The New Democracies

Up-to-date and broad in scope, these essays have been carefully selected from The Washington Quarterly to address specific problems, countries, and regions involved in the tide of political change.

This book considers whether the potential of democracy following the end of the Cold War was diminished by technocratic, judicial control of politics in the new democracies of Central and Eastern Europe. It explores the complexities and drawbacks of modern constitutionalism by offering a comprehensive theoretical and comparative-empirical assessment of the status and role of constitutionalism in five new EU Member States. The democratization of countries in Central and Eastern Europe has been guarded by constitutions and constitutional courts. This book examines the implications of powerful courts and rigid constitutions for the democratic engagement of citizens and the political authority of politicians. Using an interdisciplinary and comparative approach, the book analyses the historical emergence of powerful constitutional institutions in the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Romania and Slovakia. The author argues that the democratic promise of 1989 largely lost out to a technocratic and top-down view of judicial control of politics – a state of affairs reinforced by EU accession. The current backlash in countries such as Hungary and Romania indicates that the realization of democratization to the extent initially expected might be ever more remote in some new democracies. New Democracies in Crisis? will be of interest to students and scholars of European Union politics, democratization studies, European constitutionalism, socio-legal studies, governance and comparative politics.

Ingrid van Biezen provides a comprehensive comparative analysis of party formation and organizational development in recently established democracies. She focuses on four democracies in Southern and East-Central Europe and addresses political parties from a cross-regional perspective. Featuring a wealth of new information on party organization, this book provides a valuable theoretical and empirical contribution to our understanding of political parties in both old and new democracies.

This text states that democratic governments must be accountable to the electorate; but they must also be subject to restraint and oversight by other public agencies. The state must control itself. This text explores how new democracies can achieve this goal.

How elites influenced major electoral reform in the emerging democracy of Indonesia

Voting in Old and New Democracies examines voting behavior and its determinants based on 26 surveys from 18 countries on five continents between 1992 and 2008. It systematically analyzes the impact on voting choice of factors rooted in the currently dominant approaches to the study of electoral behavior, but adds to this analysis factors introduced or reintroduced into this field by the Comparative National Elections Project (CNEP)—socio-political values, and political communication through media, personal discussion, and organizational intermediaries. It demonstrates empirically that these long-neglected factors have significant political impact in many countries that previous studies have overlooked, while "economic voting" is insignificant in most elections once long-term partisan attitudes are taken into consideration. Its examination of electoral turnout finds that the strongest predictor is participation by other family members, demonstrating the importance of intermediation. Another chapter surveys cross-national variations in patterns of intermediation, and examines the impact of general social processes (such as socioeconomic and technological modernization), country-specific factors, and individual-level attitudinal factors as determinants of those patterns. Complementing its cross-national comparative analysis is a detailed longitudinal case study of one country over 25 years. Finally, it examines the extent of support for democracy as well as significant cross-national differences in how democracy is understood by citizens. Written in a clear and accessible style, Voting in Old and New Democracies significantly advances our understanding of citizen attitudes and behavior in election settings.

This volume focuses on the relationship between the tasks of institutional design and the outcomes of the process of economic and political liberalization in Latin America and in Central and Eastern Europe. The contributors emphasize the design of institutions to serve a market economy, the design of electoral laws, and the design of executive-legislative relations. Within this framework each chapter discusses the legacy of the pre-existing authoritarian regime; the range of preferences among various strategic actors with regard to the pace and mix of reforms; and the consequences of final choices for the institutionalization of effective economies and the process of democratization. Countries throughout Latin America and Central and Eastern Europe are moving from semi-closed to open economies and from authoritarian to democratic political systems. Despite important differences between the regions, these transitions involve similar tasks: the establishment of governmental institutions and electoral systems conducive to legitimation of the new and fragile democracies and expansion of the institutional infrastructure of a market economy. This volume looks at both regions, focusing on the relationship between the tasks of institutional design and the outcomes of the process of economic and political liberalization. In particular, the contributors emphasize the design of institutions to serve a market economy, the design of electoral laws, and the design of executive-legislative relations. Each chapter discusses the legacy of the pre-existing authoritarian regime; the range of preferences among various strategic actors (the government, state bureaucracies, opposition parties, and interest groups) with regard to the pace and mix of reforms; and the consequences of final choices for the institutionalization of effective economies and the process of democratization.

Previously published as a special issue of the Journal of Legislative Studies, this volume offers a broad comparative assessment of the many faces of parliamentary opposition in different political, legal and cultural settings. Issues of political opposition, and of parliamentary opposition in particular, are at the very heart of the study of democratic processes in different parts of the world. Written by leading scholars in the field, this book looks both at the core features of the parliamentary opposition itself and its role in the legislative and wider political process. This includes an inquiry into the manifold challenges that the parliamentary opposition in many countries has come to face in the more recent past, in particular the rise of different non-parliamentary opposition actors. The countries covered in this volume include the old democracies of the Anglo-Saxon world, continental Europe and Japan, and the new democracies and democratizing regimes in Central and Eastern Europe, Latin America and South Africa. Another chapter looks at the manifestations of parliamentary opposition within the multi-level system of the European Union