The Five Ancient Criteria of Democracy: The Apotheosis of Equality

Democracy in ancient Athens was different from what is implemented today even in the most advanced democracies. To evaluate this difference, this paper presents five criteria of democracy and then applies them to ancient Athens and modern advanced democracies. In comparison and according to five criteria, modern democracies are inferior to what the eligible citizens of Ancient Athens enjoyed. The ancient Greek literature on the subject has identified five criteria of democracy which neither today nor in ancient times were fully satisfied. The democracy today satisfies some but not all five criteria. This was also true for the ancient (Athenian) democracy. They differ in which criteria they satisfied. Of course, each criterion is fulfilled to a certain extent and this may differentiate modern from ancient democracy. These issues are discussed in this paper.

Determinants of the Socio-Economic Turnout Gap in OECD Countries

Consistent evidence of variation in the participation gap between education or income groups in developing and developed democracies has begun to accrue. This points to varying disparities in participation between the haves and have nots that occasionally reach alarming levels, potentially triggering breakdowns in political representation. A few cross-sectional analyses identify institutional factors, such as voting complexity or state capacity, or economic ones, like income inequality, as driving the difference. Few explanations currently try to address why this participation gap varies over time. This is the question I take up here—I examine the extent to which the turnout gap has changed over time, and what the most robust explanations are for this temporal trend out of a set of factors grouped into 3 “families”. These sets of explanations refer to mechanisms that operate through voters’ (1) resources, (2) motivation to participate, or (3) likelihood of being mobilized at election time. Using an original pooled data set, with individual-level turnout data from 170–180 elections in 21 OECD countries, and party placement data from the MARPOR project, I show that the magnitude of the turnout gap between lower-SES and higher-SES citizens has increased over time, and that this trend has mainly been driven by the demobilization of lower-SES citizens. A two-stage analysis reveals that union density along with legislative fractionalization are the most consistent correlates of the participation gap between SES groups. The results are obtained from the most comprehensive evaluation to date of the way in which the SES-based turnout gap in advanced democracies has evolved over time. The findings contribute to our understanding of the long-term consequences for individual political behavior of institutional transformations in advanced democracies, and the democratic implications of these changes.

Cultural Backlash? How (Not) to Explain the Rise of Authoritarian Populism

This book review examines the theory of populism advanced by Pippa Norris and Ronald Inglehart in Cultural Backlash. The authors offer a distinct explanation of the rise of authoritarian populism in advanced democracies. As societies become more liberal over time, older, more conservative cohorts feel under threat of losing majority status and allegedly turn towards authoritarian-populist parties that promise to stop the tide of liberalism. However, this theory of populism finds little empirical support. In contrast to what the authors argue, there is no polarization of attitudes between younger and older cohorts, and younger cohorts are more likely to vote for authoritarian-populist parties. To substantiate this claim, I replicate many of the analyses in Cultural Backlash and add additional ones with the newest wave of the European Social Survey and the Chapel Hill Expert Survey. I conclude by observing that while the cultural backlash theory of populism does not hold, this does not invalidate cultural approaches more generally.

What Makes Party Systems Different? A Principal Component Analysis of 17 Advanced Democracies 1970–2013

Party systems, that is, the number and the size of all the parties within a country, can vary greatly across countries. I conduct a principal component analysis on a party seat share dataset of 17 advanced democracies from 1970 to 2013 to reduce the dimensionality of the data. I find that the most important dimensions that differentiate party systems are: “the size of the biggest two parties” and the level of “competition between the two biggest parties.” I use the results to compare the changes in electoral and legislative party systems. I also juxtapose the results to previous party system typologies and party system size measures. I find that typologies sort countries into categories based on variation along both dimensions. On the other hand, most of the current political science literature use measures (e.g., the effective number of parties) that are correlated with the first dimension. I suggest that instead of these, indices that measure the opposition structure and competition could be used to explore problems pertaining to the competitiveness of the party systems.

Similar But Different: Constructing Equivalent Protest Measures in Comparative Research

Protest emerges in different forms in different countries. A strategy is presented here to deal with country-specific forms of protest by developing equivalent instead of identical measures in 13 advanced democracies around the world. The main substantive results show, first, a clear distinction between direct forms of protest and organizational actions. Yet the specific compositions of these two modes differ between countries. Second, common cross-national subsets of items comprising only three forms for direct actions (demonstrating, petitioning, boycotting) and also for organizational protest (humanitarian/charitable, self-help, consumer organizations). Third, several forms of protest can be used as country-specific expansions of the common three-item sets. Apparently, constructing equivalent instead of identical measures for protest is most important for the detection of relatively small sets of common cross-national indicators and for the accompanying disclosure of country-specific forms of protest. Due to the small percentages of protesters, applying equivalent measures and identical measures of protest largely produces the same results for the positioning of countries from a cross-national perspective.

Many Secessionist Movements, One International System

This chapter focuses on the strategy and tactics of secessionist movements, and the game they play with states and the international community to win their sovereignty. The chapter provides a conceptual theoretical treatment of the sovereignty game. It assesses six identifiable kinds of movements: democratized, indigenous legal, weak combative, strong combative, decolonial, and de facto, through an analysis of all contemporary movements. The chapter brings together three research areas that are usually treated separately: the work on de facto states, the scholarship on secessionist political parties in advanced democracies, and the study of secessionist conflict. Ultimately, the chapter clarifies the behavior of diverse secessionist movements and accurately predicts the tactics they adopt. It focuses on what they do to achieve independence, which is a neglected area of research, and a vital one given that secessionist behavior is destabilizing and sometimes violent.

What Doctors Want: A Comment on the Financial Preferences of Organized Medicine

Organized medicine’s persistent demand for high payments is one factor that contributes to the rising costs of health care. The profession’s longstanding preference for private and fee-for-service practice has pressured payers to increase reimbursement rates in fee-based systems; and it has stalled, thwarted, or otherwise co-opted attempts to contain costs in other payment systems. Yet what doctors want in fact varies. This comment revisits classic comparative studies of organized medicine in the advanced democracies to highlight two underemphasized findings: (1) physicians’ financial preferences can deviate from traditional expectations, and (2) the structure of the organizations that represent doctors can shape whether and how those preferences are expressed. These findings remain relevant today, as a discussion of contemporary American health politics illustrates.

Does Class Shape Legislators’ Approach to Inequality and Economic Policy? A Comparative View

Do the class backgrounds of legislators shape their views and actions relating to inequality and economic policy? Building on findings about ‘white-collar government’ in the US, this article examines the relationship between legislators’ class and their attitudes and self-reported behaviour in advanced democracies, drawing on survey data from 15 countries including 73 national and subnational parliaments in Europe and Israel. I find that legislators from business backgrounds are more likely to support income inequality and small government, as well as less likely to consult with labour groups, than those from working-class and other backgrounds. These results are buttressed by analysis of an additional cross-national survey of European legislative candidates’ attitudes, which replicates key findings. Given the skewed class makeup of legislatures in advanced democracies, these findings may be relevant to our understanding of widespread economic and political inequalities that are increasingly salient in many countries.