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Electoral Engineering
From Kosovo to Kabul, the last decade witnessed growing interest in ?electoral engineering?. Reformers have sought to achieve either greater government accountability through majoritarian arrangements or wider parliamentary diversity through proportional formula. Underlying the normative debates are important claims about the impact and consequences of electoral reform for political representation and voting behavior. The study compares and evaluates two broad schools of thought, each offering contracting expectations. One popular approach claims that formal rules define electoral incentives facing parties, politicians and citizens. By changing these rules, rational choice institutionalism claims that we have the capacity to shape political behavior. Alternative cultural modernization theories differ in their emphasis on the primary motors driving human behavior, their expectations about the pace of change, and also their assumptions about the ability of formal institutional rules to alter, rather than adapt to, deeply embedded and habitual social norms and patterns of human behavior.
Support for Democracy and Meanings of Democracy
The study deals with the micro-level factors behind the perceived legitimacy of the democratic political system. Following Lipset, we searched for evidence of evaluative support for democracy when understood as representing certain procedures and institutions, compared with the equally important and widespread support base which understands democracy in terms of egalitarian values. Using recent data from a World Values Survey survey carried out in 2011 Slovenian public opinion we confirmed that support for democracy per se is largely dependent on the former “liberal” or procedural understanding, while the support it derives from those with egalitarian priorities is more ambivalent. The consequences are discussed for the prospects of resolving the conflict surrounding current cuts in social benefits spending.
Social Science Data Archives in Eastern Europe
Results of a workshop held in Berlin, Germany in February, 2002, on social science data archives in Eastern Europe. Sponsored by UNESCO Management of Social Transformations Programme (MOST) and the German Social Science Infrastructure Services (GESIS).
