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Although the end of the Cold War has led to the creation of new nation-states, at the same time, the uniqueness, independence, & relevance of this political unit has declined. The current world is viewed as a global village, with interdependent trade relations, international exchanges, & competition for world market shares. How these revolutionary changes have impacted the nation-states of Western Europe is considered here, & the need for comparative political research on this topic addressed. A review of extant research shows that country-specific elements still play a prominent or dominant role in comparative research in Western Europe: there is no evidence that country-specific factors have dwindled. The traditional general research design appears able to survive rapid political changes. Due to changing definitions of the concept of the state, & to changing positions of nation-states, there is a need to develop equivalent instruments to account for country- or culture-specific differences & similarities. 1 Figure, 72 References. M. Payment

ABSTRACTThe theory of the Silent Revolution relates value change to the process of population replacement. Materialist and post‐materialist values are seen as reflections of the conditions that prevailed during one's pre‐adult years. This assumption is tested here by analysing a Dutch panel, questioned in 1974 and in 1970. The change actually found at the individual level is not in line with the predictions of the theory and leads to a dilemma. The first option implies a rejection of the socialization hypothesis ‐ one of the cornerstones of the theory. The second option places considerable doubts on the reliability of the instrument. Moreover, the validity of the instrument seems to be questionable too. The remarkably similar marginal distribution of the materialist and post‐materialist value types in both years, accompanied by massive shifts between the types, points into the direction of political attitudes and non‐attitudes instead of basic orientations or basic outlooks.

Gemeinden haben positive Effekte auf die politischen Orientierungen der Bürger. Weil die räumliche Nähe intensivere Kontakte mit Politikern ermöglicht, mehr Möglichkeiten der Beteiligung bietet und eine größere Vertrautheit mit dem politischen Prozess erlaubt, trägt die lokale Ebene dazu bei, die Legitimität des politischen Systems zu stärken und das Vertrauen in die Demokratie zu fördern. Diese plausible These und weitverbreitete Argumentation wird allerdings nur selten empirisch überprüft. Die Beiträge in diesem Band, versuchen diese Lücke zu schließen. Zu klären ist, welche Bedeutung das lo

Social capital is considered to be crucial for democratic politics. Its benevolent consequences can be attributed to two substantively different modes of social capital. Understood as an individual property the impact of social capital will be mainly restricted to those who command these resources. A much less researched approach depicts social capital as a collective good; that is, as a property of distinct societies whose impact everybody will feel. The main question of this study is: How do these individual and collective modes of social capital influence democratic citizenship in Western democracies? Multi-level modeling is used to test the impact of the two distinct modes of social capital, as well as their interactions using survey data for 28 democracies extended with indicators for collective social capital. The analyses show that living in a country rich on social capital contributes to democratic citizenship beyond the positive effects of individual social capital. Moreover, especially environments richer on collective social capital activate citizens with high levels of individual social capital are more to be politically active than less equipped environments. Apparently, those who are already privileged in terms of individual social capital will profit most from a social capital rich environment.

The repertoire of political participation in democratic societies is expanding rapidly and covers such different activities as voting, demonstrating, volunteering, boycotting, blogging, and flash mobs. Relying on a new method for conceptualizing forms and modes of participation we show that a large variety of creative, expressive, individualized, and digitally enabled forms of participation can be classified as parts of the repertoire of political participation. Results from an innovative survey with a representative sample of the German population demonstrate that old and new forms are systematically integrated into a multi-dimensional taxonomy covering (1) voting, (2) digitally networked participation, (3) institutionalized participation, (4) protest, (5) civic participation, and (6) consumerist participation. Furthermore, the antecedents of consumerist, civic, and digitally networked participation, are very similar to those of older modes of participation such as protest and institutionalized participation. Whereas creative, expressive, and individualized modes appear to be expansions of protest activities, digitally networked forms clearly establish a new and distinct mode of political participation that fits in the general repertoire of political participation.