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We investigate the support for neofascist and populist parties across societies in Europe. Apart from the standard variables, such as immigration and unemployment as well as various supply-side variables, we also consider societal openness (defined on the basis of European Social Survey, 2004), welfare state and democracy. The main contribution of this paper is to establish the meta link between the three institutions (1) societal openness, (2) welfare state, and (3) democracy, and find out their impact on the support for extreme right in Europe. We first establish that, in more open societies the direct effect of openness on neofascist votes is negative; however, openness increases the neofascist support indirectly through immigration and unemployment. Moreover, we find that openness has no direct effect on the support for populist parties, but has indirect positive effects through unemployment. We also find that the effect of openness go hand in hand with that of welfare indicator within countries; however, the link between openness and democracy is less unambiguous. Our results are robust with respect to different classifications of extreme right parties and when endogeneity of immigration is controlled for. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

By 2006 all of the post-communist states of East and Central Europe (ECE) had adopted laws on Freedom of Information (FOI). This is intriguing considering that it took most “traditional” democracies much longer to pass such laws. The paper asks why the laws were adopted so quickly in ECE and if they are truly effective. The study identifies three mechanisms that contributed to the adoption of FOI laws: a) pressure from civil society; b) unexpected consequences of membership in transparent international organizations; c) direct involvement by international actors. It argues that the differences in the processes leading to FOI law adoption in these countries have translated into differences in their effectiveness. I generate a series of hypotheses and test them by developing two gauges of effectiveness of FOI laws: 1) the public’s use of laws (based on the number of FOI requests received), 2) the implementation of laws by officials (based on the proportion of requests receiving answers). The research looks at developments in Bosnia, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Hungary, Macedonia, Montenegro, Poland, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia and Slovenia. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

AAs the ideological gap between political parties' narrows and party identification decreases, parties need new strategies to attract voters. Politicizing political corruption is one option and this paper explores to what extent and with what results political parties have used the issue of corruption in European parliamentary elections between 1983 and 2007. 171 electoral campaigns in 32 European democracies are analyzed and the main results are that politicization of corruption is correlated with the level of corruption. Moreover, the issue is rather under than over politicized, implying that it is not a used as a populist strategy to win votes. Rather it is established mainstream parties that are the main champions of anti-corruption. Finally, the results show that corruption allegations quite substantially increase the likelihood of governmental turnover in medium and highly corrupt countries, whereas corruption is not politicized at all in low corrupt countries. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper suggests that previous literature has focused too narrowly on the institutional limitations to democratic responsiveness, to the neglect of the cultural-identity concerns raised in democratic theory. I provide and test a framework for conceptualizing identity, and noting its determinants, which takes into account a variety of factors previously addressed in the literature on EU support. Eurobarometer survey data is utilized in a multi-level model, allowing for the simultaneous consideration of both individual-level and state-level theories of identity formation. Identity development is found to be primarily influenced by diffuse elements of policy support and latent socialization mechanisms. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper investigates the role of presidential heads of state in the government termination process in European democracies. From the examination of the constitutional powers of the president over the dissolution of parliament in nine West European democracies, we have found that most presidents in these countries have constitutionally-endowed powers to call or not to call premature elections once the incumbent governments lose the confidence ofparliament. Based on these findings, we derive several hypotheses relating the configuration of preferences among the president, parliament, and government to the duration of the government and electoral performance. We find that a government is likely to terminate more quickly, the more ideologically distant it is from the median parliamentary party; that a government lasts longer, the more ideologically distant the president is from the medianparliamentary party; and that president's parties perform better in early elections than in regularly scheduled elections. