Suchergebnisse

During the last three decades, there has been a growing interest in systems that combine elements of parliamentarism and presidentialism. Despite the fact that much attention has been directed towards the semi-presidential form of government in particular, it is evident that many aspects of regime forms remain unexplored. This book systematically categorises democratic political regimes with a separate head of state and government (including regimes with a monarch and prime minister, and president and PM) globally and over a long historical period 1850–2019. It analyses how regimes with a dual executive emerge and what trajectories they follow. It also explores the stability of these regimes across time and space. An important feature of this endeavour is to address actual powers of the head of state rather than constitutional provisions. Carsten Anckar is Professor of Political Science at Åbo Akademi University, Finland.

During the last three decades, there has been a growing interest in systems that combine elements of parliamentarism and presidentialism. Despite the fact that much attention has been directed towards the semi-presidential form of government in particular, it is evident that many aspects of regime forms remain unexplored. This book systematically categorises democratic political regimes with a separate head of state and government (including regimes with a monarch and prime minister, and president and PM) globally and over a long historical period 1850-2019. It analyses how regimes with a dual executive emerge and what trajectories they follow. It also explores the stability of these regimes across time and space. An important feature of this endeavour is to address actual powers of the head of state rather than constitutional provisions. Carsten Anckar is Professor of Political Science at Åbo Akademi University, Finland.

This global study uses statistical analysis to relate the popularity of the death penalty to physical, cultural, social, economical, institutional, actor oriented and historical factors.

The aim of this global study is to assess the impact of physical variables (size and islandness) on the degree of democracy. The study is conducted at three points in time: 1972, 1985, and 2005. The following variables are controlled for: socioeconomic development, ethnic or linguistic heterogeneity, British or American colonial heritage, and dominant religion. The results show that size per se contains little explanatory value. Findings indicate that religion is becoming a key determinant of democracy during the "fourth wave" of democratization. Furthermore, the success of democracy in non-Christian settings does not depend on the level of socioeconomic development. Instead, results show that as democracy tries to gain a foothold in non-Christian settings, insularity smoothes the transition to popular government. The impact of islandness on democracy within this particular context is increasing over time.

The first decade of the 21st century has brought with it two important breakthroughs in the study of comparative politics. The first one concerns the availability of data. Nowadays, access to a wide range of information sources for a large number of countries in the world can be gained without too much effort. The second one concerns the methodological achievements made in recent years. Today, sophisticated multi-level analyses can be conducted fairly easily. Among qualitatively oriented researchers, Charles Ragin has made a significant contribution by introducing the fs/QCA-technique into the field of political science. However, the growing amount of data & the new methods not only open up new possibilities for the researcher. The present article explicitly deals with the problems related to the use of multi-level analyses & fs/QCA in comparative political research. In addition, attention is drawn to the drawbacks of using survey data from heterogeneous settings. Adapted from the source document.

The present study tests the assumption that size affects party system fragmentation. Three dependent variables are used: the number of parties, the electoral support for the leading party, and the effective number of parties. The study operates on two levels. On the macro level, the research population consists of 77 countries with free party systems. On the micro level, local units in Great Britain and Finland constitute the object of research. The impact of the following intervening variables is controlled for: the effective threshold, presidentialism, socioeconomic diversification, and ethnic and religious diversity. On the macro level, the results show that size contains far more explanatory power than any other variable. This holds true for countries using a plurality electoral system as well as those using a proportional electoral system. On the micro level, there is a strong association between the size of the population and the number of parties, whereas the other dependent variables are insensitive to variations in size.