The Asia Annual 2011 focuses on the various aspects of democracy in the Asian context. The chapters in this volume reflect diverse perceptions, adopting an interdisciplinary approach, which enhance the discussions and reveal a plethora of opinions and outlooks. The collection of essays has been arranged primarily in terms of 'regions' (in the geopolitical sense). The volume brings together contributions from leading experts and 'area specialists' who offer special insights and critiques on crucial issues and questions related to the central theme of democracy in their respective 'regions/areas' of specialisation. The intention is to submit an inclusive volume concerning the idea of democracy in Asia. It strives to offer an exhaustive analysis that could prove to be valuable for those who are absorbed in Asian studies. The essays contend with wide-ranging debates on varied aspects related to the processes of democracy and democratisation from the Asian geopolitical space and contemplate on problems arising from the pressures associated with movements for democracy. The authors in their accounts also raise crucial questions regarding the viability as well as the consequences of external efforts at stimulating democracy and the setting up of imported models of democracy. The inherent emphasis is on both the intrinsic distinctiveness of the regions as well as the considerable commonalities, which inspire comparative analyses in general and in the context of democracy/democratisation in particular.

This is a unique book. It is a book, like a door that opens itself for the citizens of the world to enter. Reading it is like reading an autobiography compiled and redacted by the citizens of the world. It is an eye-opener that veers into the lives of the past and present political players, as well as the lives of the past and present avant-garde writers. First published in 1991, reading it today is like reading Ifa-Ife, the Book of Enlightenment, or the Bible whose prophecies have come to past in the 21st century. It is a must-read for every heart that lives.

"Policy Horizons and Parliamentary Government" introduces a new hypothesis concerning the formation and survival of coalition governments in Western European parliamentary democracies, the policy horizon hypothesis. Although the hypothesis itself is very simple, it implies a fundamental change in our understanding of how parliamentary systems function in the absence of a majority party. The book finds support for the hypothesis in a wide array of evidence, including findings based on a new survey of experts in West European political systems.

Mozambique and the Construction of the New African State analyzes the international inspired to rebuild this war-torn country. It seeks to understand the role of the international community in constructing a new kind of African state in the aftermath of conflict and socialism. At the heart of the book is the question of sustainability of the post-conflict African state against the backdrop of the multiple legacies of war, socialism, and regional and international intervention upon an enervated Mozambican society.

This study examines the process of democratic political consolidation as seen in Portugal. It considers how, by solving problems and fulfilling expectations, Portugal's relatively new democratic regime has improved its chances for long-term durability. As Maravall has suggested, once democracies are re-established after a period of dictatorial rule, new problems emerge: the efficiency of the new political system, not just its legitimacy, becomes the main issue. In the case of Portugal, the government has been strengthened by dealing successfully with several different sets of problems. The author analyzes these problems and this process by dividing Portugal's consolidation period into three recognizable intervals, during which the new regime has had to simultaneously confront political, economic, and military challenges. Scholars in comparative politics and government will find this a useful study of democratic development.

This collection presents a varied picture of the state of democracy in Asia, revealing unique findings from a project entitled the 'Asia Democracy Initiative' which explored the role of ordinary people in democratization through the rise of expressive social values in Indonesia, South Korea, the Philippines and Thailand.

This book seeks to answer the question 'Which institutional architecture for which kind of democracy for the EU?' by bringing two important recent debates together- the institutional analysis of the Union and its democratic assessment. The book examines a series of institutional architectures in light of the democratic quality of the processes and decisions generated by them. The discussion of these various institutional architectures is preceded by an analysis of the democratic values and principles according to which institutional architectures and governance structures should be assessed. The first part of the volume starts from key democratic principles and indicates which institutional architectures are most likely to embody them. The second part is dedicated to those institutional architectures that best describe the current state of the European Union and its likely future development, particularly given the impact of the current economic crisis. The fundamental belief that animates this volume is that it is only by paying attention to the democratic legitimacy of the Union that the process of European integration may hope to be sustainable, particularly in the face of the difficult economic crisis that the members of the Euro-area and the Union in general are experiencing.

