Book Review: Comparative Politics: Crisis and Control: Institutional Change in Financial Regulation

AuthorJohn-Paul Salter
Published date01 February 2015
Date01 February 2015
DOIhttp://doi.org/10.1111/1478-9302.12073_39
Subject MatterBook Review
Laf‌leur shows there are many different answers to
these questions. Italy, for example, has extraterritorial
constituencies, and organises elections by post, while
parties can and do organise campaigns among expats.
Mexico, however, limits voting rights to those with a
valid voting identity card, thereby potentially restricting
their impact on home elections. This in-depth analysis
also shows how external voting is pushed by some
domestic political actors and resisted by others, with the
resulting legislation an unavoidable compromise. Inevi-
tably, there are international consequences (interest-
ingly, Canada has attempted to ban other countries from
running election campaigns on its territory).
This is a complex area, involving multiple actors,
interests, countries, types of legislation and motivations.
It is not always evident that the states empowering their
expats know themselves to whom they are extending
such rights. Laf‌leur is to be congratulated for this
welcome research. It has extended knowledge consid-
erably in this f‌ield. If there is one complaint, it is that
this work has been published in a series on
transnationalism. While it f‌its very well there, it deserves
a much wider political science readership because these
issues – voting rights, political loyalties, citizenship and
electoral design – go to the heart of the discipline.
Alistair Clark
(University of Newcastle)
Parliaments and Citizens by Cristina
Leston-Bandeira (ed.). Abingdon: Routledge, 2013.
272pp., £85.00, ISBN 978-0-415-58969-7
This edited volume tries to explore in a deep and
original way the relationship between citizens and
parliaments. This is a topic with which political
science is not yet fully engaged but one that involves
a crucial dimension useful for understanding the
actual role of legislatures in modern democracies and
the way in which citizens are connected – through
parliaments – with the whole political system. The
book analyses a rich number of cases, providing not
only an overview of the most important Western
democracies, but also some interesting studies of geo-
graphical areas such as sub-Saharan Africa and Latin
America (plus an analysis of Bangladesh as being
representative of Asia).
The main hypothesis linking all the chapters is the
idea that in the last few years there has been growing
attention around how to improve the relationship
between citizens and parliament, particularly because
legislatures need this to enforce their legitimacy
and to strengthen their position within political
systems. In studying this link, the authors underline the
role of three key actors: members of parliament (MPs),
political parties and the legislature as a whole. The
authors assess which actions are undertaken by these
actors in order to improve their relationship with citi-
zens; and whether these actions are effective.
This book represents an interesting outlook on a
topic that is becoming more and more important due
to increasing political disengagement and problems
concerning the functioning and legitimacy of our con-
temporary democracy. The way in which it is possible
to enforce a stronger linkage with citizens has gained
ever more attention over recent years, especially with
regard to enforcing the role of the media and in order
to combat the growing trend towards political apathy
among the masses. As stated by the authors, it is not
simply a problem of making politics accountable
through the legislature, but rather it is mainly a ques-
tion of how citizens can inf‌luence political decisions
and bring forward new issues that need a response from
the political system.
The plurality of cases presented in this book (differ-
ent continents and different political systems) is funda-
mental because it enables an understanding of how
different cultural and institutional contexts can inf‌lu-
ence this relationship. One of the main benef‌its of this
work is the precision with which all the authors
outline how the different systems try to enforce linkage
with citizens (e.g. by promoting petitions or ensuring
transparency of actions) and how these instruments are
effective in achieving the proposed goals.
Eugenio Salvati
(University of Pavia)
Crisis and Control: Institutional Change in
Financial Regulation by Renate Mayntz (ed.).
Frankfurt: Campus Verlag, 2012. 293pp., £35.00,
ISBN 978 3,593 39671 2
‘Never let a good crisis go to waste.’
Winston Churchill
This book tackles two related questions: What has
changed in f‌inancial regulation since the start of the
global crisis, and why has it been so limited? An
116 COMPARATIVE POLITICS
© 2015 The Authors. Political Studies Review © 2015 Political Studies Association
Political Studies Review: 2015, 13(1)

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