Democracy in microstates: why smallness does not produce a democratic political system

To fully understand the function of volatility in today's European democracies, it is necessary to employ the principal-agent model. Where democracy is exercised in the form of party government, then it is especially essential to enquire into how the electorate can monitor politicians. Electoral volatility may increase the responsiveness of the party system to the electorate and increase the accountability of politicians. Party system instability is persistently higher in the east European democracies than in western Europe. System transition in eastern Europe passes through the party system, as new parties enter the electoral arena. Political innovation in western Europe also passes through the party system, where new movements appear alongside the established parties. However, there are signs of decreasing volatility in the east, whereas volatility is on the rise in several west European democracies. There will be convergence between west and east European democracies: both will experience considerable volatility in the future. This is a positive gain for democratic vitality in Tingsten's conception. The level of party system fractionalization is already the same over the regions of Europe. The principal-agent model would favour several agents as well as agent switches, which means a moderate level of party system instability.     

Politics and Economic Growth

Traditional growth theory viewed economic growth as a resultant of economic factors, in particular capital investment. Development economics implied a broader approach, emphasizing social structure change and human capital. Finally, it was also hinted that political factors could influence the rate of change in the development of the economic system. Testing various theories of economic growth we find that institutional sclerosis is the basic political factor that is related to the process of economic growth. The next step is to analyse how political structures and public policy have an impact on the basic factor in economic growth, viz. investments.     

Democratic Party Systems in Europe: Dimensions, Change and Stability

if a party system is really a system, i.e. a set of objects with relationships between the objects and between their attributes, and not simply an unordered set of political parties, then it is a vital problem in party research to identify the systems properties of this kind of system. We argue that the semantically relevant properties of the party systems in European democracies may be derived from the observational outcome of the operation of a party system, i.e. the national elections since the introduction of democratic procedure. Thus we arrive at five systems dimensions: functional orientation, fractionalization, radical orientation, polarization and volatility. The problems of party system change and stability are analysed by estimating the occurrence of trends and fluctuations over time in these party system dimensions for the set of European democratic party systems. The finding is that the widely accepted thesis of stability in European party systems is not corroborated.     

Narcotics,Radicalism, and Armed Conflict in Central Asia: The Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan

While the academic debate on security has broadened in recent years, it has failed to cohesively include transnational organized crime and drug trafficking as a security issue. However, especially in weak states in developing and postcommunist regions, these phenomena are having an increasingly negative effect on security in the military, political, economic, and societal sense. Security issues in Central Asia are a prominentexample of the links between drug trafficking and military threats to security. This is illustrated most clearly by the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU), which has been both a major actor in the drug trade from Afghanistan to Central Asia as well as the most serious violent nonstate actor in the region. The link between the drug trade and armed conflict is of fundamental importance to understanding the challenges to Central Asian security.     

The socio‐economic structure of European democracies

The article presents the findings of a factor analysis concerning socio‐economic structure and socio‐economic development in sixteen European democracies. The socio‐economic structure of these nations consists of three dimensions: level of affluence, level of industrialisation and degree of urbanisation. A prominent feature in the change of the contemporary social structure of Western Europe is the weakening of the relationship between affluence and industrialisation. Statements about the implications for political life of socio‐economic structure and socio‐economic development entering into theories about modernisation and social mobilisation may be clarified and tested only if socio‐economic concepts are made operational in terms of a set of indicators, the interaction between which can be stated by means of factor analysis and used in the construction of indices.     

Political Institutions, Public Policy and Economic Growth

The argument of the Rise and Decline of Nulions (RADON) opens up a new area of important social science research: to understand the social and political setting of economic growth. The paper tests the argument that institutionalization leads fo the decline of nafions slowing down the rate of economic growth. Employing several indicators on economic growth and controlling for a number of factors the finding with regard to the OECD-nations is that the Olson emphasis on institutionalization is confirmed.