|
|
|
|
CIAO DATE: 10/05
Volume 5, Number 1, Spring/Summer 2005
Foreword
Think-Tanks in Europe (PDF, 4 pages, 140.8 KB)
PolSci Papers
Democratization without Decommunization. The Balkans Unifinished Revolutions (PDF, 22 pages, 185.1 KB) by Alina Mungin-Pippidi
Due to their perspectives of European integration and the formidable incentives they face in this process, the Balkan countries are set on a clear course towards improving their democracies. As one external factor, the general fall of Communism, has triggered their transition, another external factor, the accession perspective to the European Union, has been a crucial factor of consolidation. Domestic factors explain only how smooth or difficult a transition was, but the final goal of the political change is everywhere the same. Communism was a mixture of domestic regime and regional empire, and everything needed reinvention after it collapsed. The more reinvention needed, the greatest the task to reconstitute the nation, the state and the society, and the more difficult the political transition, because the task was not identical in every postcommunist country. Prior to asking ourselves if democratic transition succeeded or failed in a given society the preliminary question is to what extent Communists had succeeded or failed there, not to bring about happiness, but to destroy completely the organic society and replace it with one designed by them.
Are the Balkan EU Candidates Different? Building a Balkan Model of Support for European Integration (PDF, 23 pages, 331.0 KB) by Michael Ardorino
This article endeavors to test Anderson's theory of imagined communities by examining the European integration movement on the Balkan Peninsula. By addressing economic choice and national identity in driving support for both the European Union and NATO, the findings here indicate that differences exist in how voters endorse joining the West in three societies in one distinct region of the postcommunist world. In societies which are more ethnically and linguistically heterogeneous such as Bulgaria and Romania, there is greater variation in backing endorsement for Western Europe based on ethnicity and languages in 1997 than in Slovenia which is more homogeneous.
The "Normalisation" of Party Systems and Voting Behaviour in Eastern Europe (PDF, 22 pages, 369.2 KB) by Daniel Bochsler
Eastern European elections are regarded as outlying cases in international research. According to scholars, the reason for it lies in a low institutionalisation of political parties. In this article, I focus on the developments which occur in the institutionalisation of party systems in the course of the first multiparty elections. Theories about party system formation and strategic voter behaviour let suggest that the party system stabilises and nationalises after several elections. It is only with sufficient experience that political parties and voters have enough information to act strategically and to adjust their behaviour to the new electoral systems. A novel database on electoral results on the district level that I constructed allows me to test those hypotheses by measuring "party nationalisation" and "wasted votes" for the first time for Eastern Europe. Both indicators are calculated with innovating measures for Russia, Estonia, Latvia, Moldova and Romania. Even if the countries (in contrast for instance to Central Europe) have few democratic experience, four of those party systems after one and a half decades reached almost "normal" values. But Russia still lacks a well institutionalised party system.
Social Actors in a Political Game. The Romanian Political Elite and Democratization, 1989-2000. (PDF, 36 pages, 294.9 KB) by Irina Culic
There are many factors accounting for the success and form of the transition to democracy. The present study examines the role of the political elite in the process of democratization and democratic consolidation for the case of Romania (1989-2000). It focuses on the structure and social composition of the Romanian political elite, pointing to its disunity and lack of integration and explaining how they have affected its political performance. For the purposes if this research, the elite was operationalized as comprising the members of the successive Parliaments. The case of Hungary is considered as a basis for comparison for the first post-communist legislature in order to understand the qualitative difference in relatively similar findings of elite fragmentation and communist elite reproduction. The smoother political transition to democracy involving actual political plurality and the practice of negotiation, the clear link between the political parties and the social groups and interests within the society they represented, and the more institutionalized political space made Hungary a more effective democracy, at least in terms of parliamentary activity.
Post-Communist Political Symbolism: New Myths - Same Old Stories? An Analysis of Romanian Political Mythology (PDF, 18 pages, 204.4 KB) by Cosmina Tanasoiu
This article applies a case-study approach in examining the relation between cultural and political myths. It looks at post-communist political myths and questions the extent to which they are new creations or recycled narratives, re-using frames already present in the public arena, thus benefiting from the resonances they carry within the collective memory of a nation. The hypothesis advanced by this article is that the "archetypes" developed and propagated through cultural myths form the basis of construction for political myths, allowing them to travel through time. Consequently, by exploiting the patterns set by one nation's cultural myths, political myths are perpetuated from one period to another although new faces and details are used to flesh out the script. I argue that a better understanding of cultural myths could provide an explanation about why a particular political myth has been created and become successful.
Public Private Partnership Between Euphoria and Disillusionment. Recent Experiences from Austria and Implications for Countries in Transformation. (PDF, 31 pages, 237.5 KB) by Dieter J. Angerer and Gerhard Hammerschmid
This paper analyses the arduous path towards implementing Public Private Partnership (PPP) as a governance mode increasingly 'en vogue' in many political programs worldwide. As current literature on PPP strongly features an Anglo-Saxon bias recent experiences from Austria with a continental-European legalistic Rechtsstaat tradition are presented. Based on our analysis of a recently failed PPP project we outline that beside factors put forward by rationalchoice approaches the dynamics of such partnerships are also shaped by normative and cultural-cognitive factors as theorized by neoinstitutional approaches. We thereby understand PPPs not only as a distinct, innovative organizational arrangement but also as a policy tool with symbolic meanings and underlying premises. In the final part general implications regarding the relevance of these experiences for transformational countries are outlined.
PolSci Lectures
Do We Really Know How to Promote Democracy? (PDF, 13 pages, 136.3 KB) by Francis Fukuyama