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The resurgence of attention to civil society as a concept of political thought and practice as well as of social science research in the past two decades has been intimately connected to the fall of communism in Europe. In fact, the connection has been so close as to render some of it myopic, not always clear on what it is that one is looking at, what is denoted and what is meant to be achieved by the term ‘civil society’ in reference to the events, actors, and processes preceding, affecting and succeeding the political change in the Eastern block. This paper systematically reviews the various ways in which civil society has been conceptualized and employed in the literature focusing on the past two decades of Central and Eastern Europe, exploring the extent to which certain assumptions underlying the concept have been challenged, explicated, or, conversely, taken for granted. It traces the fluctuating vision of civil society as a tool and as a cause, posited as an explanatory variable and as a dependent variable, but always in connection to transition to and consolidation of democracy, and assesses whether the literature to date has shown the concept of civil society in Central and Eastern Europe to have analytical value-added. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How stable are the party systems of Eastern European democracies, which are member-states of the European Union? In this paper, I apply the criteria and framework for identifying institutionalized party systems first employed by Scott Mainwaring and Timothy Scully (1995) in Latin American democracies and later modified by Michelle Kuenzi and Gina Lambright (2001) to examine African democracies. I utilize two of the four components of the original framework that are applicable to the selected cases, party competition and party roots in society, with party competition (volatility) first divided similarly in the manner of Allan Sikk (2005) and Eleanor Powell and Joshua Tucker (2008) and then considered as a single value. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]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]

This paper argues for a close connection between political trust and overall regime-legitimacy in authoritarian systems such as the Chinese. It analyses the effects of perceived performance (in terms of perceived political and economic performance and perceived financial well-being) and political culture (in terms of hierarchical and conflict orientations) on political trust in the imagined, central state and the real, executive state. It also includes other previously tested variables such as internal political efficacy and media consumption. The results show that political trust is an outcome of aspects of per-formance (in particular political performance) and parts of political culture. Political trust can be better understood when we try to gauge the interaction patterns between both. The detailed analysis reveals important indirect effects of performance being shaped by as-pects of political culture and well-being. The results also suggest that there is a strong effect of trust in the real state on confidence in the imagined state. However, media con-sumption seems to no longer affect political trust while internal efficacy does affect attitudes on the imagined state. Lastly, indirect and direct effects from structural variables such as age, education, and income on political trust suggest that trust levels and probably also regime legitimacy are structurally inclined to decrease in the future unless the regime finds a way to make its political system less vulnerable to an increasingly skeptical citizenry. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Support for Democracy and Autocracy in post-Communist Central and Eastern Europe.x000d.1992 - 2006.x000d..x000d.Christian W Haerpfer.x000d..x000d.The topic of this paper is part of the current scholarly debate about the concept of “political support for democracy.” This paper proposes to go beyond that specific concept of “support for democracy” and includes, in addition, the concept of “support for autocracy” within comparative studies of democratization. The proposed paper is analyzing political support for democracy on 5 levels: political community (1), regime principles (2), regime performance (3), regime institutions (4) as well as political actors (5). This paper is the sequel of an article in the International Political Science Review 2008, vol. 29, No.4, 411-432..x000d..x000d.The data analyzed in this article are taken from the New Democracies Barometer (NDB) as well as the World Values Study (WVS) for 1992, 1994, 1996, 1998, 2000, 2002 and 2006. The paper is using data from both surveys for the following countries: Slovenia (1), Poland (2), Romania (3), Bulgaria (4), Serbia (5), Moldova (6), Ukraine (7), and Russian Federation (8). The paper will use as most recent time point data from the most recent WVS wave, which has been conducted in 2006 and 2007. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Markets and democracies constitute more or less contested allocative mechanisms. Given that they define winners and losers, they may in turn generate or ameliorate social conflict over distributive outcomes. When perceptions of social inequality are high, the probability of markets and democracy generating social conflict may be even higher and this propensity may even be heightened further in the case of new or unconsolidated markets and democracies. We test these expectations against evidence from mass surveys undertaken in 12 post-Communist states in 2007 supplemented by country-level data about economic and political performance. Notably, we find little link between national-level indices of income inequality and expectations that markets and democracy will produce social inequality. However, we do find a link between views of the extent of social inequality and expectations of market generated but not democracy generated conflict, even when controlling for support for the market and democracy as ideal systems. Underscoring these positive and negative findings, views of social inequality are also clearly consequential for support for 'strong hand' economic government, but not for anti-democratic leadership. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Western democratic countries, especially the United States, are pouring billions of dollars into educational training programs for people from Eastern Europe, the newly independent states of the former Soviet Union (NIS) and other countries around the world. These training programs bring people to the United States and are intended to impart not only technical skills but to promote democratic values and pro-Western attitudes among the participants who are expected to return to their native countries where they will encourage democratic regimes and market economies. Very little empirical research has been aimed at determining if training programs achieve their specified goals of promoting democratic and free-market attitudes among participants. To address this dearth of research we studied the impact of five different training programs on participants from four different countries (Bosnia / Herzegovina, Ukraine, Georgia and Kazakhstan) during the period between 2000 and 2003. The study uses a panel design with three waves of data collection based on face-to-face interviews with program participants both before and after taking part in the training program. The analysis reveals mixed results. There is little evidence demonstrating that training program participation fosters democratic values generally although it does appear to slightly promote opposition to limiting civil liberties and support for workplace democracy. Partaking in a training program also encouraged the program participants to be more favorable toward the involvement of Western countries in the economy of their own country. The greatest impact of training program participation, however, was that it sharply increased international communication which could lead to a higher level of appreciation for cultural diversity among those who participate in training programs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Voter turnout in post-Communist countries is again on the decline after a significant drop in the first transitional elections. Existing research emphasizes the importance of transitional dynamics and the institutional context for political mobilization, but these factors alone cannot explain the current strong trend of disengagement among voters. This paper argues that corruption, seriously threatening democratic governance in the new democracies of Eastern Europe, is another influential determinant of voter turnout. The effect is hypothesized as curvilinear: initially corruption may mobilize voters to overthrow corrupt politicians; continued abuse of public office, however, will lead to distrust in the political process and alienation from politics. To test the proposed hypothesis, I analyze macro-level and Comparative Study of Electoral Systems survey data from eight East European countries. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Understanding the link between constitutions and individual attitudes has, by and large, been ignored in favor of focusing on the impact of specific institutional arrangements. This paper attempts to bridge the gap between theoretical expectations concerning the importance of constitutions and empirical work in the field. Beginning with Jürgen Habermas’ theory of discursive democracy, I analyze how constitutions affect both behavior (discourse) and individual levels of perceived regime legitimacy. Constitution drafting and implementation across Central and Eastern European countries provide a unique natural experiment to test hypotheses derived from normative theory. Findings suggest that constitutions impact both behavior and attitudes, but not in the way that Habermas predicted. While both the effective level of checks and balances and rule of law significantly impact the probability of political discourse. Guaranteed rights (necessary and non-necessary) actually decrease levels of perceived legitimacy. Interestingly, the inclusivity of the constitutional drafting and ratification processes appear to have no impact on perceived legitimacy. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The main purpose of this paper is to analyze the relation between voter turnout and legitimacy of democratic regime in Central Eastern Europe. More specifically, I want to answer the following questions: Does electoral abstention in Central Eastern Europe ‘carry a message of protest’? Does it mean de-legitimacy? Do non-voters abstain because they do not legitimize democratic regime? Are high numbers of abstainers a threat to democracy in Central Eastern Europe? The key finding is that post-communist regimes are not the same as far as the relation between voter turnout and democratic legitimacy is concerned. Empirical analyses show that in those regimes, where voters differ significantly from non-voters in respect to legitimacy, the overall level of democratic legitimacy is higher, while voter turnout is lower. In contrast in those regimes, where democratic legitimacy is relatively weaker, voters and non-voters do not differ significantly in respect to legitimacy; at the same time voter turnout is much higher there. The analysis therefore implies that non-voting in Central Eastern Europe is a lesser threat to democracy than usually suggested. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In new democracies of Central and Eastern Europe (CEE), political parties have not been successful with generating loyal constituencies consistently and the academia’s attempts to explain the creation of political parties by the reference to social cleavage theories are not necessarily applicable in the CEE cases. The turn of political elites to populism should not come as a surprise, given the existence of ideological vacuum in CEE states where parties have been failing to articulate the interests of their constituencies and mobilize them. What is puzzling is the strength of the populist party appeal in some CEE states and their relative weakness in other cases. This paper focuses on the rise of political party populism in ex-communist states of Central and Eastern Europe. What is the nature of East Central European populism and how is it different from its Western or Latin American versions? Which factors explain the rise of populism and its stronger appeal in some CEE cases (such as Poland, Slovakia, and Bulgaria) and its relative weakness in other cases? Finally, what are the implications of the rise of populism for the quality of democracy? Does populism hinder democracy or is it a “corrective mechanism” of democracy? ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the myriad ways in which political corruption is antithetical to democracy, incidences of such corruption, or at least the perception that this corruption exists, has been on the rise throughout the formerly communist states of East-Central Europe over the last decade. Given the continued process of democratic consolidation in the region, how might we explain this growing perception that political systems are corrupt? Beyond the determinants of perceptions of corruption, the consequences these perceptions hold for new democracies may be equally, if not more, important. Do these perceptions influence an individual’s attitudes toward the political system? Furthermore, does perceiving the system to be corrupt hold consequences for the behavior of these individuals? This paper contributes to the extant literature, in which corruption perceptions are largely overlooked, by utilizing survey data from the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems to examine both the causes and consequences of perceived corruption in eight post-communist states: Albania, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Romania, Russia and Slovenia. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the theoretical implications of internal party democracy for the electoral fortunes of political parties and relates the issue to the political contexts in Central and Eastern Europe. The main argument to be analyzed stipulates that more internally-democratic parties are more successful electorally. The alternative view emphasizes the presence of a trade-off between vote maximization and internal democracy. In addition, the analysis outlines a list of empirical indicators of the degree of internal party democracy and a procedure for classifying political parties in Central and Eastern Europe. Finally, the analytical framework is applied to the major political parties in Bulgaria. The empirical evidence illustrates that the degree and consequences of internal party democracy vary across parties and political contexts. Examples of electoral success can be found both for parties that restrict and enhance internal democracy. Yet, greater inclusiveness of party members into the deliberation and decision-making processes with moderate to high degrees of decentralization are likely to provide parties with more stable structural bases, better ability to deal with internal crises, and more legitimate decisional outcomes, which in turn would increase the viability of party organizations in the external environment. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Most of our limited knowledge about democracy promotion comes from studying the activities of established (Western) democracies. I look instead at democracy export by young democracies and focus on the Eastern European members of the EU. To shed light on and to explain the variation in the democratization activities of Eastern European civic groups and government officials, I examine the activities of Poland and Slovakia. There are two types of Eastern European donors: the first oriented mostly toward the so-called Eastern European neighborhood and the second â€" working in both the Eastern European neighborhood and the Western Balkans; Poland is representative of the first type while Slovakia â€" of the second. I find that democracy promotion by recent democratizers is best understood as an export of the local experience with transition to democracy. It is this experience, which colors a donor’s response to the political development of the recipient country. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We present and analyze a new dataset on government duration in eleven Eastern European countries from 1992 to 2007 that specifically takes account of caretaker periods and delays in the government formation process. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]