Institutional Design and Party Development in Post-communist States
Author: Sergiu Gherghina
Publisher: Editura Lumen
Published: 2007
Total Pages: 23
ISBN-13: 9731703454
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →Lanterna Rally
eBook PDF Download Digital Library
Institutional Design in Post-Communist Societies
Author: Jon Elster
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 1998-03-28
Total Pages: 368
ISBN-13: 9780521479318
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →The authors of this book have developed a new and stimulating approach to the analysis of the transitions of Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Slovakia to democracy and a market economy. They integrate interdisciplinary theoretical work with elaborate empirical data on some of the most challenging events of the twentieth century. Three groups of phenomena and their causal interconnection are explored: the material legacies, constraints, habits and cognitive frameworks inherited from the past; the erratic configuration of new actors, and new spaces for action; and a new institutional order under which agency is institutionalized and the sustainability of institutions is achieved. The book studies the interrelations of national identities, economic interests, and political institutions with the transformation process, concentrating on issues of constitution making, democratic infrastructure, the market economy, and social policy.
Governing After Communism
Author: Vesselin Dimitrov
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Published: 2006
Total Pages: 316
ISBN-13: 9780742540095
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →This timely comparative analysis explores the evolution of governance in Central and Eastern Europe. The book considers post-communist leaders' key challenge: the development of central government institutions capable of coordinating, integrating, and steering the policymaking process. Building on a broad range of primary sources and extensive field research, the distinguished authors analyze the processes and outcomes of institution-building in Hungary, Poland, the Czech Republic, and Bulgaria since the late 1980s. They examine in detail the organization and inner workings of central executives; explain differences in executive trajectories across time and countries by considering the influence of institutional legacies, the impact of evolving party systems, and the role of crises in spurring institutional change; and show the effects of executive institutions on patterns of public policy, especially the budgetary process. Through a rigorous application of the core-executive framework, this study offers nuanced conceptual and analytical insights that will enhance understanding of both the evolving institutions of Central and Eastern Europe and the more stable West European systems. The in-depth analysis of the development of national executive institutions casts a distinctive new light on debates about EU enlargement, Europeanization, and patterns of governance.
Institutional Design and Party Government in Post-communist Europe
Author: Csaba Nikolenyi
Publisher: Comparative Politics
Published: 2014
Total Pages: 229
ISBN-13: 0199675309
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →This volume examines the institutional foundations of coalition government in the ten post-communist democracies of Eastern and Central Europe, arguing that differences in the arrangement of political institutions systematically explain variations in patterns of multi-party government.
Women's Access to Political Power in Post-Communist Europe
Author: Richard E. Matland
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 2003-05-01
Total Pages: 394
ISBN-13: 0191529923
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →This book considers women's access to formal positions of powers in the newly formed democracies of post communist Europe. While acknowledging the relevance of recent history, this book takes an important step away from the communist legacy and explicitly argues for a framework based on causal variables identified in the existing literatures from industrialized democracies on women and politics and legislative recruitment After a brief introduction, the second chapter sets forth a general theoretical framework, which posits that the level of female legislative representation in a given country is a function of the relative supply of and demand for female candidates. After a chapter considering a broad overview of public opinion on women and politics in Eastern Europe, thirteen country chapters, spanning the spectrum of Eastern European democracies, address and test hypotheses about the key variables affecting the supply and demand sides of the equation in individual countries. Relevant aspects of the communist cultural and developmental legacy are addressed, but authors give particular attention to political factors, such as electoral rules and the characteristics of the emerging party systems, that vary within the Eastern European countries. The new democracies of Eastern Europe provide a novel context in which to test and extend our theories about the consequences of political institutions for the quality of democracy. Since institutional arrangements are more malleable than developmental or cultural characteristics, those variables also offer the greatest promise to scholars and practitioners wondering what can be done to improve women's access to formal arenas of political power? How can we build democracies that are stable, lasting and representative? A careful analysis of the post-communist context can help us to address issues concerning institutional design and development that has relevance well beyond the Eastern European context.
