April 1997, Volume 8, Issue 2
Clarifying Consolidation
A review of Problems of Democratic Transition and Consolidation: Southern Europe, South America, and Post-Communist Europe, by Juan J. Linz and Alfred Stepan.
Articles by Philippe C. Schmitter:
April 1997, Volume 8, Issue 2
A review of Problems of Democratic Transition and Consolidation: Southern Europe, South America, and Post-Communist Europe, by Juan J. Linz and Alfred Stepan.
January 1995, Volume 6, Issue 1
January 2015, Volume 26, Issue 1
Rather than being in decline, democracy is in crisis due to the gap between the democratic ideal and how democracy is actually being practiced. It will survive by transitioning into a new, as yet unknown, form.
October 2012, Volume 23, Issue 4
The present crisis of the Euro is a near perfect example of how causal complexity, unanticipated consequences, and decisional uncertainty can have a significant and cumulative impact on regional integration. In theory, this should be the crisis that will drive the EU from economic to political integration. In practice, the outcome—at least, so far—has been…
October 2003, Volume 14, Issue 4
Europe faces a potentially dangerous “double bind”: The legitimacy of domestic democracy in the member states is waning, and citizens are increasingly unhappy with the EU’s lack of accountability—but the new draft Constitution fails to address the problem.
October 2004, Volume 15, Issue 4
A ket to “modern representative political democracy” is accountability, but the task of assessing it must be carefully thought through.
January 2010, Volume 21, Issue 1
A coauthor of the pathbreaking study Transitions from Authoritarian Rule reflects on the lessons that he has learned about democratic transition and consolidation since the publication of this work nearly 25 years ago.
Books:
For almost a decade, Freedom House’s annual survey has highlighted a decline in democracy in most regions of the globe. Some analysts say this shows that the world has entered a "democratic recession." Others dispute that interpretation, emphasizing democracy’s success in maintaining the huge gains it made during the last quarter of the twentieth century.
"[This] elegantly written and rigorously structured volume … constitutes an important landmark in the comparative study of democratization."—Carlos Santiso, Forum for Development Studies
"A useful compilation popularizing the work of an influential journal… The Journal of Democracy is an effective tribune for mainstream U.S. thinking on these issues."—Political Studies
Political parties are one of the core institutions of democracy. But in democracies around the world, there is growing evidence of low or declining public confidence in parties. But are they in decline, or are they simply changing their forms and functions?
"An important milestone in the study of democratic quality, and an excellent resource for both scholarly researchers and graduate courses on comparative democracy and democratization."—Daunis Auerson, Political Studies Review
With such influential contributors as Francis Fukuyama, Robert Putnam, His Holiness the Dalai Lama, and Anwar Ibrahim, this is an indispensable resource for students of democracy and instructors at the undergraduate and graduate levels.