Suchergebnisse

From open civil war in Bosnia and Georgia to the Russian president's use of military units against an uncooperative parliament, civil-military conflicts in the former USSR and Yugoslavia are increasingly attracting world-wide attention and concern. This volume brings together fourteen essays that explore the roles of the armed forces in the ongoing struggles for control over the processes of state formation and government in these newly independent countries. Twelve chapters focus on the experiences of particular countries in the region; and introductory and concluding chapters draw out commonalities and differences among the cases, comparing them with one another as well as with post-authoritarian regimes elsewhere in the world.

This book demonstrates that the timing as well as the degree to which the armed forces leave the levers of political power and the nature of the successor regime depend on both external, societal, or ecological factors as well as internal, organizational, or institutional ones.

This essay assesses participation and competition in the quality of democracy in Greece. Theoretically, the quality of democracy is assessed in three interrelated dimensions: procedure, result, and content. Procedure encompasses the character and working of the environment in which governance takes place, and it is assessed through the rule of law, accountability, and participation and competition. Result refers to the overall quality of government performance and citizen satisfaction. Content involves the quality of the substance of governance. Using diverse indices and quantitative data, the essay assesses the participation and competition dimensions of the quality of democracy in post-1974 Greece. It concludes that the country's quality of democracy is fair but in need of improvement.

This essay explores and assesses the connection between accountability and the quality of democracy in modern Greece along three key dimensions: vertical, horizontal, and social. Vertical involves elected officials and the three branches of government; horizontal deals with the nonelected arms of government and bureaucratic agencies; and social addresses civil society, the mass media, and nongovernmental organizations. Examination and analysis of the relevant data indicate that the state of accountability in Greece is weak in all three dimensions, and a host of structural, social, and attitudinal factors contributes to this weakness. Accountability problems undermine the quality of democracy. The essay expresses hope that reforms initiated under pressure from the European Union eventually would strengthen accountability and Greece's quality of democracy.

Despite periods of growth, modern Greece is no stranger to severe and prolonged economic crises. Analyses of Greece's current economic crisis have stayed clear of the seminal importance of culture as a key variable responsible for widespread and persistent corruption that has deprived the country of a viable and sound economic foundation. This essay seeks to fill the void by concentrating of the cultural roots of corruption and the sources and factors that generate, nurture, and maintain high levels of corruption in the Greek setting. Borrowing from anthropological literature, the essay utilizes nine cultural dimensions of corruption: uncertainty avoidance, future orientation, institutional/societal collectivism, individual/in-group collectivism, human orientation, performance orientation, power distance, assertiveness, and gender egalitarianism.