Reassessing Democratic Consolidation in Central and Eastern Europe and the Role of the EU

Over the past two decades, the countries of Central and Eastern Europe have completed a long transition from authoritarian rule, and joining the EU has been considered to be an indication of the end of the consolidation process. However, this path was anything but linear and in many cases it was marked by concentration and abuse of executive power, a systematic political patronage and a plebiscitary interpretation of democracy. In order to shed light on the meaning of these phenomena, this paper provides for an analysis of democratic consolidation in these countries by way of comparing the cases of Bulgaria, Poland and Slovakia.     

Securing the Only Game in Town: The EU's Political Conditionality and Democratic Consolidation in Post-Soviet Latvia

The state of democracy in post-communist Europe has been subject to some debate in recent years; but it needs to take account of longer-term trends. The focus here is on how far the EU's political conditionality has contributed to democratic consolidation using an in-depth case study of post-Soviet Latvia. The record of the impacts of conditionality up to EU entry is examined and then attention turns to whether post-accession tendencies have demonstrated any significant changes after the end of Brussels' monitoring. Using a comparative framework, this article shows that the outcome after four years of EU membership is mixed with both positive and negative results. It is concluded that there is no automatic locking-in effect of European integration; and that conditionality assists democratic consolidation more in structural than in attitudinal or behavioural terms.     

Status Quo Bias or Institutionalisation for Reversibility?: The EU's Political Conditionality,Post-Accession Tendencies and Democratic Consolidation in Slovakia

The EU's political conditions have been a consistent and at times salient element in the accession process, since Brussels enlarged their scope and tightened procedures from the mid-1990s. But so far little attention has been given to post-accession compliance with these conditions. This is important, for while the European Commission no longer monitors them, the political conditions were imperfectly implemented by the time of the 2004 enlargement. The question that therefore arises is whether compliance continues or whether there are any tendencies to reverse the process. Using a comparative approach based on four alternative hypotheses, this problem is explored in detail using the case of Slovakia, a country where the EU has been a prominent factor in its return to the path of democratisation after the Me?iar years. Comparing Slovakia's performance on the EU political conditions before EU entry in 2004 and during the three years after, two competing approaches, ‘rationalist’ and ‘constructivist’, are assessed. It is found that the fears of the rationalists have not been strongly justified nor have the hopes of the constructivists been much encouraged. The outcome of political conditionality is related to democratic consolidation in Slovakia, and the conclusion is that the former assisted the latter despite its limitations but much more with respect to reforming institutions than to changing either attitudes or behaviour.     

Democratic Refusal in Iran

The Iranian revolution—the political realization of the Great Refusal of Western modernization—was a direct consequence a half century later of the forced secularization of the Ottoman Caliphate by Kemal Ataturk. With the superstructure of the Muslim ummah dismantled and replaced by the Turkish nation state, insurgent religious movements, from the (Sunni) Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt to the Shiite imams of Qum and Najaf, moved into the vacuum to reclaim Islam from the shadow of Western dominance.
Now, history is turning again. Iran has been seized by violent turmoil as it seeks to reconcile democracy and religious rule. Secular Turkey is governed by an Islamist-rooted party. As they struggle to regain their balance, the global economic meltdown threatens a convergence against globalization that joins the Islamist resistance with populist backlashes elsewhere.
Two legendary intelligence agents, a Hezbollah leader, an Iranian dissident philosopher and Shirin Ebadi, the Iranian human rights lawyer and Nobel Laureate, examine this historical turn.     

Fixing Europe's Democratic Deficit

Because they have failed to address the fundamental economic imbalances within Europe obscured by the single currency, each effort by European leaders so far to resolve the euro crisis has only deepened it. Without a decisive move toward fiscal and political union, accompanied by policies that push productivity and competitiveness toward convergence while closing the democratic deficit, the Eurozone will disintegrate. To discuss the way forward, the Nicolas Berggruen Institute's Council on the Future of Europe met in Rome on May 28 with Italian Prime Minister Mario Monti. In this section we publish the contributions from that meeting by the former European leaders, scholars and Nobel laureates who are members of the Council.     

民主社会主义不适合中国

民主社会主义源于19世纪末20世纪初的国际工人运动中的改良主义。其指导思想和理论来源是多元化的,信奉"自由、公正、团结互助"的基本价值,主张国家干预经济社会事务,建立福利国家。民主社会主义与科学社会主义在历史与现实中存在着联系乃至相似之处,两者都与国际工人运动有着密切的联系,在国际政坛中都属于左翼力量,都致力于政治民主和社会公正,都追求变革和革新。但两者在指导思想、行动原则、终极目标等方面,存在着根本性的区别与对立。民主社会主义不适合中国。中国特色社会主义道路是我们的正确选择。     

埃及民族民主党

民族民主党是埃及执政党,创建于1978年,穆巴拉克总统为该党主席.该党在议会中占73%的席位.     

