Seats and Votes: The Effects and Determinants of Electoral Systems Rein Taagepera and Matthew Soberg Shugart New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989, pp. xviii, 292

This sketch, however, provides only a vague blueprint for the progressive-environmentalist Utopia, leaving unanswered questions such as whether the movement would pursue greater integration or greater autarky in its proposals for economic restructuring. Nor does Paehlke provide much guidance on how the new movement should pursue its aims. Given the amount of ground covered, it is perfectly reasonable that questions of strategy are treated as largely beyond the book's scope. Still, Paehlke might have been advised to anticipate the criticism of those who will argue that in his determination to define a centre that might hold, he has produced an ideology too soft-edged to galvanize and guide an effective challenge to the powerful forces which are likely to resist change. The case for a pragmatic, centrist movement would have been enhanced had Paehlke extended his speculation far enough to suggest how forces bent on business-as-usual exploitation of the biosphere might be pushed aside.