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Examines the dimensions of losers’ consent in old and new democracies. We expect that losing has stronger negative effects in new democracies relative to mature democracies since losers have not yet learned to lose in countries where democratic governance is of recent vintage. The results show that, with few exceptions, political losers have lower support levels than winners across all dimensions of political support, including beliefs in core principles of democracy. Moreover, we find that the winner–loser gap is more prominent in newly democratized and democratizing states. The data also indicate that the supporters of the old communist parties exhibit significantly lower levels of support for the democratic system than voters for other parties, and in particular, if they are not in power.

Assesses the trajectories and dynamics of public support for seven democratizing regimes in Central and Eastern Europe—Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Poland, Romania, and Slovenia—during the first five years following the fall of communism. It begins by offering a reconceptualization of support for new democracies. An examination is then made of popular approval of the new regimes in 1991, shortly following the collapse of communism, and the trajectory of support is tracked through to 1995. Next, a model of the dynamics underlying these trends is developed and tested, paying particular attention to the extent to which support is contingent on political and economic performance. More generally, an exploration is made of whether and to what extent the sources of support change over time as citizens acquire experience with the new regimes.

First highlights common themes that have emerged in the book: an emphasis that the concept of political support of government is multi‐dimensional; the existence of divergent trends in support for regime principles and institutions; and how to interpret the consequences of the various developments that can be seen. The book aims to steer a course between the crisis theories of democracy and over‐optimistic claims that ‘all's right with the world’. The book argues that there are genuine grounds for concern about public support for the core institutions of democratic government, both in established and newer democracies, but that all too often ‘crisis’ accounts are broad‐brush and exaggerated when the diagnosis needs to be careful, systematic, and precise. Reviews the literature on democratic crisis and stability, and briefly discusses the factors necessary for consistent and systematic comparison of trends, including the conceptual framework; suitable sources of survey data; the selection of time periods; the choice of countries; and the choice of appropriate measures. The major findings about global trends in support for democratic governance are then highlighted, and potential explanations for the dynamics of political support are suggested. The roadmap of the rest of the book is then summarized.

The greater the gap between democratic ideals and reality, the greater the resulting tension. This chapter presents a model of tension in a new democracy and applies it to the Republic of Korea (South Korea), drawing on survey data from the 1997 New Korea Barometer. South Korea is particularly suitable for intensive analysis, since the level of mass education is high and commitment to democratic ideals is also high, yet the introduction of free elections in 1987 has produced a succession of presidents whose actions in government have fallen well short of the democratic ideal, leading to convictions on corruption charges. The political fallout of the abuse of power for personal gain was exacerbated in 1997 when the government faced the national humiliation of relying on the biggest International Monetary Fund loan in history to avoid financial collapse and the chapter concludes by considering demand‐driven pressure for reform.

The main goal of this chapter is to use an extensive body of comparative survey research to map patterns and forms of political support across a wide range of political conditions. While the goal is primarily descriptive, at least two themes emerge: first, there are no major trends suggesting a decline in support for democracy as a form of government in the abstract or as applied to existing democratic experience, and certainly, no evidence of a crisis of democracy; second, the fact of dissatisfaction does not imply danger to the persistence or furtherance of democracy. A significant number of people around the world can be labelled ‘dissatisfied democrats’, they clearly approve of democracy as a mode of governance, but they remain discontented with the way their own system is currently operating. This chapter exploits the resources of the World Values Surveys to map certain key elements of political support among the mass publics in established, consolidating, and non‐democracies. Specifically, it develops indices fitted reasonably well to three forms of support: for the political community; for regime principles or democracy as an ideal form of government; and approval of the regime's performance. Attitudes towards these three dimensions are examined through cross‐national surveys.

The main aim of this book has been to analyse what determines how new democracies face an authoritarian past (and human rights violations in particular) and, in turn, the way in which policies of truth and justice shape the process of democratization. Thus, eighteen cases are analysed in detail, covering a good part of the processes of democratization that have taken place since the beginning of the 1970s; countries experiencing a political change that did not undergo a transition to democracy have been left out, as have countries in which truth and justice policies are the result of the end of a civil conflict where there is no accompanying movement towards democratization. The key obstacle to theorizing about this topic is the enormous influence of the particular historical evolution of each country, and various factors emerging therefrom, on policies of truth and justice in transition. Thus, a general overview to categorize different experiences of transitions from dictatorial rule according to the balance of power between authoritarians and democrats is immediately useful, although the aim of the editors has been to keep sight of the peculiar nature of national experiences while providing some kind of useful guidelines for approaching the subject. It is in this spirit that the two sets of conclusions offered here provide a way of looking at the issue of transitional truth and justice: the first pertains to the probability that a new democracy will undertake policies of this kind; the second refers to the consequences that such policies may have for democratic life or democratization.

