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Network of Democracy Research Institutes
-Democracy Research News-No. 3, June 2003Welcome to Democracy Research News, the quarterly newsletter of the Network of Democracy Research Institutes (NDRI). The Network is a membership association of institutions that conduct and publish research on democracy and democratic development. It is also one of several functional networks associated with the World Movement for Democracy (www.wmd.org). This newsletter is one means of informing democracy scholars and others worldwide about the activities of and publications produced by NDRI member institutes. The newsletter will continue to evolve as the Network grows, and we invite readers' comments and suggestions of useful features they would like to see in future issues. Additional information about the Network and profiles of all member institutes are available at www.wmd.org/ndri/ndri.html. To submit comments or to inquire about joining the Network, please write to Thomas Skladony (). Subscribing to Democracy Research News Democracy Research News is distributed exclusively by e-mail. Subscriptions are available free of charge by writing to ndri@ned.org. We encourage readers to forward this newsletter to colleagues who may wish to subscribe. If you do not wish to receive Democracy Research News, send the message "unsubscribe" to ndri@ned.org and we will remove your name promptly. We have begun sending Democracy Research News to several existing mailing lists, including participants in the World Movement for Democracy, contributors to the Journal of Democracy, university professors and think-tank scholars of democratization and area studies, and lists provided by members and friends of the Research Network. Some readers who appear on multiple lists may receive multiple copies of this newsletter in the early months. We apologize for any inconvenience as we work to consolidate our lists and to purge duplicate addresses. Contents 1. News and Announcements 2. New Publications and Recent Events by NDRI Members 2.1 Africa 2.2 Asia and the Pacific 2.3 Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union 2.4 Latin America and the Caribbean 2.5 Middle East 2.6 Comparative, Theoretical, and General\ 1. NEWS AND ANNOUNCEMENTS NDRI Welcomes New Members: The Network of Democracy Research Institutes continues to welcome new members from all corners of the globe. As of May 2003 the NDRI included 35 member institutes, and additional members are expected to join in the coming months. Among the newest Network members are four independent institutes that collectively form the Global Barometer Surveys network, plus important democracy research centers in Turkey, Taiwan, Korea, Portugal, and the United States. The Global Barometer Surveys network (www.globalbarometer.org) includes the Afrobarometer, East Asia Barometer, and Latinobarómetro, plus the New Russia Barometer, New Baltic Barometer, and New Europe Barometer (the last three being based at the Centre for the Study of Public Policy in Scotland). Each Barometer conducts regular nationwide random sample surveys of how citizens in their respective regions are responding to political and social change. Survey questions are designed to elicit information about such issues as democratization, the performance of government institutions, economic expectations, and crime and corruption. Barometer surveys typically repeat key questions year after year, and also include common questions that permit comparisons across continents. The Afrobarometer (www.afrobarometer.org) is directed by Michael Bratton, Michigan State University, United States; E. Gyimah-Boadi, Ghana Center for Democracy and Development; and Robert Mattes, Democracy in Africa Research Unit, University of Cape Town, South Africa. The Latinobarómetro (www.latinobarometro.org) is directed by Marta Lagos, managing director of the Market and Opinion Research International (MORI) in Chile. Richard Rose directs the Centre for the Study of Public Policy (www.cspp.strath.ac.uk) at the University of Strathclyde. The newest member of the Global Barometer Surveys network is the East Asia Barometer (www.eastasiabarometer.org), launched in 2001 and directed by Yun-han Chu at National Taiwan University. Please visit the Web sites listed above for more information about each organization. The NDRI is also pleased to welcome the Turkish Economic and Social Studies Foundation (TESEV, www.tesev.org.tr), one of the largest and most prominent policy research institutes in Turkey. TESEV's work includes economics and national security, plus ongoing studies of administrative and constitutional reform, civil society, Turkey's bid to join the European Union, and the multiyear TESEV Corruption Project. Founded in 1989 as a subsidiary of a Taiwanese foundation, the Institute for National Policy Research (INPR, www.inpr.org.tw) was the first privately funded, nonpartisan think tank in