The Political Consciousness of Post-Industrialism@@@The Silent Revolution: Changing Values and Political Styles among Western Publics.

This paper investigates the relationship between political instability and per capita GDP growth in a sample of 113 countries for the period 1950 through 1982. We define political instability as the propensity of a government collapse, and we estimate a model in which such a measure of political instability and economic growth are jointly determined. The main result of this paper is that in countries and time periods with a high propensity of government collapse, growth is significantly lower than otherwise. We also discuss the effects of different types of government changes on growth.

Political Instability and Economic Growth

/pdf/political-instability-and-economic-growth-15uyrvzzal.pdf

Political instability and economic growth

Many fear that democracies are suffering from a legitimacy crisis. This book focuses on 'democratic deficits', reflecting how far the perceived democratic performance of any state diverges from public expectations. Pippa Norris examines the symptoms by comparing system support in more than fifty societies worldwide, challenging the pervasive claim that most established democracies have experienced a steadily rising tide of political disaffection during the third-wave era. The book diagnoses the reasons behind the democratic deficit, including demand (rising public aspirations for democracy), information (negative news about government) and supply (the performance and structure of democratic regimes). Finally, Norris examines the consequences for active citizenship, for governance and, ultimately, for democratization. This book provides fresh insights into major issues at the heart of comparative politics, public opinion, political culture, political behavior, democratic governance, political psychology, political communications, public policymaking, comparative sociology, cross-national survey analysis and the dynamics of the democratization process.

Democratic Deficit: Critical Citizens Revisited

Using surveys conducted in sixteen mature and newly established democracies around the globe, this study examines the effect of corruption on people's attitudes toward government. The analysis demonstrates that citizens in countries with higher levels of corruption express more negative evaluations of the performance of the political system and exhibit lower levels of trust in civil servants. However, the results also show that the negative effect of corruption on evaluations of the political system is significantly attenuated among supporters of the incumbent political authorities. These findings provide strong and systematic evidence that informal political practices, especially those that compromise important democratic principles, should be considered important indicators of political system performance. Moreover, they imply that, while corruption is a powerful determinant of political support across widely varying political, cultural, and economic contexts, it does not uniformly diminish support for political institutions across all segments of the electorate.

Corruption, Political Allegiances, and Attitudes Toward Government in Contemporary Democracies

After describing the universe of 233 new parties formed in 19 West European and Anglo-American democracies from 1960 through 1980, the authors use data on those parties to address several hypothese...

Formation and Success of New Parties: A Cross-National Analysis

Democracy Transformed? Expanding Political Opportunities in Advanced Industrial Democracies. Edited by Bruce E. Cain, Russell J. Dalton, and Susan E. Scarrow. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003. 328p. $49.95. For those who assume that within those countries we commonly consider to be the wealthiest and most stable liberal democracies, there exists a single shape, form, and formula for democracy itself, they need to consult this bold, innovative, and informative volume. Bruce Cain, Russell Dalton, and Susan Scarrow have edited a superb collection of 11 chapters (including the introduction), written by 15 internationally renowned students of comparative political analysis (including the editors), dealing with a simple and clear set of questions, namely: 1) Has representative democracy among the most industrially advanced liberal democracies of the world undergone a series of reforms during the past 20 years or so? 2) What is the nature and form of this reform? 3) In what way, if at all, has this change affected the quality and nature of democracy in these countries?

Democracy Transformed? Expanding Political Opportunities in Advanced Industrial Democracies

This article is an attempt to begin to fill the void in the empirical political science literature concerning the direction and strength of the hypothesized bond between government stability and support for the democratic regime. Alternative measures of government stability are considered, and four are chosen and used throughout the analyses based on data for nine EEC countries. Substantial relationships are found to exist in predictable directions, and those relationships remain for "passive" measures of satisfaction even when controls for legislative fractionalization and macroeconomic performance are introduced. Evidence is provided, however, which suggests that relationships between government change and support for "radical change" in the system may be spurious, resulting from relationships of both variables with macroeconomic performance.

Government Stability and Regime Support: A Cross-National Analysis

One of the critical challenges of contemporary democracy is securing a balance between the markets of representation and the markets of exchange and capital within democracies. This article explores the effect that political markets have upon capital markets' performance as measured by the market risks within the long-term government bond markets in nineteen democracies of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) between 1955 and 1992. Our theory linking political markets and capital markets will be developed around the logic of transaction cost economics. We will argue that critical aspects of transaction costs within political markets generate corresponding transaction costs and risks within capital markets thereby reducing market efficiency. Specifically, we demonstrate that, based on cross-national evidence drawn from three panels over the time period 1955–1992, stochastic political markets generate transaction costs within long-term government bond markets, the consequences of which are reflected in rising market risk within these capital markets. Our pooled cross-sectional sample confirms that stochasticity in institutional structure presents trade-offs for democracy. Stochasticity may reflect more responsive and generally sensitive representative institutions, but often at the price of risk-laden capital markets. We consider the implications of these findings at the conclusion of the article.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/2600820.pdf

Political Markets, Bond Markets, and the Effects of Uncertainty: A Cross-National Analysis

As democracies enter an era of economic retrenchment, the political costs associated with economic decline have come under close scrutiny by students of comparative politics and public policy. Of particular concern is the linkage between inflation, unemployment, and the collapse of incumbent governments. The present study provides an initial application of an alternative approach to measuring this linkage across 8 European democracies, and offers significant evidence linking political costs for cabinet governments with rising prices and the growing unemployment. By utilizing the Poisson method of determining probabilities of discrete events, increasing probabilities of government collapse are significantly associated with rising inflation and unemployment in European democracies between January 1958 and December 1979. Subsequent use of the Sanders and Herman's (1977) and Warwick (1979) analyses of cabinet stability provides a useful means to disaggregate the nation sample of the study into four discrete s...

John D. Robertson

Papers

Formation and Success of New Parties: A Cross-National Analysis

Democracy Transformed? Expanding Political Opportunities in Advanced Industrial Democracies

Government Stability and Regime Support: A Cross-National Analysis

Political Markets, Bond Markets, and the Effects of Uncertainty: A Cross-National Analysis

Inflation, Unemployment, and Government Collapse: A Poisson Application