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes to explain why the European Union decides to intervene outside of its borders to support electoral processes in transitional and non-established democracies. EU’s support for elections takes the form of electoral assistance projects and election observation missions. Election assistance is the technical and material support given to the electoral process, and election observation is its political complement. The EU has been active in the area of election support since the early 1990s, and it has become one of the leading actors in the world in this domain. Although EU’s foreign policy has been studied widely, very little attention has been given to explaining why the EU has become such an important actor in the area of election support. In order to fill this gap, this paper answers the following question: what explains the EU’s decision to provide electoral support to transitional and non-established democracies? This paper will present an analysis of the EU decision-making process and the determinants of intervention in the area of election support since 1993. Preliminary research shows that criteria for interventions fall into four main categories: strategic, ideological, operational, and circumstantial. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Liberal democracies in Europe are facing a new challenge. Parties belonging to the radical right-wing party family have gained more political influence. Sweden is, in this context, no exception. The Sweden Democrats (Sverigedemokraterna), the Swedish version of radical right-wing populism, is at the moment the largest political party outside the Swedish parliament. The success of the Sweden Democrats implies a discussion on how the Swedish political system handles the presence of radical right-wing populism. The purpose of this paper is to discuss the relationship between radical right-wing populism and the democratic institutions. The paper shows how the Sweden Democrats are used as a marker by the Swedish political establishment; the party has become associated as something the other parties do not want to be connected to. The Sweden Democrats are being perceived as “the Evil Other”, the pariah and used as an instrument for the other political parties in order to distance themselves from each other. The existence of radical right-wing populism within the European political systems implies a thorough discussion on how to handle this existence in relation to the basis and values of the modern European democratic institutions. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Numerous observers have noted the recent trends of increased voter abstention, reduced confidence in politicians and political parties in decline. Such complaints are levied against the advanced democracies of Europe, their post-communist neighbors, the United States, and Latin America. Some use the term “anti-politics” to capture these apparently global phenomena that affect new and old democracies alike. This usage includes everything from relatively benign conditions of voter apathy to the more consequential loss of regime legitimacy. Whatever the specific symptom, they reflect varying degrees of negative public attitudes toward politics. Along with the rise of anti-politics, particularly in the 1990s, came a resurgence of populism. Several right-wing populists emerged in Europe, at times capturing surprisingly large shares of the popular vote. In Latin America, so-called neopopulists generated discussions of delegative democracy, hyperpresidentialism, illiberal democracy and so forth. Populist leaders of all stripes tend to exploit domestic problems to their own advantage. They play on the complaints of common citizens and blame the nation’s rulers from causing the hardships. As such, their efforts and rhetoric could be described as “anti-political.” Yet this raises an interesting question: what, exactly, is the relationship of anti-politics to populism? Are these merely two terms that describe the same phenomena, or are they analytically distinct? This paper attempts to clarify the relationship between populism and anti-politics. It enters into the conceptual discussion of populism—offering a new definition of populism as a political movement, rather than a style or strategy and so forth—and argues that anti-politics is best considered as a means of securing support. That is, if populism is not in itself a political strategy, then anti-politics must be the strategy populist leaders use. Although one can conceive of non-populists using anti-political strategies, it is difficult to conceive of populists not relying on anti-politics. Populists of all stripes rely on it. The classic populists in Latin America rose in reaction to the oligarchical parties that dominated politics at the time, and infused their messages with nationalist rhetoric. Neopopulists of the 1990s similarly reacted to the so-called political class that seemed aloof and removed from the problems of ordinary citizens. In these, as well as with the agrarian populism in the United States and the right wing populism in Europe, the effort to mobilize support includes the claim that the political system is not working properly, that the interests of ordinary citizens are ignored, and without some big changes the status quo will remain. In all of these cases the predominant argument in favor of the change is that the system needs fixing. Populists claim to offer an appropriate solution. This paper will present the logic behind this conceptualization and explore their relationships in the cases of Peru and Venezuela, with an eye toward providing an inter-regional comparative framework. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