Taiwan. It became a fully independent endowed foundation in 1998. The Institute conducts research on economic policy, relations with the mainland, Taiwan's foreign policy, social and cultural development, and democratization and constitutional reform. Political scientist Byung-Kook Kim launched the East Asia Institute (EAI, South Korea) in 2002 to be what he calls a "virtual think tank." The Institute has a small administrative staff but no in-house researchers; it commissions ad hoc research teams of prominent Korean scholars to produce monographs and reports on such topics as "Redefining Presidential Roles and Restructuring Presidential Power" and "Generational Change, Ideological Transformation, and the New Electoral Politics." The East Asia Institute's Web site (www.eai.org.kr) is under construction. The Institute for Political Studies (IEP, Portugal, www.ucp.pt/iep/iep.htm), directed by political theorist João Carlos Espada, is a democracy- and public-policy research center based at the Portuguese Catholic University. The Institute offers graduate studies in political science, hosts an annual international conference in political theory, and publishes both original scholarship and Portuguese translations of classic works such as Alexis de Tocqueville's Democracy in America. Finally, we welcome the Center for the Study of Democracy (CSD, United States, www.democ.uci.edu), a research unit at the University of California at Irvine directed by Russell Dalton. The CSD sponsors research and advanced study on democracy, with a special focus on empirical democratic theory. The CSD Web site includes a Virtual Library on Democracy and bibliographies of classic and new books on democratic theory. It also connects to the eScholarship Repository of the University of California, which provides access to a large number of papers, lectures, and conference proceedings produced by CSD scholars and guest lecturers. For a listing of all NDRI members and brief profiles of each institute please visit www.wmd.org/ndri/ndri.html. Almost all NDRI members maintain comprehensive Web sites listing their research projects, conferences, and publications. NDRI Exchange Visits and Publications Exchanges: The Network of Democracy Research Institutes launched a pilot program of professional exchange visits in the fall of 2002. The program allows scholars and managers of NDRI members to visit other Network members to plan or conduct research or to teach and learn effective administrative and managerial techniques. Judith February, a lawyer and head of the Governance Unit at the Institute for Democracy in South Africa (Idasa, www.idasa.org.za) spent a week in October 2002 at the Center on Democratic Performance at Binghamton University in New York (http://cdp.binghamton.edu). And in December 2002, the International Forum for Democratic Studies (United States, www.ned.org) organized a week-long exchange visit for Ha Jeong Kim, general secretary of the East Asia Institute in South Korea (www.eai.org.kr), and William Yeboah, nonexecutive director of the Ghana Center for Democracy and Development (www.cdd-ghana.org). Ms. Kim and Mr. Yeboah discussed effective think-tank management with senior-level administrators, fundraisers, and outreach experts at the United States Institute of Peace, American Enterprise Institute, Democracy Coalition Project, Center for International Private Enterprise, and other area institutes. The NDRI also launched a modest program of financial support for NDRI members in September 2002 that enabled Network members in developing democracies to mail selected publications to all other NDRI members. Both programs were made possible by a generous grant from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation of Menlo Park, California. NDRI Workshop at 2003 APSA Meeting: The NDRI will sponsor a one-day workshop for representatives of member institutes at the end of the 2003 annual meeting of the American Political Science Association. Ten international members of the Network will travel to Philadelphia to attend APSA panel sessions and to meet and network with U.S.-based scholars before attending the NDRI workshop on August 31. For more information please write to Thomas Skladony (skladony@ned.org). 