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that a political party “is in equilibrium when it can offer its candidates something approximating an even chance of election” (p. 33). This seems to make party competition part of the concept of equilibrium, not a separate factor that is affected by equilibrium. The theoretical argument of the book might be presented just as well without the concept of equilibrium: the hypothesis would simply be that the existence of two developed political parties that are oriented toward winning office leads to competitive elections which then results in more effective democracy. In elaborating the mechanism behind these relationships, the authors argue that ambitious politicians, running under party labels, make this system work through their desire to win office, retain office, and move to a higher office. After laying out their theoretical argument, the authors describe the party system in the South for different time periods. In the antebellum period, a competitive party system was developing in the South in the 1840s, and the region was catching up to the North in this regard, but the collapse of the Whig Party in the 1850s and the subsequent Civil War ended that brief period of competitive party politics. In the late 19th century, a competitive party system never became established in the South, and the domination of the Democratic Party continued throughout the first half of the 20th century. Movement toward party competition began in the mid-20th century, but it was not until the 1980s that a real two-party system existed in the South. In recent decades, political parties in the South have been as developed and as competitive as those in the North. Following the description of party politics in the South and the North at different points in time, the authors analyze the effects of differences in party development and party competition. They present a great deal of analysis, too much to be able to summarize all of the findings in this review. One important analysis investigates the effect of party development on electoral competition, using data on the states at different points in time from 1948 to 2012. This analysis finds that states have a higher level of competition in presidential elections when there are sharper differences between the parties (measured by the difference in roll call voting between the Democratic and Republican congressmen from the state) and when more voters perceive party differences. Another important analysis finds that competitive party systems lead to greater government responsiveness: using data for various time periods, they show that there is a stronger relationship between the roll call votes of US Representatives and Senators and the ideological orientation of voters in their districts or states when there is a more competitive party system. In the past, Southern members of Congress were much less responsive to the ideological character of their district or state, but in the more competitive environment of recent decades, Southern members of Congress are just as responsive as those from the North. Aldrich and Griffin also show that greater party competition leads to more democratic attitudes on the part of citizens: as the South has become more competitive, it has become more similar to the North in support for democratic values, such as free speech. This book is a valuable addition to the literature on political parties. It tackles big questions, attempts to answer them with a wealth of data analysis, and produces theoretically important findings. Furthermore, the approach and methods used in this study are likely to be a guide to other scholars who want to examine the role that political parties play in a democracy. In their attempt to present a large amount of analysis in a relatively short book, the authors sometimes fail to provide some of the methodological details that would interest some scholars. For example, near the end of Chapter 7, there are the results of what I believe is a Granger causality analysis, but it is not identified as such, and the details of the analysis, including the coefficients, are not included. It would have been nice to see more methodological information in some places, even if it were relegated to an appendix. However, this is a minor criticism of what is overall a very fine book.