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Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences
The State And Civil Society In The Arab Middle East, Stacey E. Pollard
The State And Civil Society In The Arab Middle East, Stacey E. Pollard
Dissertations
While the notion that civil society organizations can democratize authoritarian regimes from below has become an article of faith among many policy makers and democracy promoters, some area experts warn that practitioners and advocates should not overestimate civil society's democratizing role. This dissertation challenges a large body of scholarship on civil society by arguing that while civil society may constitute a democratic force in any given polity it may also be comprised of less democratic, even radically undemocratic forces as well. Therefore, commensurate with the research yielding that finding, this project argues that on an account of the nature of …
Who's Attending The Party? Elections, Parties, And Democratization In Postcommunist States, Jonathan Windle Riggs
Who's Attending The Party? Elections, Parties, And Democratization In Postcommunist States, Jonathan Windle Riggs
Dissertations
The record of democratization in the postcommunist states indicates that there is a relationship between the type of electoral system they adopted and the success of their democratic development--countries which instituted proportional representation (PR) elections have achieved greater success than have those countries which instituted single member district (SMD) elections. The record also shows a second relationship existing between type of election method used and the development of political parties as important political actors--PR methods promote party politics whereas SMD methods do not. A third phenomenon--significant numbers of ambitious office seekers who have no party affiliation competing in SMD elections--strongly …