This concluding chapter considers four common claims that are made concerning the consequences of any erosion of confidence in the institutions of representative democracy and. the growth of critical citizens.

First, growing cynicism about government may deter conventional political participation, thus discouraging electoral turnout, political activism, and civic engagement; second, alienation with the regime may affect protest politics, fostering unconventional activism, support for anti‐state extremist movements, and even occasional incidents of urban terrorism; third, a deep reservoir of public trust is generally thought to encourage voluntary compliance with the law, thus enhancing the ability of governments to pass and implement effective legislation and raise revenues, without the need for coercion; and lastly, growing tensions between ideal and reality may undermine the stability of regimes, increasing the pressures for political reform in established democracies and hindering the consolidation process in newer democracies. A critical examination is made of support for and against these claims, and the implications for strengthening transitional, consolidating, and established democracies are considered.

This chapter presents two elite surveys and the available public-opinion surveys. It aims to determine the difference between eastern and western Germans' ideological values shortly after Germany's unification, and to examine the influence of these values in a fairly well-established and new democracy. The prepared questionnaire contains both close-ended and open-ended questions. The close-ended questions are mostly derived from previous research on political and economic values. The open-ended questions are used to gather information from political elites. The chapter then examines the political and social climate at the time when the fieldwork was conducted. Lastly, the chapter concludes by addressing the most important parameters that are measured in the study: the East-West differences at the elite and mass level, the absolute support for a value domain at both levels, and whether the mass-elite differences over ideological values are similar within the East and the West.

Time: October 1935 to March 1947. Jingju at Yan’an is examined in the context of the CCP’s vision of a new democratic culture, as articulated in Mao Zedong’s “On New Democracy” and “Talks at the Yan’an Forum on Literature and Art.” The author examines discrepancies between official doctrine and other sources including personal memoirs, performance records and script analysis, arguing that jingju at Yan’an offers cultural productions that are far more complex than those depicted in CCP’s official narrative. The author presents two overlooked aspects. One is that, although the CCP was determined to construct a new democratic culture, in terms of jingju performance in Yan’an, traditional repertory was more popular and was more frequently staged than both newly written historical plays and modern plays. The other is that, as a close analysis of the 1944 Driven to Join the Liang Mountain Rebels reveals, Mao’s claim of “an epoch-making beginning” of revolutionizing old theatre was only partly realized through adjusting thematic concerns; it did not reflect the practitioners’ dilemma of devising a satisfying form to serve new content.

The chapter discusses the economic record of the New Democracy government in Greece during 2004-2009. It argues that much needed structural reforms were abandoned during that time and that the government lost control of macroeconomic policy, leaving Greece perilously positioned during the onset of the global financial crisis.

This concluding chapter argues that Clinton’s passion for reconciliation failed. Indeed, Bill Clinton’s third-way politics was the midwife of the contemporary state of strong partisanship and weak parties. The wayward path of new democracy reveals how the third way can all too easily degenerate into a plebiscitary form of democracy in which citizens directly invest their support in an individual leader, then all too often withdraw it. Just as surely, Clinton’s tainted success sheds light on the love–hate relationship that Americans have formed with the national state forged by the New Deal and the Great Society. Rather than healing this breach, Clinton’s third way left the American people in a profound state of uneasy ambivalence.

Evaluations of leaders have often been considered as decisive factors in determining voting behaviour in new democracies in Central and Eastern Europe. However, it has been argued that it is not clear whether leader evaluations stem from cognitive considerations or emotions. This chapter sheds light on this question by examining the effects of emotions towards leaders in Croatia. In order to do this, emotional reactions to leaders are integrated into a general model of vote choices in postsocialist democracies in Central and Eastern Europe and hypotheses concerning the effects of different emotional reactions on voting decisions are then deduced from Affective Intelligence theory.

The chapter discusses the negotiation of Greece's second Memorandum which accompanied the country's additional financing, worth 130 billion Euros. It is argued that the three parties supporting the government were excessively preoccupied with partisan self-interest, thus undermining the credibility of the country's negotiating strategy with its creditors. Mistrust towards Greece was epitomised by German suggestions that the EU should appoint a Commissioner with executive powers over the drafting of the Greek budget.

The chapter discusses the election of 6 May which brought a seismic change to the party system of Greece. It is argued that New Democracy's underperformance in the election was due to the inconsistencies of its leadership which had initially opposed the Memorandum and subsequently made an embarrassing u term. PASOK too was punished by its traditional power base for not defending the pre-crisis status quo. Anti systemic parties, on the other hand, made significant gains. The electoral impasse that followed necessitated another general election, causing widespread uncertainty over the future of Greece in the Eurozone.