election fraud and reactions to the attack in more or lessreal time. On the former, what I found most interesting
were the postelection trends. When asked whether theelection was “free and fair,” responses predictably diverge
after Election Day, but then change little thereafter (303).
And although the postelection drop in conﬁdence is larger
for those who consume more conservative media, there islittle over-time change there as well (315). In contrast,
Trump voters do seem to have become less conﬁdent that
their own ballot was counted as intended as the propaganda
campaign ground on (305). These trends raise interestingquestions about the role of elite rhetoric and media in
shaping both broad and speciﬁc conﬁdence in elections.
One of the authors’ conclusions in these ﬁnal chapters isthat beliefs in voter fraud led to the attack and, more
broadly, to support for future political violence. To measure support for violence, they ask respondents about
support for the insurrection, beliefs that the rioters werepatriotic, beliefs that any violence was a “false ﬂag,” beliefs
that force may be necessary to save the American way oflife, and beliefs that it may be necessary to take the law into
one’s own hands. The cross-tabulations of these responses
are chilling and certainly tell us something important
about how the January 6 attack was framed and perceived
by partisans. But is it really the case that a substantial shareof voters will embrace violence as a substitute for politicalaction when elections do not go their way?
There is actually little direct evidence that either beliefs
in fraud, support for violence, or participation in theJanuary 6 attack is associated with lower political participation; thus, there is no evidence that fraud beliefs leadvoters to choose “force, rather than the ballot box”
(p. 340) as the authors predict. There is also, as far as I
can tell, no direct statistical test of the relationshipbetween fraud beliefs and support for violence in chapter
9. Recent survey experimental work also suggests that,
although elite rhetoric about fraud undermines conﬁdence in elections, it does not also undermine support fordemocracy or increase support for violence; see Nicolas
Berlinski et al., “The Eﬀects of Unsubstantiated Claimsof Voter Fraud on Conﬁdence in Elections,” Journal ofExperimental Political Science (2021); Katherine Claytonet al., “Elite Rhetoric Can Undermine DemocraticNorms,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences(2021). On the other hand, and as we can clearly see inthese pages, a substantial share of Republican voters will
act as apologists once political violence is committed,
which is perhaps no less unsettling.
Overall, there is probably no better accounting of thebehavioral causes and eﬀects of January 6, and there isalmost certainly no better accounting of voter behavior in
the 2020 election campaign. But as if making sense of asingle chaotic election and its aftermath were not enough,the members of the IOD Collaborative have achieved evenmore. Through the use of numerous innovations inmeasurement and data collection, they have set us all up
to better understand the elections to come.
More Parties or No Parties: The Politics of Electoral
Reform in America. By Jack Santucci. New York: Oxford University
Press, 2022. 248p. $49.95 cloth.
doi:10.1017/S1537592723002311— Todd Donovan, Western Washington University
Todd.Donovan@wwu.edu

Contemporary electoral reform eﬀorts in the United Statesgive primacy to voting systems that make use of rankings,
particularly ranked choice voting (RCV). Known morecommonly as the alternative vote (AV) before its rebranding
by US reformers, RCV has been adopted nearly exclusively
for single-winner contests. After adoption in nonpartisan
local contests, reformers aimed for the state level, successfully implementing RCV in Maine and, most recently,
Alaska. Jack Santucci’s wide-reaching book explores thehistory of early twentieth-century local adoption and repealof multiwinner, single transferable voting (STV) in theUnited States. This work helps us better understand how
previous and contemporary electoral reform eﬀorts emphasize “anti-party” reforms and the consequences of failing toaccommodate competition among political parties.
Many readers familiar with the Model City Charter ofthe early twentieth century are likely aware of the overt
goals that earlier reformers had to weaken political parties.
The Model Charter proposed oﬀ-year, at-large elections;
small assemblies; and nonpartisan ballots. Fewer may beaware that various iterations of the Model Charter also
advocated for multiwinner STV elections to be used in
combination with these other features, because it“worked” with nonpartisan elections and the other Model
Charter anti-party reforms. Yet, as Santucci observes,
although these other reforms were adopted widely, only
24 cities adopted STV—all between 1915 and 1948. This
book provides rich theoretical and empirical explanations
for why STV was adopted and abandoned.
Santucci develops a theory of reforms reﬂecting thecoalitions that shaped the new rules, with reforms being
seen as eﬀorts to “get or keep control of government”(p. 50). He identiﬁes three reform strategies: insulating(aimed to keep an existing coalition intact), realigning(aimed to alter the existing coalition), and polarizing(aimed to target “centrists”). All the reforms guiding
STV are argued to be of the realigning type, whereincumbent party defectors align with the party out ofpower to build a new coalition. In all cases except for
New York and Cleveland, this was done in a two-party
context, with minor parties playing a weaker role. Where adominant party was factionalized, a realigning coalition
should be more likely. The empirical work provided
supports this case.
December 2023 | Vol. 21/No. 4https://doi.org/10.1017/S1537592723002311 Published online by Cambridge University Press

