This article addresses itself to the crisis of democracy in inter-war Europe which saw the breakdown of one democratic regime after the other with Czechoslovakia as the only survivor case in Eastern and Central Europe by the end of this period. It is cast within the framework of Stein Rokkan's seminal conceptual map of Europe which is expanded in order to account for countries and variables originally not included in his analytical scheme. The analysis leads to the following conclusion: where the state building was weak and the legacy of empire strong, or where secular nation building was still impaired by deeply rooted religious sentiments, or where significant segments representing major cleavages where not coopted into a constitutional compromise, the chances for democratic survival in inter-war Europe were slim indeed. The conclusion applies to the inter-war era alone, but it clearly has implications for contemporary Europe. Noting that statehood and secularization ranked high on the agenda of communist Eastern Europe, the authors raise the paradoxical question if the success of democracy in this part of the world may in fact be a byproduct of the extent to which the now defunct communist regimes were successful in promoting their pet goals.
This chapter examines public opinion regarding European Community integration in the five small but comparatively prosperous countries in the European Free Trade Association (EFTA). The evidence reveals a split. On the one hand, there is the positive endorsement expressed in Austria, Finland and Sweden; on the other, there is the negative assessment expressed in Norway and Switzerland. This ambivalence confirms that the impact of centre-periphery location is complex. Moreover, as the Norwegian and Swiss cases indicate, the centre-periphery cleavage within countries is as relevant as that between countries to an understanding of support for internationalized governance.
This chapter begins with a macro-level analysis of post-Cold War attitudes to European Community integration within the CEE countries, and examines the extent to which these attitudes reflect differences in character and pace of progress towards democratization. It then turns to micro-level analysis of public opinion survey data for answers to three issues: the state of CEE public opinion about European integration in general and about EC membership in particular; the identity of groups favouring or opposing EC membership; the extent of nationalism and xenophobia in the CEE countries, and their likely impact on support for EC integration.
The Stalinist and neo-Stalinist system of government was imposed on Eastern Europe by the leading member of the Soviet bloc. It was a centralized and authoritarian system that was capable of transformation only within boundaries defined by the ruling communist parties. The revolution of 1989-90 was a byproduct of a permanent legitimacy crisis in Eastern Europe compounded by a series of serious political and economic mistakes. In the aftermath of the anti-communist revolution, a new process of evolution away from the Stalinist system has been entered upon, in which the party systems of Eastern Europe have undergone profound change, as new cleavages have appeared and old cleavages have reasserted themselves.
A fifty-year period of tranquility in the Scandinavian party arena was broken in 1970 with the success of the Finnish Rural Party and the Swedish Center Party. Three years later, Denmark and Norway witnessed the break-through of heretofore unknown parties: the Progressive Party, the Center Democrats and the Norwegian Anders Lange's Party. Social Democracy consistently came out as the big loser.
This paper focuses on party system stability and its correlates in postwar Scandinavia. What was it that the losing parties failed to adapt to: changing social conflict structures, changing political realities or both?
The data from all four countries concur in highlighting the importance of the political as opposed to the sociological. The social changes which manifested themselves in the early '70s, most notably the decrease in class voting, were not dramatic enough to undermine the class character of the party systems. Even the new arrivals make sense in a left-right perspective. The drop in class voting was an asset to whatever party knew how to take advantage of it; and the realigning elections in the early part of this decade testify to the unwillingness rather than the inability of most parties to do so.
Much of the political science literature suggests that a cohesive political community is advantageous-if not a precondition-for a stable democracy. Forging a cohesive community is obviously a more complex matter in a multi-ethnic setting. This article will consider the prospects of building political communities in the Baltic countries-three countries that, to various extents, struggle to balance ethnic pluralism, nation building, and democracy. The article examines the relationship between political community and democracy from a theoretical perspective, followed by an outline of the nation-building strategies taken by Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania after re-establishing independence in the early 1990s. Drawing on survey data, we use territorial attachment to tap the sense of political community in the three countries. Notably, our figures disclose that most of the Russian-speaking minorities in Estonia and Latvia identify themselves as "Russians," and not at all with the country they reside in. This suggests that the contested issue of citizenship rights in the two countries has not been particularly conducive for creating cohesive political communities. We then move to the political regime and set out to examine the character of regime support in the three countries. Can we envisage solid support for democracy and its institutions in the absence of a cohesive political community? As it appears, regime support is not contingent on territorial identity. Our data disclose that many Baltic inhabitants draw a clear distinction between their own experiences with different political systems and what they perceive as relevant regime options today.