2002-2003 Reagan-Fascell Democracy Fellows Arrive: The International Forum for Democratic Studies welcomed incoming Reagan-Fascell Democracy Fellows for the 2002-2003 program year in October 2002. Countries represented by this year's cohort of fellows include Belarus, Cameroon, Egypt, Kyrgyz Republic, Liberia, Mongolia, Peru, Poland, Russia, Slovakia, South Africa, Turkey, and the United States. (For a complete listing of current and former fellows and descriptions of their projects, please visit www.ned.org/forum/internationalforum.html.) The Reagan-Fascell Democracy Fellows Program was established in 2001 to enable democracy activists, practitioners, scholars, and journalists from around the world to deepen their understanding of democracy and to enhance their ability to promote democratic change. Fellows receive monthly stipends, travel support, and furnished offices at the International Forum for Democratic Studies. The deadline for applications for the 2004-2005 program year is Monday, September 15, 2003. For more information and instructions on how to apply, visit www.ned.org/forum/internationalforum.html. The Institute for Political Studies (IEP, Portugal, www.ucp.pt/iep/iep.htm) will sponsor its eleventh International Annual Meeting in Political Studies from June 30 to July 5, 2003, at the seaside village of Cascais, Portugal. The conference theme for 2003 is "New Challenges to Liberal Democracy in a Global World." Featured participants this year include Marc F. Plattner, editor of the Journal of Democracy; Abdou Filali-Ansary, editor of Prologues (Morocco); and Pierre Hassner, Centre d'Etudes et de Recherches Internationales (France). The conference is also expected to close with a dinner address by José Manuel Durão Barroso, prime minister of Portugal. For more information write to Ivone Moreira at imoreira@iep.ucp.pt. The Centre for Democratic Institutions (CDI, Australia, www.cdi.anu.edu.au) has launched a new Web site and has begun publishing CDI.NEWS, a bimonthly electronic newsletter covering recent activities and upcoming events at the Centre. Current and back issues and subscription information are available at the address above. The Centre has also announced the appointment of three new associates, including Sharon Bessell, Peter Larmour, John Wood. Ms. Bessell's research focuses on the rights of women and children and on social safety nets. Mr. Larmour specializes in development and has pioneered the teaching of anticorruption strategies. And Mr. Wood is a former deputy ombudsman of Australia with experience on governance issues and administrative and consumer rights. Additional information about the new associates and their current projects is available at the CDI Web site. Rights & Democracy (Canada, www.ichrdd.ca) helped defray the travel costs of five Afghan women participating in an international conference on the role of women and international organizations in the reconstruction of Afghanistan. The October 2002 meeting in Montreal was organized by Development and Peace, Solidarité Union Coopération, and Rights & Democracy. Rights & Democracy associates Ariane Brunet and Isabelle Solon-Helal also helped establish the Women's Rights Fund in Afghanistan, a project financed by the Canadian International Development Agency's Peacebuilding Fund that will assist local organizations focusing on women's rights, advocacy, and networking. 2. NEW PUBLICATIONS AND RECENT EVENTS Most NDRI members have active publications and conference programs. This section of Democracy Research News presents some-but by no means all-of the most important NDRI research published and events organized in 2002. (The next issue of this newsletter will feature highlights from the first six months of 2003.) News items in this section are arranged by broad geographic regions, with a final section containing comparative, theoretical, and general works. Many Network members also publish the full texts of their articles, reports, and even entire books on their Web sites. Please visit the Web addresses provided below to access these publications. 2.1 AFRICA The Institute for Democracy in South Africa (Idasa, www.idasa.org.za) published three new books in 2002. The Right To Know, The Right To Live, by Allison Tilley and Richard Calland, is a guide to South Africa's access to information law, considered by some experts to be one of the strongest such laws in the world. Budget Transparency and Participation: Five African Case Studies, by Alta Folsher, examines the link between government spending and the delivery of services from the perspective of both ordinary citizens and legislators in Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, Zambia, and South Africa. In the Balance: Debating the State of Democracy in South Africa, edited by Paul Graham and Alice Coetzee, provides analysis and commentary on the quality of democracy in that country. The book also includes Idasa's Democracy Index, a set of several dozen questions developed by Robert Mattes and Richard Calland that allows citizens to provide their own assessments of the state of political participation, popular selection of (and control over) decision makers, and economic and social inequality. Information on these and other publications is available at the Idasa Web site. The Ghana Center for Democratic Governance (CDD-Ghana, www.cdd-ghana.org) publishes brief monographs in its Critical Perspectives series. Studies published in 2002 include reports on candidate selection in the 2000 parliamentary elections, civil-military relations, public-sector reform, and the state of the current anticorruption campaign in Ghana. CDD-Ghana also publishes