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6 results on '"Pendarovski, Stevo"'

3. Fault Lines of Political Culture in Europe: Vibrant Legacies from the Past

Author

Pendarovski, Stevo

Subjects
political culture, post-communism, democracy, autocracy, democratic values
Abstract

For some time, scholars have argued that Western and Eastern Europe differ in terms of the political culture of their unified political communities. Since all the available evidence indicates that political culture is crucial to the economic performance and political stability of individual states, it is important to detect the drivers behind the basic beliefs of citizens, two and a half decades after the fall of communism. The Relevant World Values Survey and the European Values Survey reports repeatedly confirmed that whilst the support for democracy is strong among the citizens of the former communist Eastern Europe, their belief in the vital components of a democratic political culture is weak. It could be argued that some post-communist countries have been less successful in building the “moral infrastructure of democracy” due to the resilient democratic values deficit, based partially upon the political and economic attitudes from the past. In a separate section of this chapter, the results of a survey conducted on a group of students from the Republic of Macedonia are presented and their replies on the dichotomy between autocratic and democratic values are analyzed. By assessing the opinions of the students who had not been born when communism was still alive, it has been concluded that a substantial cultural shift will have to take place if the current system of formal democracy is to be replaced by a more effective one.

Published
2016
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4. ON-LINE POLITICS AND VOTING: OVERCOMING THE DEMOCRATIC DEFICIT

Author

Pendarovski, Stevo, Pachovski, Veno, Andonov, Marko, Mihajloski, Zoran, Cavdar, Kimo, Pendarovski, Stevo, Pachovski, Veno, Andonov, Marko, Mihajloski, Zoran, and Cavdar, Kimo

Abstract

The advance of digital technology in the field of politics in the last 20 years has raised the expectations about enhancing the potentials of the long dominant model of representative democracy. The need to reinvigorate the overall political process was talked about since the first signs of decline in the civic engagement in the second half of the past century. In the meantime, technological gadgets, and, especially the great versatility of Internet applicability have indeed contributed for better communication between the political elites and their people and for sharing the information on the unprecedented level. Yet, the key challenge still seems barely touched: how to provide meaningful participation of the politically awakened individuals in the decision-making processes within the states. In the article we offer a brief survey of the European and USA achievements in the field of e-voting and Internet-voting in order to show how the political, technical and security concerns are still prevailing in the debates thus undermining the trust in the new modes of casting the votes. Also, we present the results of the survey done with 120 students in the Republic of Macedonia and their considerations about the eventual Internet voting in the country. Applying the descriptive and analytical methods we would argue that the immense possibilities for using Internet in politics are far from being exploited, so the initial miscalculation and failures should not discourage the communities from observing new pathways for improving the unavoidable digital component of democracy.&nbsp

Published
2015

6. Electoral Authoritarianism at the End of Transition in the Western Balkans.

Author

Pendarovski, Stevo

Subjects
DEMOCRATIZATION, AUTHORITARIANISM, TRANSITION economies, SOCIAL development, SOCIAL order, BALKAN Peninsula politics & government
Abstract

"The Third Wave" (Huntington, 1991) started in the early 1970s, and embraced a number of Southeast European countries which after 1989 commenced a long venture toward democracy. Two and a half decades away from communism there is almost an agreement among scholars that the transition towards a different social order is now over. Meanwhile, many former communist states in Europe have made advances in accepting democratic practices, whilst most of the Western Balkan countries are witnessing a democratic backlash. Moreover, in some of them a different type of political system somewhere in between democracy and dictatorship, labeled electoral or competitive authoritarianism (Levitsky & Way, 2002) is emerging slowly, but steadily. Although the region in the 1990s has already seen illiberal regimes (such as Yugoslavia and Croatia), democratic recession after almost a quarter of century into the formal democratic enterprise is surprising. By looking at the various indexes that have measured democracy in the Western Balkan countries in the past decade, the authoritarian tendencies are becoming more visible. Though behind this developmental stage a range of factors that influence political, economic and social transformations is involved, the author would argue that the legacy from the countries' communist past has a specific importance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Published
2015

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