Embodying Democracy
Author: S. Birch
Publisher: Springer
Published: 2002-10-04
Total Pages: 255
ISBN-13: 1403914249
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →Embodying Democracy analyzes the politics of electoral reform in eight post-communist states including Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Romania, Bulgaria, Russia and Ukraine. By exploring the multiple factors that shaped the design of electoral institutions during the first ten years of post-communist transition, it accounts for an important element of the post-communist reform process and illuminates general features of institutional design in post-transition states.
Comparing Post-Soviet Legislatures
Author: Joel M. Ostrow
Publisher:
Published: 2000
Total Pages: 305
ISBN-13: 9780814250440
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →One dilemma facing new or newly independent states, such as those of the former Soviet Union, is how to design effective legislatures when political parties are weak and fragmented or even nonexistent. In this book, Joel M. Ostrow develops a comparative institutional framework to explain marked differences in behavior across three post-Soviet legislatures: the Russian Supreme Soviet, the Russian State Duma, and the Estonian legislature. He argues that these differences in ability to manage political conflict can be explained in large measure by the design of the legislatures. Most significant is the choice of whether and how to include parties or partisan factors. Legislatures are an omnipresent component of modern democracy. Ostrow's comparative institutional design confirms the presumption of many political scientists that parties are essential for legislative consensus building. However it also reveals that parties may have paradoxical effects on a legislature's performance. In following the budget process in Russia and Estonia, Ostrow explores the consequences that different institutional designs have had on post-Soviet legislatures. He has found that how parties are included may determine how capable a legislature is at managing political conflict, both internally and with the executive branch of the government. The author was present at many of the committee hearings and legislative sessions he describes, and his firsthand observations and interviews with committee members enhance his analysis.
Postcommunist Democratization
Author: John S. Dryzek
Publisher:
Published: 2002
Total Pages: 300
ISBN-13: 9781107124196
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →"Democracy is not just a matter of constitutions, parliaments, elections, parties, and the rule of law. In order to see if or how democracy works, we must attend to what people make of it, and what they think they are doing as they engage with politics, or as politics engages them. This book examines the way democracy and democratization are thought about and lived by people in China, Russia, and eleven other countries in the post-communist world. It shows how democratic politics (and sometimes authoritarian politics) works in these countries, and generates insights into the prospects for different kinds of political development. The authors explore the implications for what is probable and possible in terms of trajectories of political reform, and examine four roads to democratization: liberal, republican, participatory, and statist. The book will be of interest to students and scholars of comparative politics, political theory, and post-communist studies."--Jacket.
Electoral Systems and Political Transformation in Post-Communist Europe
Author: S. Birch
Publisher: Springer
Published: 2003-11-25
Total Pages: 220
ISBN-13: 1403938768
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →Electoral Systems and Political Transformation in Post-Communist Europe assesses the influence of electoral systems on political change in 20 post-communist European states. The main finding is that electoral institutions have systematic effects on the formation of representative structures. 'Party-enabling' aspects of electoral laws such as list proportional representation tend to foster popular inclusion in politics and institutionalized party systems, whereas 'politician-enabling' rules such as single-member districts and ballots that allow voters to select individuals often favour the development of weakly structured systems and high levels of popular exclusion from the representative process.
Communism's Shadow
Author: Grigore Pop-Eleches
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Published: 2017-05-09
Total Pages: 344
ISBN-13: 1400887828
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →It has long been assumed that the historical legacy of Soviet Communism would have an important effect on post-communist states. However, prior research has focused primarily on the institutional legacy of communism. Communism's Shadow instead turns the focus to the individuals who inhabit post-communist countries, presenting a rigorous assessment of the legacy of communism on political attitudes. Post-communist citizens hold political, economic, and social opinions that consistently differ from individuals in other countries. Grigore Pop-Eleches and Joshua Tucker introduce two distinct frameworks to explain these differences, the first of which focuses on the effects of living in a post-communist country, and the second on living through communism. Drawing on large-scale research encompassing post-communist states and other countries around the globe, the authors demonstrate that living through communism has a clear, consistent influence on why citizens in post-communist countries are, on average, less supportive of democracy and markets and more supportive of state-provided social welfare. The longer citizens have lived through communism, especially as adults, the greater their support for beliefs associated with communist ideology—the one exception being opinions regarding gender equality. A thorough and nuanced examination of communist legacies' lasting influence on public opinion, Communism's Shadow highlights the ways in which political beliefs can outlast institutional regimes.
