A review of The Failure of Presidential Democracy, edited by Juan J. Linz and Arturo Valenzuela.
About the Author
Matthew Soberg Shugart, associate professor of political science at the University of California, San Diego, is the coauthor of Presidents and Assemblies: Constitutional Design and Electoral Dynamics (1992).
The worldwide popularity of runoff rules for presidential elections has grown strikingly in recent decades. In Latin America, contrary to scholarly expectations, this shift has had important benefits for democracy.