I examine how parties respond to different electoral subconstituencies by shifting their policy positions. I argue that parties tend to respond disproportionately to the policy preferences of their supporters, and also to subconstituencies composed of the religious, ethnic, and sociodemographic groups of voters that have traditionally supported the party. Basing my conclusions on analyses of the Comparative Manifesto Project data on party positions, and national election study data on voter preferences from several European democracies, I find evidence that supports my hypotheses. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent studies of interethnic trust in Europe and the United States suggest ethnic diversity frequently produces interethnic distrust. This research does not bode well for the new democracies since most are ethnic diverse or divided states. Do these results hold for diverse, new democracies? The special case of highly diverse, divided states where the potential for conflict is high provides unique insight into the effects of ethnic diversity on interethnic trust. This study uses four such cases from the Afrobarometer: Nigeria, Kenya, Senegal, and Ghana. The results indicate the relationship is not as simple as lower diversity leading to higher trust. For these four states, diversity and interethnic trust display two distinct relationships, one for highly divided states and one for less divided states. In either case, rising ethnic diversity increases interethnic trust at least initially even in divided states. Even for some disadvantaged groups, increased ethnic diversity increases interethnic trust. Increases in trust match association membership trends. More importantly, interethnic and intra-ethnic trust rise and fall together in all four casesâ??"High ingroup trust is no barrier to faith in others." (Bahry et al. p. 529). ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study of five European democracies finds that, in the context of PR and certain mixed electoral systems, individual citizens are more likely to possess political sophistication than their counterparts in countries with plurality systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using a comparative analysis that includes democracies in Europe and Latin America, I demonstrate that gender-based shortcuts do function outside of the US, and that their function and power varies in different political environments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While a considerable literature shows how political institutions affect economic and social inequality, and a smaller one argues that inequality affects institutions, we suggest (following most historical literature) that exogenous changes in technology, trade, or demography alter the value of factor endowments and thus change both inequality and institutions. We support this assertion with a welfare-maximizing model of endogenous institutional choice, with a series of historical case studies, and with an empirical examination of the history of franchise extension in 19th and 20th Century Europe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The linkage model of external democratization contends that strong ties of transition countries to estab-lished democracies decisively foster political transformation. Yet, the model has only been tested at the aggregate level of states and on transition countries already moving ahead with democracy. This paper takes a different perspective by examining whether linkage to 'the West' may also transfer democratic rules and practices into Arab authoritarian regimes hitherto reluctant toward political liberalization. It will be examined whether social and communication ties to democracies can create important domestic stakeholders for democratic change by transforming state officials into democrats within a non-democratic polity. In order to directly examine attitude change rather than infer it from behaviour, an original scale is developed. Empirically, the argument is tested on Morocco's linkage to Europe using data from an original survey among state officials employed in different ministries. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the effects of internal party democracy in candidate selection on the legitimacy, the representativeness, and the responsiveness of political parties in the European old and new democracies. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that greater institutional decentralization, especially under conditions of political and social diversity, increases opportunities for police repression of protesters and civil and political rights violations overall. Differences are attributed to the level of autonomy and power sharing between national and subnational governments (vertical relations). This argument is tested on a sample of nineteen European countries to determine institutional effects on overall human rights performance (1981 - 2004). Next analysis is done to determine individual level effects of protest on repressive policing in a cross-national sample of daily level contentious events in five European countries with either federal or unitary arrangements: Germany, Switzerland, United Kingdom, Bulgaria, and Poland, from 1990 - 1995. Results for the sixteen year time series suggest that more decentralized institutional arrangements have a slight negative impact on overall respect for civil and political rights. At the daily level, we find a similar trend across the five countries, where presence of local direct elections tends to increase the magnitude of repressive policing at protest events. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses the question of how ordinary people understand democracy. Do contemporary publics display a reasonable understanding of the meaning of democracy, and what are the contents of their definitions? Do people focus on the procedural aspects of democracy-elections, democratic institutions, and processes-which are the main focus of democratization efforts. Alternatively, do they see democracy in economic or social welfare terms? We draw on a wide range of public opinion surveys that have recently been conducted to explore these questions in Africa, Asia, Europe, and Latin America. Our research yields two generalizations about popular conceptions of democracy. First, most citizens of new democracies are cognitively capable of imputing meaning to democracy in their own words. Second, and most important, most of those cognitively capable citizens think of democracy in terms of the freedoms, liberties and rights that it conveys, rather than procedural and institutional conceptions of liberal democracy. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper draws on two recent and largely untapped sources of data to test empirically the Tocquevillian argument about the impact of involvement in civic organizations on individual attitudes and behaviors. We seek to fill-at least partially-the gap between theories of civil society and demonstrable results. Our analysis is based on two related studies-the European Social Survey (ESS) and the U.S. "Citizenship, Involvement, Democracy" (CID) survey-that incorporate innovative and detailed measures about respondents' involvement in voluntary associations in 19 European countries and in the United States. These surveys provide us not only with rich individual-level data, but they also allow us to develop and test a new measure of civic involvement that distinguishes between different levels of participation. After employing our new measure of civic involvement in pooled and individual country analyses, we find strong support for the Tocquevillian argument. On average, those persons with greater levels of involvement in voluntary organizations also engage in more political acts, have higher life satisfaction, and are generally more trusting of others than those who do not, even when controlling for a host of important demographic factors. Although these findings provide only an initial examination of the internal effects of participation, they highlight the general importance of actual involvement as opposed to nominal membership. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper uses cross-national survey evidence to examine changing levels of paticipation within political parties in established and new European democracies. Have activity patterns changed as memberships have shrunk? ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines both support for democracy as regime principle and satisfaction with democracy in practice in central and eastern Europe, analyzing economic, cognitive, and other variables to identify critical citizens in these countries. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We examine the relationship between the dispersion of policy choices on offer in a party system and citizen satisfaction. Cross-national analyses, based on twelve countries from 1973-2003, are presented that suggest that when parties in a political system are more ideologically proximate to the mean voter position in Left-Right terms that overall satisfaction increases. The central impli-cation of this finding is that for understanding within country changes in satisfaction, party posi-tions matter. And, when the average party’s policy position is more proximate to the mean voter position, satisfaction increases. Our macro-level approach produces new insights for understand-ing within country changes in satisfaction over time. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The third wave of democracy is now in its fourth decade and while numerous studies have been conducted on Southern Europe, Latin America, Eastern Europe, and even Africa, Asia has been consistently marginalized in the literature. Asia as a region has many democratic experiences that are empirically rich with vibrant transitions, mass participation, military coups, reversals, and many other factors that make Asia important to the study of democratization. This study attempts to place Asia in the mainstream participation literature by testing the resource theory of political participation, characterized by a positive correlation between turnout and socioeconomic status, utilizing individual level data from the 2003, 2004, and 2005 Asian Barometers across several democracies in Asia. I use linear regression to test several hypotheses derived from this theory. The results have important implications for the state of Asian democracies and the success of third wave transitions. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since 1989, the postsocialist states of East-Central Europe have had to confront the legacy of communism in their transition to democracy. Many of these states have adopted lustration laws that either require individuals to reveal the role they played during communism or require the government to open secret files from the previous regime to the public. Though philosophers and scholars of memory have theorized the connections between an undemocratic past and politics in the present, it is still unclear why states choose to adopt certain measures over others. We enrich these debates by using Boolean algebra to analyze how regime harshness, democratic experience, the influence of the Soviet Union and the perpetration of grave crimes explain the implementation of lustration laws in sixteen postcommunist states. We find two sufficient causes for lustration: the presence of a particularly harsh communist regime or the combination of strong Soviet influence and the absence of prewar democratic experience. These findings allow us to add to the theoretical literature by better understanding why some states transitioning from communism choose to deal with the past through lustration laws. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The issue of public sector values has been increasingly important in public sector reform debates inEurope in the past decade. The reasons vary, but often relate to the introduction of publicmanagement reforms that are claimed to challenge a more traditional normative basis for the publicsector (Hood 1991, Lundquist 1998). While there is much debate over values and normative basisthere is limited empirical evidence on value profiles and value changes (Van der Wal, de Graaf andLasthuizen 2006, Hansen and Lauridsen 2004, Bozeman and Rainey 1998). This article aims toaddress such limitations by presenting data from a major survey based study of value orientations atall levels in the Danish public sector. Results from this study are relevant for the analysis of valuesin other stable, democratic western states.The article investigates the following questions: How do public managers perceive values in thepublic sector? Can we construct value profiles for the public sector or parts of it? Two relatedhypotheses are suggested. First that it is possible to identify a set of values that is regarded asimportant by almost all public managers and second that these value profiles are reflected in valueorientations and perceptions regarding staff skills and motivation.The article uses four ideal typical perceptions of governance forms and related values to assess thepublic sector values in Denmark. The analysis suggests that traditional public sector values havesurvived, but are now combined with a very strong orientation to values of innovation/renewal atthe general level and in regards to staff skills and motivation. This raises several questions of valueconflicts and possible "crowding out" of traditional values in the long term. There are someinteresting differences and tensions in the value profiles underneath the general picture ofhomogeneity. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyzes the electoral effect of the legislativeactivities of political parties in decision making in the EuropeanParliament (EP). Challenging the influential --Second-Order Model"in studies of the EP elections, this article explores the extentthat European voters use the EP elections to hold their Europeanrepresentatives responsible for European decisions. In so doing, Iassume European voters develop at least affirmative or negativeassessments of the national parties in European decision making.Next, I develop a new measure of national party cohesion inEuropean decision making resulting from their conflicts with theirEuropean Party Groups (EPGs). Considering the conflicts as salientelectoral information, I hypothesize that European voter choice ofa party is partly determined by voters' assessment of theirparties' cohesion in European decision making. Analyses at anaggregate level with data covering the second and sixth EP showthat national parties have been punished in the EP elections whenthey act with low internal cohesion caused by the influence of theEPGs on their members' voting behavior. The results imply thatEurope indeed matters to voters' choices in the EP elections. Tothat extent, the EP elections function as instruments of Europeandemocracy. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The issue of democracy and participation within regional integration processes has acquired big relevance in the last few years. In this context, one can find many studies on the determinants of public support for the European integration process. However, studies for other regional blocs are scarce. For this reason, this study focuses on a Latin American integration process: the MERCOSUR, conformed by Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay, and studies the opinion of Uruguayan citizens about it. Specifically, the study analyses the knowledge of Uruguayans about the integration process, and which are the determinants of not knowing it. It also evaluates the probability of supporting MERCOSUR and voting for it in a hypothetical referendum. Information from the ISSP Survey for year 2004 in Uruguay was used. Surprisingly, in spite of the fifteen-year history of the bloc, almost 55 percent of the sample had heard "nothing" or "few" about MERCOSUR. Results show that being a man, older than 55 years old, and with secondary or university studies rises the probability of having read or heard about the integration process. Knowing nothing about the integration process leads to a non- support for it and raises the probability of a negative vote in a hypothetical referendum to maintain Uruguay as a member of MERCOSUR. Last, the so called "democratic vocation" of Uruguayans is confirmed: a referendum to evaluate Uruguay's incorporation into MERCOSUR would be approved by almost 70 percent of the citizens at the moment the survey was carried out, even when the percentage of supporters is much lower. This result is positively influenced if the person feels identified with any national political party. We can conclude that there exist information deficits within MERCOSUR that leads to a lower level of knowledge and that contributes to keep the democratic deficit of the bloc. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is significant fear that giving power to judges is bad for democracy. Many American scholars particularly question the legitimacy of having courts oversee the electoral process. Constitutional makers in the emerging democracies in post-communist Europe entrusted courts with significant oversight of democratic rights and processes. Despite Western fears, this had not hindered democratic development. In fact, constitutional courts in many of these countries (here Lithuania and the Czech Republic) have interpreted democratic rights and procedures in ways that foster democratic development. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]