Josephine Andrews analyzes decision making in the Russian Supreme Soviet (Parliament) between 1990 and 1993. Her book has two objectives. On the one hand, it uses the case of Russia to shed light on the main result of the social choice theory—the intransitivity of collective preference under majority rule. On the other, it relies on this result to explain the behavior of Russia's political elite. As such, the book should be of interest to a wide audience of political scientists: Russia specialists, scholars of legislative institutions, students of democratic transitions, and empirically minded, formal theorists.

To get a flavor of the core theoretical argument, consider a stylized legislature where three deputies, Dinissa, Katya, and Olga, have to adopt a new constitution. Imagine that there are three basic options: a parliamentary system, a premier-presidential arrangement, and a presidential constitution.

Dinissa, who is an Anglophile, prefers the first alternative over the second over the third. In love with France, Katya prefers the second alternative over the third over the first. Finally, Olga, impressed by the United States, prefers the third alternative over the first over the second. Imagine also that the three legislators already have deliberated about the best course of action and were unable to reach a consensus. Perhaps their disagreement reflects divergent conjectures about the efficiency and stability of different constitutional designs, or perhaps it simply mirrors different financial ties to special interests.

Since there is no consensus and since they live in a democracy, they have to vote. If they had to decide between parliamentarism and premier-presidentialism, then they would select the parliamentary system because both Dinissa and Olga prefer this alternative over the premier-presidential design. On the other hand, if they were to choose between parliamentarism and presidentialism, then the presidential system would win, with Olga and Katya voting for and Dinissa casting her ballot against. However, if presidentialism were pitted against premier-presidentialism, then they would adopt the premier-presidential system because both Katya and Dinissa would be in favor and only Olga would be opposed. Notice what happens here: In pairwise, majority voting, presidentialism defeats parliamentarism, then premier-presidentialism defeats presidentialism, and finally parliamentarism defeats premier-presidentialism. In short, each alternative defeats and in turn is defeated by some other alternative. As a result, while the preferences of each legislator are fixed, the collective preference of the legislature cycles from one constitutional design to the next.

Andrews derives two broad empirical implications from this result. The first one is that legislative decision making may exhibit a certain degree of confusion. In particular, in a given session, legislators may pass a sequence of amendments only to cycle back and adopt the original bill at the end of the day. This problem should be especially pronounced in legislatures, such as the Supreme Soviet, which have fairly permissive amendment rules. The second implication is that the person who controls the legislative agenda acquires a considerable degree of power. For example, if Katya were in charge of scheduling parliamentary votes, she could begin the legislative session by pairing parliamentarism against presidentialism and then pit the winner of this contest against the premier-presidential constitution. On the first ballot, presidentialism would defeat parliamentarism, and on the second ballot, premier-presidentialism would defeat presidentialism. As a result, by being clever about the sequence of parliamentary votes, Katya could ensure that the legislature adopts her most preferred alternative. Since the same is true of Dinissa and Olga, it follows that the agenda setter is critically important.

Given these hypotheses, the book has two empirical objectives: to demonstrate that preference cycling is not just a theoretical artifact but can plague a real-world legislature, and to show that the chairman of the Supreme Soviet, Ruslan Khasbulatov, was able to craft a legislative agenda that exploited such cycling to further his own political ambition. The empirical section on legislative cycling is especially interesting. It consists of a descriptive case study that carefully documents the failure of the Supreme Soviet to pass a new constitution, and it attributes this outcome to the cycling of preferences. Moreover, Andrews presents a statistical analysis of roll-call votes from the Supreme Soviet and argues that in addition to the choice of a new constitution, preference cycling affected a wide range of issues. As a result, it led to a permanent political pathology that made the Supreme Soviet incapable of decision making and thus contributed to a violent showdown between the Supreme Soviet and the president of Russia, Boris Yeltsin.

While this argument has a considerable appeal, the theoretical side of the book could have been strengthened by a more careful justification of the assumption of sincere voting. As things stand, there is a certain tension in the underlying logic because we are simultaneously asked to assume that legislators are sincere while the agenda setter is highly strategic. To see the significance of this point, return to the above example where Katya controls the agenda. Notice that at the beginning of a parliamentary session, Olga might anticipate that by voting sincerely for presidentialism on the first ballot, she effectively ensures the adoption of premier-presidentialism on the second ballot. Since this is her worst possible outcome, she has an incentive to vote strategically on the first ballot and support the parliamentary system. This way, parliamentarism defeats presidentialism on the first ballot, and then it defeats premier-presidentialism on the second ballot. In short, Olga's craftiness as a voter may foil Katya's careful planning as the agenda setter. Along these lines, a clearer discussion of how Chairman Khasbulatov was able to monopolize the agenda-setting powers in the Supreme Soviet, given the Soviet's liberal amendment rules, would have strengthened the empirical side. Over all, however, When Majorities Fail constitutes a solid piece of comparative politics, and it contributes to our knowledge of legislative and constitutional politics, as well as to our understanding of Russia's transition to democracy.