Suchergebnisse

Latin American democracies have gone through a series of perfect storms over the recent years. In what ways have these challenges transformed the institutional infrastructure of democracy? How have institutional reforms impacted the democratic prospects? This review article analyzes four recent edited volumes that approach the problems of institutional change against the backdrop of the multiple crises unfolding throughout the region. It describes two modes through which the reforms of political institutions have had an ambivalent or outright negative effect on the quality of democracy, and assesses the resilience of political institutions. Arguing for a more prominent role of informal institutions and political parties in institutional analyses, the article suggests that changes in formal political institutions have had a limited impact vis-à-vis the profound changes in political cleavages, culture wars, swift changes in religious identities and the decline of political parties.

Democratic backsliding in Hungary and Poland has raised questions as to whether Czech politics would follow a similar path. Focusing on transformations in the country's political system over the past decade, this article argues that Czech democracy has proved resilient and defied the Central European illiberal trend. The starkly divergent outcomes are attributable to differences that set the Czech political tradition apart from those of Poland and Hungary. The liberal, secular, and pluralist tendencies present in the Czech democratic myth have made it more difficult to form an ideologically based movement built around a national-religious conservative narrative challenging liberal democratic values.

The response of the Nicaraguan government to the COVID‐19 emergency is an extreme case of disease denialism. Such denialism is a major threat to public health, so understanding the sources of this attitude is paramount. Three explanations are offered: (a) the autonomous logic of a polarised political conflict; (b) an explanation based on an economic rationale; and (c) the regime's mystical and religiously‐inspired discourse. The denialist response of the government is inexplicable without referring to the characteristics of the political regime, its political discourse and its recent developmental trajectories since the massive 2018 protests and the ensuing political conflict.

AbstractChoosing the type of electoral system in new democracies has become a contested issue for social scientists as well as for political actors. Contrary to the state of the public debate on the issue, the article advances the position from a multidisciplinary standpoint (political science, historical sociology, economics) that proportional representation with large districts and closed lists performs better on a variety of key indicators. We review recent literature on the performance of electoral systems especially in post-communist and Latin American democracies. The article identifies the centripetal theory of democracy as a normative basis for our institutional prescriptions and discusses how distinct types of political representation relate to the debate on electoral systems. We focus especially on four main concerns commonly associated with proportional representation (the rise of "extremist" parties, government instability, party system deconsolidation, and corruption and clientelism). Contrary to much of the public debate on electoral systems, we conclude that further steps towards personalization (by opening lists or reducing district magnitude) are not advisable.