The Handbook of Democratic Government is the first compact and comprehensive data collection for 20 countries which simultaneously provides comparative and complete information on the composition of governments. Parties, ministries, portfolios, ministers and parliamentary support are listed, as well as duration, type of government and reasons for termination. The data are organised in such a manner that every researcher can use them as a basic data set, ready to be transformed according to the particular needs dictated by the research undertaken. Various levels of analysis are possible, both cross-nationally and across time, ranging from individual ministers and separate ministries to specific parties, governments or countries. Given its format, the data set is also a very useful background to the special annual issue of the European Journal of Political Research: Political Data Yearbook. It will save researchers in the field of comparative politics valuable time as it can be utilised in connection with, or in addition to other data sources.

A comparative survey which discusses how national leaders in six Western democracies, Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Great Britain, and the United States, are nominated for the highest office in their country. The combinations of methods each country utilizes to nominate their leaders are described. The text emphasizes that most national leaders have served a long apprenticeship in various public offices--sometimes having made several attempts--before actually being nominated to the nation's highest public office. Increasingly, the text shows that opinion polls, television, and professional campaign management are playing a greater role in the leadership selection process in all six countries. This book will be of interest to upper-level college and graduate students and faculty in comparative government, political parties, and public affairs and academic as well as public libraries.

Under which conditions do democracies participate in war, and when do they abstain? Providing a unique theoretical framework, Mello identifies pathways of war involvement and abstention across thirty democracies, investigating the wars in Kosovo, Afghanistan and Iraq.

Resistance, Representation, and Community is an important new analysis of these three key concepts and the influence they had on the continuing development of the modern state in Europe. Peter Blickle brings together a wealth of scholarly experience from all over Europe to explore the part played by the people and their communal organizations - ranging from rural parish meeting to powerful city council - in state-formation. The resulting collection forms a debate with both firm theoretical grounding and valuable new data, crossing all national boundaries to show the origins of the ethos of people power which underpins the politics and culture of Europe today.

Democracy promotion is an established principle in US and EU foreign policies today, but how did it become so? This comparative study explores the promotion of democracy, focusing on exponents from emerging democracies alongside more established Western models, and investigates the impact of democratic interests on foreign policy.

There is a major contradiction in contemporary politics: there has been a wave of democratization that has swept across much of the world, while at the same time globalization appears to have reduced the social forces that have built democracy historically. This book, by an international group of authors, analyses the ways in which local politics in developing countries--often neglected in work on democratization--render democratic experiments more or less successful in realizing substantial democracy.

This book examines the antecedents and consequences of citizens' confidence in different political institutions and authorities. Its main argument states that a distinction between confidence in representative and regulative institutions and authorities is of crucial importance in order to gain novel insights into the relevance of political confidence for the viability of democratic systems. Relying on individual-level data from the European Social Survey (ESS), the author provides empirical evidence that citizens from a total of twenty-one European countries make a distinction between confidence in representative institutions and authorities and confidence in regulative institutions and authorities. Furthermore, the author shows that both types of political confidence emanate from different sources and are associated with varying consequences. Overall, these findings indicate that confidence in representative and confidence in regulative institutions and authorities establish two qualitatively different types of political confidence, each with distinct implications for the functioning and well-being of modern democracies.

This book of critical essays explores new thinking and new evidence on the role of locally-elected representatives in Western democracies. The book is topical in the light of the intense political and popular interest in the problems of making local government representative and responsive. The contributors, drawn from the UK, US, France, Denmark and Norway, deal with two principal themes: political recruitment and representativeness; and the processes of political representation, and highlight the dilemmas of open and accessible local government.

Where and why was democracy successful in the twentieth century? In The Democratic Century, Seymour Martin Lipset and Jason Lakin combine social, cultural, economic, and institutional analyses to explain why democracy has succeeded in some countries and failed in others.Defining democracy as a political system in which all adults may vote in contested elections to choose their representatives, Lipset and Lakin argue that the mainstays of a successful system are institutions that encourage the diffusion of power - such as competitive parties, an independent civil society, and federalist arrangements. But central to their argument is the notion that culture, at least as much as any other variable, is responsible for the establishment of democracy. The authors' concept of culture is not static, however. They argue that, because cultures interact with social, economic, and political variables, they can change and become compatible with democracy. Consequently, Lipset and Lakin hope for a democratic twenty-first century. The Democratic Century revisits theories from Lipset's earlier works, including the classics Agrarian Socialism and Political Man. But the authors do more than update Lipset's work; they offer an expansive view of democratic systems and of the vast body of relevant literature.

