This book explains how a political systems works. Democratic and non-democratic political systems are analysed deeply in their structures, processes, forms and institutions, and afterwards are compared in order to check the main diferences between them. A fantastic book!

I am a strong proponent of proportional representation and I
bought this book along with Lijphart's Patterns of Democracy.
I read Powell's book first and was very excited in the beginning,
but as the book went on I found some of his arguments not
very compelling, and I ended up skimming very quickly
the second half of the book. I am an academic, but my
field is not political science, so perhaps this book would
be more interesting to someone in the field. So far, I find
Lijphart's book to be much more interesting.

The book does a good job of laying out how two models of democracy--majoritarian and proportional--deal with voters' intent and desires. While both political systems have their merits, this book shows how the proportional vision out-performs the majoritarian by better reflecting the populace's needs and better representation of the voter's wishes. This result may give pause to many Americans, who may believe that our majoritarian system is preferable to others, when, in fact, Proportional Representation may actually be the most democratic. One note of caution: the intended audience is clearly the Poly Sci community, so be ready for lots of tables, charts, averages and regressions.

Although this book has wonderful facts and figures, and should be used as a reference material, it is awfull for reading. The only way you will finish reading this book is if you have to for school or you are very motivated. It is slow and does not keep your attention.

This book stands apart from the other comparative pol. books because of its lengthy introductory unit (almost 150 pages in 7 chapters). Some of it is very deep analytical material which is appropriate for very advanced students, but most high school readers will die of confusion if boredom doesn't finish them off first.

For the country chapters, they are very thorough, and each is 40-50 chapters, quite a lot of material. It's pretty dense, too. One good thing is that the book includes the usual "big" ones (G.B., France, Russia, China) as well as Germany and Mexico, but also India, Nigeria, Brazil, and Egypt, giving much material for the often overlooked less-developed countries.

Received the book right away and book was in good condition.