社会主义与民主社会主义二题

马克思主义经典作家关于社会主义社会特征的论断与现实生活相距遥远,不应被用来裁定现实;应当坚持的是马克思主义的社会批判精神和社会主义价值观;当代西方国家的现实与马克思恩格斯的时代大不相同,它们在经济上实行多种所有制关系并存,实行国家对经济的宏观调节,政治上实行民主宪政;因为历史发展的不可测性,对于资本主义之后的社会形态,不可能作出准确预见;作为制度的社会主义没有统一的模式,没有必要在社会主义的定义上作无谓的论证。民主社会主义与我们所称的科学社会主义本是同根同源,都信奉马克思主义,以实现社会主义、共产主义为最终目标。从社会党国际的政治实践看,它们历来是资本主义国家的左翼政治力量,以劳动者、社会的中下层作为自己的社会基础和依靠力量。民主社会主义不失为坚持社会主义的一条道路,一种明智的选择,实践证明也是有效的。     

德国社会民主党基本纲领(汉堡纲领)

前言:21世纪的社会民主主义 在<柏林纲领>通过十年之后,1999年12月的柏林党代表大会委托一个委员会为德国社会民主党起草一份新的基本纲领.在经历了漫长的反对派时期之后,德国社会民主党重新在德国执政.正因如此,一部分人希望,另一部分人则担心纲领基础的现代化.然而,任务是明确的,即对于开放边界和社会风险所带来的挑战要找到符合时代要求的答案.     

The Myth of the Democratic Advantage

Existing research points to a democratic advantage in public good provision. Compared to their authoritarian counterparts, democratically elected leaders face more political competition and must please a larger portion of the population to stay in office. This paper provides an impartial reevaluation of the empirical record using the techniques of global sensitivity analysis. Democracy proves to have no systematic association with a range of health and education outcomes, despite an abundance of published empirical and theoretical findings to the contrary.     

评德国民主社会主义党的演变

德国民社党深刻总结原民主德国社会主义失败的经验教训,根据社会环境的变化和形势的发展不断刷新自己的形象,调整党的纲领和策略,争取到越来越多选民的支持,从而逐步走出德国统一社会党的阴影,成为德国政坛上一支不可忽视的力量.德国民社党将自己定位为一个左翼社会主义政党,在思想上、理论上已经完全社会民主党化了,但与社民党仍有区别,两党是相互竞争与合作的关系.     

德国社会民主党章程

前言 德国社会民主党是一个民主的人民党.它联合具有各种不同信仰和思想倾向的人们,只要他们承认和平、自由、公正和互助,承认男性和女性之间的社会平等及保护自然环境. 德国社会民主党是联合在社会党国际中的各政党所组成的共同体的成员.     

求新改革的埃及民族民主党

民族民主党为埃及执政党,自1978年7月成立迄今,已连续执政20多年.上世纪八九十年代,该党虽曾面临各种问题与挑战,但借助于萨达特和穆巴拉克两位总统先后担任党主席职务,始终保持一党独大的优势.执政地位也一直比较稳固.     

瑞典社会民主工人党党纲--2001年11月6日威斯特罗斯代表大会通过

瑞典社会民主工人党 1 889年 4月 1 9日成立 ,1 897年第 4次全国代表大会仿照德国社会民主党爱尔福特纲领制定并通过了第一份党纲。 1 91 1年、 1 92 0年、 1 944年、 1 960年、 1 975年和1 990年该党六次修改党纲。 2 0 0 1年 1 1月 6日在威斯特罗斯市召开的第 34次全国代表大会上讨论并通过了第八份党纲。本译文根据瑞典文译出。     

Measuring Polyarchy

The authors have developed a scale based on Robert Dahl’s concept of polyarchy. The scale measures the degree to which national political systems meet the minimum requirements for political democracy, where real-world “democracies” rather than abstract ideals are the, standard. The Polyarchy Scale is constructed from indicators of freedom of expression, freedom of organization, media pluralism, and the holding of fair elections. The scale is (1) well grounded in democratic theory, (2) world-wide in scope., (3) demonstrably valid, (4) solves problems of weighting indicators and (5) is easy to interpret and replicate., Some limitations in the scale's applicability are discussed and suggestions are made for improvements and future research. Michael Coppedge is assistant professor in the Latin American Studies Program at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS), 1740 Massachusetts Ave., N.W., Washington, D.C. 20036. He is completing a book on party factions and presidential democracy in Venezuela. Wolfgang H. Reinicke is a Ph.D. candidate at Yale University and a research fellow at the Brookings Institution, 1775 Massachusetts Ave., N.W., Washington, D.C. 20036. He is currently completing a dissertation on the politics of global integration in banking and finance.