This edited volume brings together a number of well-known scholars and activists from various parts of the world to present critical perspectives on recent and long term trends in the economic, socio-cultural and political life of the people of Asia and examines the policies and constraints faced by the nation-states of the region. It contributes to and enriches the current debates on globalization, the prospects for democracy, and sustainable human development. The book offers an incisive assessment of the role of civil society in creating a democratic political culture in Asia.

Drug and alcohol education in public schools may be important, but its authoritarian stance often invites skepticism among teachers and students alike. Yet this program has its roots not in modern bureaucracy or even Prohibition but in a social movement that flourished over a century ago.

Scientific Temperance Instruction was the most successful grassroots education program in American history, championed by an army of housewives in the Woman's Christian Temperance Union under the leadership of Mary Hanchett Hunt. As Hunt and her forces took their message across the country, they were opposed by many educators and other professionals who believed that ordinary citizens had no business interfering with educational matters. STI sparked heated conflict between expert and popular authority in the debate over alcohol education, but it was eventually mandated as part of public school curricula in all states.

The real issue surrounding STI, argues Jonathan Zimmerman, was not alcohol but the struggle to reconcile democracy and expertise. In this first book-length study of the crusade for STI, he shows Mary Hunt to be a wily and manipulative politician as he examines how citizens and experts used knowledge selectively to advance their own agendas. His work offers a microcosm for observing Progressive Era tensions between democracy and professionalism, localism and centralization, and social conservatism and liberalism.

"Distilling Democracy" points up a crucial and ongoing dilemma in our education system: educational directives handed down by experts deny citizens the right to transmit their values to their children, while populist educational values sometimes stifle classroom debate. By using history to demonstrate the public's participation in shaping public education, Zimmerman suggests that however unappealing the program, society needs to embrace such popular movements in order to uphold true democracy. His book offers fresh insight into an overlooked chapter in our history and will spark debate by raising fresh questions about lay influence on school curricula in modern America.

This book provides a fascinating analysis of the external and internal linkages that have for decades impeded economic and political reforms in the Arab world, and presents a new and coherent framework that enables policy makers and practitioners to better understand, identify and deal with the root causes of terrorism.

One of the more positive international trends as of late has been the transformation of several countries from authoritarian-based dictatorships and single party systems into multi-party democracies characterized by peaceful political transitions. In this volume, a group of experts are gathered to analyze this progression on a comparative level. The essays reveal how the dramatic collapse of the USSR functioned as a crucial catalyst in allowing pent-up domestic pressures for change to emerge in a less charged international environment. In addition, the chapters study the historical and current evolution of these countries, focusing on their success in developing long-term pluralistic structures, and gauging whether these recent trends are more overnight fads than long lasting advancements.

Political constitutions alone do not guarantee democracy; a degree of economic equality is also essential. Yet contemporary economies, dominated as they are by global finance and political rent-seekers, often block the realization of democracy. The comparative essays and case studies of this volume examine the contradictory relationship between the economy and democracy and highlight the struggles and visions needed to make things more equitable. They explore how our collective aspirations for greater democracy might be informed by serious empirical research on the human economy today. If we want a better world, we must act on existing social realities.

With democratic capitalism appearing to sweep the world, this timely collection addresses theoretical and practical aspects of building democracy in one-party systems. Contributions examine the progress and condition of democracy in Central and Eastern Europe, Africa, and the two Chinas; the fall of Gorbachev; and the Serbian drive for hegemony in the Balkans. Focusing upon four main areas, the volume analyzes (1) the theoretical challenge of creating and sustaining democracy, (2) the experience of operating democracy in the absence of two-party competition, as found in the Southern United States, (3) building democracy in the place of communism, and (4) building democracy in less-developed countries.

This authoritative study of election observation in Africa by foreign and local observers studies its relation with democratization processes. Election observation is seen by donor countries and the international community as a means to enhance democratization, but controversial issues include the "mandates" of the observers, the cases of its misappropriation by authoritarian governments, and its masking other interests of donor countries. The book offers theoretical and historical assessments of election observation and evaluates policies and their implementation in specific case studies.