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Citizens of many democracies are becoming more critical of basic political institutions and detached and disaffected from politics in general. This is a new comparative analysis of this trend that focuses on major democracies throughout Latin America, Asia and Central Europe. It brings together leading scholars to address three key areas of the current debate: the conceptual discussion surrounding political disaffection the factors causing voters to turn away from politics the actual consequences for democracy This is a highly relevant topic as representative democracies are coming to face new developments. It deals with the reasons and consequences of the so called ‘democratic deficit’ in a systematic way that enables the reader to develop a well-rounded sense of the area and its main debates. This book is an invaluable resource for all students of political science, sociology, cultural studies and comparative politics.
This book offers a detailed analysis of affective polarisation based primarily on a unique dataset created from an online panel survey in Spain. Spain is a country that provides a rich context for the exploration of identity-based polarisation. The analysis spans particularly politically relevant times in Spain during which identities were highly politicised, providing important lessons for the comparative standpoint. A series of different individual-level measures of likes and dislikes towards different social-groups, including partisan supporters, national and subnational identifiers and other social groups are provided in the survey, allowing the authors to observe the social identities b...
This unique study presents the results of a cross-national analysis of citizenship and participation among citizens in twelve European democracies. Research on the future and quality of contemporary democracy is usually restricted to focus either on political participation, on particular aspects of citizenship, or on social activities, exclusively. This new book offers the first empirical investigation of the relationships both between social and political involvement, and between ‘small-scale’ and ‘large-scale’ democracies. Citizenship and Involvement in European Democracies offers representative samples of the populations in a selection of European countries between 2000-2002, incl...
Voting in Old and New Democracies examines voting behavior and its determinants based on 26 surveys from 18 countries on five continents between 1992 and 2008. It systematically analyzes the impact on voting choice of factors rooted in the currently dominant approaches to the study of electoral behavior, but adds to this analysis factors introduced or reintroduced into this field by the Comparative National Elections Project (CNEP)—socio-political values, and political communication through media, personal discussion, and organizational intermediaries. It demonstrates empirically that these long-neglected factors have significant political impact in many countries that previous studies hav...
Using a rich variety of sources, this book explores how the historical memory of the Spanish Civil War influenced the transition to democracy in Spain after Franco's death in 1975.
Gusatvo Flores-Macias' After Neoliberalism? offers the first systemic explanation of why the ever-popular left-wing governments in Latin American countries have become extremely radical or moderate once in power.
This book explores how digital media use affects political attitudes and behavior, and how this relationship is shaped by political environments across countries. While research in this area has concentrated on the United States and United Kingdom, such results are set in comparative relief through the analysis of cases across Europe, Latin America, the Middle East, and Asia. The book concludes that digital media have an effect on users, and depicts some of the characteristics of different political systems that play a significant role for online political engagement.
Building on one of sociology's core ideas—that social ties can shape collective outcomes—Democracy's Voices shows that connections across class boundaries can remake public rhetoric and thus the quality of democratic life. Robert M. Fishman takes up a question of enduring significance to people concerned with the quality of democratic public life, focusing on why political rhetoric proves engaging and broadly relevant, or disengaging and narrow. The answer to that question, he argues, is to be found not only in the deeds of prominent politicians and the nature of official institutions but also in the existence and the character of social connections among ordinary citizens. Fishman's boo...
"A typical presidential election campaign in Latin America sees between one-third and one-half of all voters changing their vote intentions across party lines in the months before election day-numbers unheard of and rarely seen in older democracies. This book proposes a new theory of Latin American voting behavior, examining how votes are truly up for grabs in democracies where political parties and mass partisanship are not deeply entrenched. The book argues that political discussion among peers causes volatility, and ulimately explains final vote choices. Describing and examining social networks of political discussion, the authors propose that everyday social communication is the hidden a...
Voting behavior is informed by the experience of advanced democracies, yet the electoral context in developing democracies is significantly different. Civil society is often weak, poverty and inequality high, political parties ephemeral and attachments to them weak, corruption rampant, and clientelism widespread. Voting decisions in developing democracies follow similar logics to those in advanced democracies in that voters base their choices on group affiliation, issue positions, valence considerations, and campaign persuasion. Yet developing democracies differ in the weight citizens assign to these considerations. Where few social identity groups are politically salient and partisan attachments are sparse, voters may place more weight on issue voting. Where issues are largely absent from political discourse, valence considerations and campaign effects play a larger role. Campaigns and Voters in Developing Democracies develops a theoretical framework to specify why voter behavior differs across contexts.