Book Reviews Sartori , Giovanni, Comparative Constitutional Engineering. An Inquiry into Structures, Incentives and Outcomes, New York: New York University Press (1994) xi + 209 pages + Index. $40, hardback; $18.50, paper. In light of the current failure of many political systems to bring about stability and political participation at the same time, Sartori's comparative study oil different forms of democratic government provides tools to analyze more critically then- merits and flaws. It is particularly welcome in connection with the debate provoked by the pending 1996 IGC. His book is an attempt to challenge democratic minimalism fostered by the media and political corruption on behalf of the citizens who have been deprived of then- participatory role. Despite the technical and somewhat misleading title, he focusses oil existing forms of governance in order to derive from their strengths and weaknesses new ways of political representation. After his books on parties and Party Systems and The Theory of Democracy Revisited Sartori ventures to examine more closely the implications of electoral and political systems in terms of their applicability. His study is divided into three parts. Part one discusses the various electoral systems, part two concentrates on presidentialism and parliamentarism. Part three unfolds Sartori's own concept of an 'alternating, or intermittent presidentialism' (p. 153). In analyzing majoritarian and proportional systems he tries to describe how people's votes are translated into a possibly fair representation. According to Sartori's diagnosis majoritarian systems are too manipulative, because they neglect large minorities. Proportional systems usually permit too many parties and thus. they fail to guarantee political decisiveness. The double ballot system allowing to vote twice after one or two weeks between the first and the second voting, round seems to combine majoritarian and proportional arrangements. At the first round the three or four most preferred candidates will be selected. At the second round the election of the winner takes place. While the first round calls for 'sincere voting' of the truly preferred candidates without any restriction, it displays elements of proportional representation. The second round comes close to a majoritarian election, where voters concentrate their votes strategically on the likely winners. In favouring the double ballot system Sartori tries to combine the idea of fair representation with the quest for clear solutions liable to provide responsible governments. It remains unclear, however, to what extent the proportional selection of the most preferred candidates in the first round is undermined by the final majority rule in the second round. Sartori contents himself too much with existing voting rules instead of exploring possibilities of extending given rules. Furthermore, Sartori defends the hypothesis that the effects of electoral systems can be adequately predicted by assessing the characteristics of the party system. In fact, there seems to be a close linkage between the concept of a two-party -system and the respective electoral system. It is less obvious which conclusions this allows to draw since Sartori disregards the far more complex relationship between party system and the respective national society. In the second part of his book he turns to a comparative assessment of parliamentary and presidential systems. Although presidential systems have in many cases performed poorly, they are conducive to effective government. Parliamentary systems work only when they are constituted by disciplined parties that hold together in supporting the government which is their appointee. Sartori draws implicitly a parallel between majoritarian voting and presidentialism because both seem to bring about effective outcomes. The same parallel is drawn between proportional systems and parliamentarism in terms of their representational and thus fair character. It is far from clear to what extent this comparison holds true. Also his proposal of alternating presidentialism seems to apply the basic idea behind the double ballot method to the political system. The representative form remains in power until it is replaced by the more decisive and outcome guaranteeing system. As long as the parliamentary system works it may persist, but in case of failure it is supplanted by a presidential mechanism. The president appears to be a corrective measure for the parliament and at the same time counterbalances its built-in weakness. Sartori contents himself with some hints that a parliamentary constitution simply needs a presidential addition and that presidential constitutions require little more than a parliamentary prefacing. Although he discusses at some length the details of how the alternating president must be empowered without undermining parliamentary control, his final justification amounts to the simple mechanical analogy that two alternating engines cannot work against each other (see p. 170). Again, he attempts to cure the odds of fair representation with the stick of a 'hard hand'. His analysis suffers not only from doubtful parallelisms. but also performs poorly as far as the justification of its arguments is concerned. It is pragmatic in the sense that his search for better solutions is outcome oriented. Sartori does not base his arguments on normative assumptions about how democracy should work, how a fair system of representation can be promoted or how the philosophical justification of a political system can be translated into practice. On the contrary, his point of departure is that constitutions engender certain political systems. As normative as they may be. Sartori takes them for granted and contents himself with their 6 repair'. That is where the mechanical metaphor of his book title *constitutional engineering' has its place. His credo is that constitutions work only as intended with the help of a built-in structure of punishments and rewards. However, the idea of constitutions as 'incentive-based structures' (p. ix) introduced in the preface is rather loosely tied to the rest of the book. When Sartori concludes that constitutions are 'pathways' (p. 201) which should ensure a controlled exercise of power, he emphasizes their procedural and content-neutral character without displaying how a supposedly 'appropriate structure of incentives' can come into constitutional being. No further argument is dedicated to the question how possible constitutional incentives interrelate with electoral and political systems. Besides the fact that Sartori cannot sustain this link, there is also little evidence in his other theoretically rather weak assumptions. That 'consensus management' (p. 72) is the very essence of democratic governance seems to be unquestionable for him. It remains also unchallenged what makes consensus democracy a desirable goal. The author does not even discuss the inherent problems of consensus. It is not only built on conflict, but possibly also on exclusion of those not agreeing. The belief nurtured from Popper's insights that generalizations in law-like form prove the truth of one's observations and allow inferences to possible improvements appears to be at best ingenuous. Sartori bases his study on the conjecture that the more political systems we compare, the more likely we are to derive a law-like rule about their functioning. From there he tries to pull the threads and pinpoint the necessary characteristics for a sustainable electoral and political system. His comparative and descriptive method neglects entirely the results provided by social choice and voting theory. It would have been of major importance to take other possibilities of extending the majoritarian rule into account and compare the results of different approaches. Thus, Sartori's study is only supposedly helpful in its attempt to foster democracy through the stick of deterrence and quasi-dictatorial measures. Citizen participation in the political process is definitively not a central issue of his framework. Monika Betzler Visiting Fellow Harvard University
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