Vol. 4 No. 3 (March, 1994) pp. 883-84

CONSTITUTION MAKING IN EASTERN EUROPE, edited by A. E. Dick Howard. Washington: The Woodrow Wilson Center Press, distributed by Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993. 215 pages.

Reviewed by Roger B. Myerson, Department of Managerial Economics and Decision Sciences, Northwestern University.

Comparative politics books such as this serve two functions. They can convey specific factual information about the current state of world political systems, and they can illustrate the basic principles that underlie all political systems. With respect to the current-affairs function, this book about constitution-making may have a very short shelf life. The chapter on Czechoslovakia was already out of date by the time it was set into type, because of the demise of the nation being discussed, and other chapters are becoming similarly dated even as this reader manages to belatedly finish his review. But no such haste is needed for the second function, offering insights into the fundamental laws of political science. In this regard, this book may indeed have some timeless contributions of great value.

For example, Katarina Mathernova, writing about politicians pulling Czechoslovakia apart while public opinion polls in both regions consistently showed a majority of voters wishing to remain in a common state, challenges us to ask about the centrifugal incentives that may be built into federal systems. Whether it is current events or history, this case study in defederalization needs to be considered by political scientists.

Joanna Regulska's chapter on local government in the new Eastern European democracies depicts the other side of federalism's instability. In spite of a widespread perception that autonomous local self-government is an essential part of freedom, national political leaders have apparently found it difficult to resist the temptation to direct and control all levels of government, when an established local power structure is not already in place. To appreciate the significance of such erosion of local authority, political scientists could learn much from the new economic analysis of organizations. In particular, Milgrom and Roberts's (1990, 1992) writings on moral hazard and the costs of centralization are directly relevant to the situation that Regulska describes. For any given local problem, well-meaning national leaders may perceive that national direction could improve the local outcome, but the effect of a policy of intervention is to invite local administrators to invest more in developing their ability to influence leaders in the capital, rather than in developing their connections with the local population. Also, loss of local autonomy raises barriers to entry into the national political arena, because it deprives politicians of an opportunity to prove their administrative ability at the local level before challenging the national leadership, and so it decreases the competitiveness of the overall political system.

Andrzej Rapaczynski's chapter on constitutional politics in Poland was for me the high point of the book. Any reader should be fascinated by the dance of politicians that prevented the drafting of a new constitution, even though everyone seemed to agree that the old constitution drafted by the Communists and Solidarity should be replaced. I was very impressed by Rapaczynski's perceptive comments on the importance of electoral systems, which define the rules of the game that politicians must play to be reelected. This is a topic which is too often overlooked in legalistic essays about constitutional rights and powers. The greatest enduring value of this book will, I suspect, be in Rapaczynski's portrayal of the Sejm politicians, who were in the unique situation of being elected undemocratically but of facing democratic reelection contests to keep their seats.

William Riker (1982), in his writings about liberalism against populism, sharpens a fundamental question about the purpose of democracy. What is the most important function of an election: to guide national policies in the period after the election, or to modify the preelection behavior of the politicians who will stand for reelection? The Polish legislators discussed in Rapaczynski's chapter offer us unique empirical insights into this question. Did the undemocratically elected members of the Sejm behave in ways that deviate

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substantially from what we would expect in a democratic legislature? The answer, as Rapaczynski reports it, is an unequivocal No. The fact that members of the Sejm would have to face a democratic reelection process to keep their seats was far more important to explaining their behavior than the fact that they were put in those seats by a Communist dictatorship. As a case study on liberalism against populism, Poland 1990 comes out squarely on the side of Rikerian liberalism.

REFERENCES:

Paul R. Milgrom and John Roberts, "Bargaining costs, Influence Activities, and the Organization of Economic Activity," in James E. Alt and Kenneth A. Shepsle (eds.), POSITIVE PERSPECTIVES ON POLITICAL ECONOMY (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), pp. 57-89.

Paul R. Milgrom and John Roberts, ECONOMICS, ORGANIZATION, AND MANAGEMENT. (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall Inc., 1992).

William H. Riker, LIBERALISM AGAINST POPULISM, (San Francisco: W. H. Freeman, 1982).