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Book Reviews | American Politics
Previous explanations of the demise of STV in theUnited States suggested that it did “too good of a job” ofrepresenting racial minorities and leftists. Santucci provides
another perspective: STV without parties did not workwithout slating organizations that attempted to take on
the role of parties. Reform coalitions turned into governing
coalitions via slating organizations. Even with slating groups
recruiting and promoting candidates, the reform’s corrosive
eﬀects on parties made for unstable coalitions. Lacking
eﬀective coordination, voter error rates were high, candidate
quality was low, and coalitions on STV councils shifted
rapidly. Slating groups proved unstable, and councils
depended on “pork” and logrolling to hold things together.
Despite “good government” slates that scholars portrayed asconservative and pro-business, Santucci demonstrates thatgovernment spending was higher under STV than plurality
elections. An alternate reading could see higher local spending under STV reﬂecting pro-business candidates channeling spending into Harvey Molotch-like “growth machine”
infrastructure investments. Santucci makes a persuasive
argument that it instead reﬂected personal vote-seeking ofcandidates pursuing the “bailiwick” strategy associated with
STV in Ireland.
Santucci argues that twentieth-century STV was used inthe United States to “defy an overarching party system”
and that slating groups—comprising candidates fromvarious dispersed groups and interests—“did not track
the wider party system” (p. 121). Moreover, these slates
did not manage to eﬀectively limit the number of candidates they nominated and suﬀered from voter dealignment
and transfer leakage away from candidates on the slate. A
resulting “legislative limbo” occurred during which no
coalition secured regular control of government. Thisencouraged counter-reform coalitions to take aim atSTV, which was then abandoned in every city by 1961,
except for Cambridge, Massachusetts.
The demise of STV in the United States then was notdue to it being “too successful” in representing race/ethnic
minorities and leftists but due to its intentionally neutering of political parties. Nonpartisan STV hid candidate
party labels, came with small councils that could not
facilitate multiparty politics, and produced unstable andineﬃcient coalitions in local legislatures.
Santucci concludes with an examination of prospects forelectoral reform in the contemporary era. This treatment
raises one question not fully addressed: Why did the
majority-preferential systems now in vogue with contemporary reformers “disappear from the map” (p. 177) in theearly twentieth century? He notes that political scientists“do not yet know why” but oﬀers some clues that raisequestions about prospects for single-winner AV in theUnited States (aka single-winner RCV). One lesson fromthis book may be that US STV of the twentieth century andRCV/AV of the twenty-ﬁrst century have never ﬁgured out
how to accommodate parties, let alone multiparty politics.
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Perspectives on Politics

https://doi.org/10.1017/S1537592723002311 Published online by Cambridge University PressSingle-winner AV persists today and “works” in Australia
because it works with parties: parties control nominations,
voter preference rankings are mandatory, parties issue “howto vote cards” to coordinate supporters’ preference transfers,and parties of similar ilk who are coalition partners makeagreements not to compete against each other in districts. Assuch, RCV/AV can complement a multiparty system.
Many contemporary US electoral reformers have advocated single-winner RCV, more recently in state-level races
where justiﬁcations for these reforms (the de facto nonpartisan “Top 4” in Alaska and a similar “Top 5” proposal
pending in Nevada) echo some of the motivations ofearlier anti-party reformers. Party control of nominations
is seen as a problem, with preferential voting without party
control of nominations said to lead to “good” outcomes,
such as “moderation.” Santucci notes that in a previousera, STV could be eﬀectively marketed as “anticorruption”(read “anti-party”). It seems that we are witnessing thisagain as reformers herald the supposed virtues of AV inAlaska as eliminating party control of nominations, blurring party lines, and electing “moderate” Republicans(Murkowski) and Democrats (Pelota), regardless of whatparty organizations might prefer. Santucci’s work challenges us to consider how a contemporary state legislatureor the US Congress might function—or not—if such antiparty systems were adopted universally. The answer here
seems to be badly, if parties are not better facilitated.
This book should be appreciated for the methodologicalrigor and detail used to support its claims and conclusions.
Some of this is visible reading the main text—spatial maps ofvoting in STV cities illustrate legislative limbo, ecologicalinferences estimate support for charter amendments bypartisanship, polynomial regression and ﬁxed-eﬀects models
estimate spending, and comparative case studies are illuminating. The book includes advertisements for the slatinggroups that will be invaluable to those teaching this subject.
Some of the most engaging bits are about ﬁeldwork and are
hidden in the footnotes: for example, about the author
ﬁnding handwritten minutes of reform group meetings;
interviewing surviving family members of elites involved inreform eﬀorts; and going on a car ride with a midcentury
party regular who recounted memories of anti-Semitism incoalitions as they made their way to a municipal archive. Thisis comparative politics of electoral systems reform at its best.
The Trump Effect: Disruption and Its Consequences in
U.S. Politics and Government. Edited by Steven E. Schier andTodd E. Eberly. New York: Rowman & Littleﬁeld Press, 2022.
208p. $85.00 cloth, $32.00 paper.
doi:10.1017/S153759272300230X— Paul E. Rutledge, University of West Georgia
prutledg@westga.edu

The presidency of Donald J. Trump constitutes a scholarly
enterprise that is far from settled, given his combination of