most of the countries included in this study. First, institutional rules matter for women's level of representation. PR benefits women when the number of seats contested in a given district is high. Parties can then win larger numbers of seats, allowing in candidates beyond the few top slots on the lists. PR thus leads to the presence of more women in parliament than does a single-mandate district system (as is typically true in Western democracies). There are some exceptions to this rule (notably Russia and Hungary). The Russian mixed-system case highlights the fact that PR is not sufficient to promote women's representation. There, party fragmentation works against women's successful election to PR seats, as does the way that party lists are composed (through patronage), whereby women are often placed in “unwinnable spots” (p. 162). In Russia's 1993 election, across all the party lists, “90 percent [of women] were below thirtieth place on the lists” (p. 163).

Another finding consistent across several countries is that women's organizing is crucial in order to improve female representation on party lists. As Frederick Douglass said, “Power concedes nothing without a demand.” In the Polish case, a main cause of the increase in the number of women elected between 1997 and 2001 was that women across parties during the election campaign in 2001 supported a “Pre-Electoral Coalition of Women,” the purpose of which was to increase the number of female parliamentarians, and which sported slogans like “Enough adoration—we want representation” (p. 232). As a result of such public pressure, combined with efforts by women within the political parties, some parties instituted sex-based quotas.

Sociocultural factors also influence women's representation. The authors of one chapter cite cross-country poll data showing that majorities of men and women in the region believe that men make better political leaders than do women. “Demand” for women in power is thus low. However, as the editors point out, some of the countries there have increased women's representation, despite such attitudes. The data in the case study chapters show that, to some extent, such increases are traceable to the introduction of PR systems, and to the change over time in party predominance, with leftist parties in particular coming to power, bringing more women into parliament with them. The most interesting case of shifting party fortunes giving rise to more women in parliament comes from Bulgaria, where, in 2001, the former king hitched his electoral efforts to a little-known women's party (of necessity, since his own party was refused registration) and won, thereby bringing the percentage of women in the parliament up to 26.7% from a mere 10.4% in the previous election (p. 316).

Other evidence reveals the underlying sexism that leads party gatekeepers to erect high barriers to female candidates' inclusion on party lists. Several chapters note the fact that women must be “hyperqualified” (p. 207) in order to receive a party's nomination; they are often better educated than male members of parliament, and also must “prove” their legitimacy more extensively than men do. In Poland, for example, in 1993, 73% of the women members of parliament had been members of Solidarity in 1980, whereas this was true of only 49% of male MPs (p. 219).

On the whole, this is a highly readable book that tells the reader an impressive amount about politics and women's representation in postcommunist Europe. The first two chapters set out the research questions and theoretical framework. All of the chapters are written in an accessible style, and the project sensibly combines qualitative and quantitative data in order to best make sense of the diverse levels of women's representation in the chosen countries. The case study chapters are densely packed with empirical data. They feature rich detail and complex explanations, exploring the factors laid out in the theoretical framework, such as public opinion, electoral institutions, party rules, and the change over time in the dominance of political parties. Women's Access to Political Power in Post-Communist Europe has a high level of coherence, since each of the cases is explored within the same theoretical framework. The chapters are punctuated by useful at-a-glance tables comparing electoral rules, levels of female representation, and so on. Any study of elections and politics in these countries from here on should take these valuable contributions into account. Gender can no longer be ignored in studies of elections in the postcommunist world.