This book is an excellent addition to our overall understanding of democratization and democratic decline in Latin America. As the region becomes more democratic and individual nations experience democratic advance or decline, we seek to understand general trends that push nations in one direction or another. One such trend is the electoral rules surrounding presidential election, that is, whether nations use plurality or runoff, also known as ballotage (named after the French system where it became well known), or some version of either. Cynthia McClintock addresses this aspect of presidential electoral rules to help us understand democratic strength or decline in most Latin American nations.

The ordering of Electoral Rules and Democracy in Latin America is straightforward and accessible. McClintock begins with an interesting overview in which she shows that most scholars of Latin America prefer and recommend plurality, while most of the Latin American politicians she surveyed preferred runoff. She then reviews the arguments in favor of each position. Her second and third chapters look at the two types of rules as an overview and in a cross-national perspective. Chapters 4–7 examine specific cases. Chapter 4 studies plurality cases, whereas Chapter 5 scrutinizes cases that use ballotage. Chapter 4 shows that plurality undermined democracy and contributed to democratic decline, while Chapter 5 shows that ballotage helped fortify democracy. These two chapters are very useful for country specialists who want to know more about plurality or runoff inside specific countries that are experiencing either democratic decline or advance.

Up to this point in the book, McClintock discusses two clear sets of cases: those that have plurality and have suffered democratically as a result, and those that have ballotage and have benefited from that rule. In Chapters 6 and 7, however, the discussion gets more complicated. Chapter 6 addresses cases with a plethora of parties, a situation that runs the risk of low presidential legitimacy if runoff is used. Additionally, critics accuse runoff of encouraging too many parties. A number of the problems associated with runoff emerge in the Chapter 6 cases, particularly in Ecuador and Peru. Chapter 7 then looks at Argentina and Costa Rica, where runoff has been used in the context of a reduced threshold. McClintock finds that the rule works well in Costa Rica but less well in Argentina.

This last contrast—that between Costa Rica, a “democratic star” (p. 177) and Argentina, a country with a deep authoritarian past—brings me to one concern that the author does not address: the role of context (history, tradition, and culture) in making any set of rules work or fail. The cases of Chile and El Salvador exemplify this problem in Chapter 5. Both countries adopted ballotage fairly early in the current democratic period. Indeed in Chile, ballotage predates the return of democracy. However, the problem with these examples is potential over determination. Chile had a robust democracy before the Pinochet dictatorship. So does a robust democratic history contribute to the decision to adopt ballotage? Or does ballotage strengthen democracy? Similarly, El Salvador’s movement to democracy was only made possible by extensive international oversight and supervision. So does external democratic support contribute to the decision to adopt ballotage or does ballotage strengthen democracy? In each of these two cases, causality probably runs in both directions so that contextual factors that strengthen democracy (like a long democratic history or supportive international players) then also increase the chances that ballotage becomes the electoral rule, which then strengthens democracy further.

Similarly, looking at the two cases from Chapter 7, we find that the same set of rules work well in Costa Rica but not in Argentina. Is it not possible that any set of rules would work reasonably well in Costa Rica, with its steadfast democratic past, while any set of rules would be problematic in Argentina, with its authoritarian past? As Ronald Inglehart and Christian Welzel write, the difference between formal democracy and real democracy is the integrity of the leadership. Integrity is certainly in very short supply in Peronism, Argentina’s predominant party (see Inglehart and Welzel, Modernization, Cultural Change and Democracy: The Human Development Sequence, 2005, p. 207).

McClintock does not need to resolve the role of context to have made a substantial contribution, however. Her argument and cases are convincing. Both the quantitative examinations of the arguments and evidence in Chapter 3 and the case study material in Chapters 4–7 support her position that ballotage is healthier for democracy. It is interesting that electoral leaders who sought to undermine democracy pushed for plurality, while those who sought to strengthen the democratic system itself supported ballotage. That alone is evidence for the superiority of a ballotage system.

These questions matter because the legitimacy of the elected president has been of critical concern to scholars of democracy at least since the time of the U.S. founding and the Federalist Papers. Alexander Hamilton, in particular, was concerned about the need to balance control and accountability of the executive, on the one hand, against the need for a strong leader who would provide vision, on the other hand. He and other Founders carried on public conversations about this subject, all of which are relevant to Latin America today.

This takes me to another reason why I am enthusiastic about McClintock’s book. It and others like it mark a turning point in the study of Latin American politics. Politics in Latin America and the development of democracy there have reached a point where a cross-national and cross-regional dialogue becomes fruitful and even necessary. Many of the concerns about democracy in Latin America, or about democratic decline there, can be best informed by viewing these same issues in Western Europe and the United States. Similarly, concerns about democratic decline can be informed by a comparative perspective that considers Western Europe historically and Eastern Europe in the contemporary era. The conversation about the U.S. founding is relevant to Latin America, where presidential systems prevail. Hamilton’s concern with having a strong executive and Thomas Jefferson’s concerns about being able to constrain that executive are of central interest in the United States today and were central during the founding period. Considering Latin American democratic development within the context of that literature and those discussions would help frame the appropriate research questions and also help us see the extent to which the issues central in Latin America are also central in other democracies. It would also allow Latin American scholars and politicians to learn from previous discussions. McClintock does exactly this in her Conclusion, taking her findings about runoff to a discussion of elections in the United States.

McClintock’s discussion of the Chilean case (pp. 124–30) exemplifies how fertile a cross-national dialogue can be. With Chile, she discusses a nondemocratic electoral rule about legislative elections (the binomial rule). The best books we write are the ones that point toward new research and a new book that still needs to be written. The author’s discussion of the binomial rule points toward the need for a book comparing more or less democratic rules in legislative elections, just as her book compares presidential electoral rules. Legislative proportional representation is used in many Latin American countries to exclude newcomers from the political system. The Chilean binomial rule was similarly designed for exclusive purposes: to reduce the presence of the Left and increase that of the Right. A study like McClintock’s but oriented toward legislative electoral rules would further enhance our understanding of democratization in Latin America. A recent change to legislative electoral rules in California was designed to reduce the presence of the Right in a very nondemocratic way that has subsequently proven surprisingly troublesome for the Left. In short, comparative discussions of legislative electoral rules would help us understand democracy both in Latin America and elsewhere.

In the same spirit of cross-national dialogue, I would also have found it useful for McClintock to have had a chapter on the history of the use of ballotage in France. France is a nation with a troubled democratic history. Many of its woes have also visited Latin American nations, including the extensive and sometimes nondemocratic influence of the Catholic Church, a recent attempted military coup, the coming of fascist government, and demagoguery. In response to these various threats, the French were among the first to adopt a runoff system. Why? It would have been helpful here to have had a discussion of why runoff has facilitated French democracy. Such a discussion would also help us understand the dual direction of causality in cases like El Salvador and Chile. Are there previous factors that helped France adopt ballotage, and are those same previous factors present in El Salvador and Chile?

This book is an important contribution to our overall understanding of democratic progress in Latin America and helps us involve that region in cross-regional conversations about democracy. It will be of use to scholars of Latin America and politicians from the region. It is also helpful for graduate seminars on Latin America and on electoral rules in new democracies. I would also use the book in an advanced undergraduate seminar on Latin American politics.