In response to my “post yesterday”:https://themonkeycage.org/2009/05/electoral_fraud_is_75_the_new.html on electoral fraud, a reader asked for a good reference on Russian elections. In a nice coincidence, Erik Herron’s new book “_Elections and Democracy After Communism_”:http://us.macmillan.com/electionsanddemocracyaftercommunism arrived in my mailbox today. I had the pleasure of getting a look at an advance copy, and I would definitely recommend this book for anyone interested in getting a nice overview of how electoral politics have developed in the post-communist region in the past two decades. While of course useful for those who work in the field, I think the book would also be particularly useful for people not familiar with the region that are considering adding post-communist cases to a larger studies (e.g., those working with “Comparative Studies of Electoral Systems (CSES) data”:http://www.umich.edu/~cses/). There are chapters on electoral system design, the effects of electoral system choice, voting behavior, political parties, direct referendums, and, appropriately enough given the theme of my last post, electoral fraud.
