This volume examines the idea of civil society in its historical and contemporary dimensions.

If the past is any guide, many of the new Third Wave democracies can be expected to fall by the wayside. Moreover, a significant part of the world's peoples do not enjoy democratic government. This volume brings together studies of many of the small number of previously established states that have retained and/or restored democracy despite, in many cases, formidable economic, social or political challenges. It seeks to establish common themes, whether or not they appear to fit a grand causal theory. It is, after all, the very adaptability of democratic systems that characterizes their...

The Internet is transforming political institutions and modes of political communication. It is also transforming relaitons between states and between citizens. Above all it provides opportunities to create new political communities. This book provides examples of how it is beginning to do so at the sub-state, state and international levels. Both established democracies, such as the US, the UK and Germany, as well as authoritarian regimes in Asia and Africa, are having to come to terms with it. But although it can be a force for increased democracy and for the spread of human rights...

Covering 10 years of post-communist political change in eastern Europe, this work examines the capacity of the former ruling parties to attract contemporary voters and their role in contributing to the consolidation of the new democratic regimes. Attention is paid to the comparative processes of party development in terms of party activity becoming more professional, aspects of party system institutionalization, major dimensions of institutional and electoral development, and party finances. A range of countries are surveyed to throw light on these processes, and broad analysis conducted on...