a newsletter-format Briefing Paper based on commissioned research and Center roundtables, plus a quarterly newsletter called Democracy Watch. For abstracts and ordering information, please visit www.cdd-ghana.org/pub.html. Among the numerous events organized by the Ghana Center during 2002 were roundtables on "Africa's Stalled Development" and on the "New Partnership for Africa's Development Report" and a symposium on "Chieftaincy and Democratic Governance in Ghana." In December 2002 the Center sponsored a forum to assess the administration of President John Kufuor at midterm; a summary of this event was then published as a CDD-Ghana Briefing Paper. The Centre for Policy Studies (CPS, South Africa, www.cps.org.za) released four reports on "Enhancing Policy Implementation" in its Social Policy Series. The reports deal with education, health, water, and crime prevention. CPS also publishes Synopsis, the newsletter of the CPS governance program (available online at www.cps.org.za/execsumm/execsumm.html) featuring brief articles on current political issues in South Africa. The Afrobarometer (www.afrobarometer.org) released four new titles in its Briefing Papers series, including "Key Findings on Public Opinion in Africa," "Violent Social Conflict and Conflict Resolution in Nigeria," "Islam, Democracy, and Public Opinion in Africa," and "Poverty, Poverty Measurement, and Democracy in Southern Africa." The Afrobarometer's Working Paper series, also available for download at its Web site, now includes 29 titles. The Center on Democratic Performance (CDP, United States, http://cdp.binghamton.edu) cosponsored an October 2002 conference on "Democratic Reform in Africa: Impact on Governance and Poverty Alleviation" at Cornell University in New York. The three-day event included panel discussions of the development of African legislatures, the role of civil society in governance, human rights and legal reforms, and a concluding session on "The Future Prospects for Democracy in Africa." 2.2 ASIA AND THE PACIFIC King Prajadhipok's Institute (KPI, Thailand, www.kpi.ac.th), together with White Lotus Press in Bangkok, published Thailand's New Politics: KPI Yearbook 2001, the first in a series of KPI Studies in Thai Politics and Democracy. Edited by Michael H. Nelson, senior research fellow at KPI, the 500-page book includes essays on the political changes that followed the adoption of the 1997 constitution, the proliferation of political parties, the political role of labor and the Thai human rights commission, and a monograph-length analysis of the 2002 Thai elections by the editor. In November 2002 KPI also launched its Thai Political News Abstracts, a compilation drawn primarily from Thailand's English-language newspapers. Current and past issues of the Abstracts are available at KPI's Web site, which also includes a comprehensive Thai Politics Bibliography, compiled and annotated by Mr. Nelson and updated in December 2002. Also available on the KPI Web site are two recent papers by Thawilwadee Bureekul, director of research and development at KPI, and Robert B. Albritton of the University of Mississippi. The first, entitled "Support for Democracy in Thailand," analyzes urban-rural cleavages and their implications for democracy in Thailand. The second, entitled "The Role of Civil Society in Thai Electoral Politics," measures and tests relationships between citizen participation in civil society and in political society. Ms. Bureekul also directed a major research project on the promotion of participatory democracy under the 1997 Thai constitution; an executive summary of this project is available at www.kpi.ac.th/en/kpi03-1-cur-03.asp. Her monograph, Citizen Participation in Politics: The Senate Election 2000 Case, was published by KPI in December 2002. King Prajadhipok's Institute convened its fourth annual congress in November 2002 at the United Nations Conference Center in Bangkok. The congress, entitled "Five Years of Political Reform under the New Constitution," reviewed the strengths and weaknesses of Thailand's 1997 constitution in such areas as civil liberties, public participation, the new electoral system, and the performance of the Thai parliament, executive, courts, and independent agencies. Participants included KPI researchers and other Thai academics, representatives of civil society organizations, and experts on political reform in other Asian countries. Conference proceedings are available at www.kpi.ac.th/en/kpi03-kcIV1.asp. Yun-han Chu, director of the East Asia Barometer (www.eastasiabarometer.org), wrote a report entitled "East Asian Democracies Under Stress" based on data obtained from 2002 Barometer surveys. With Yu-Tzung Chang he also prepared a study of "Confucianism and Democracy: Empirical Studies of Mainland China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong" for a forthcoming edited volume. And with colleague Hu Ko-wei, Messrs. Chu and Chang wrote a paper entitled "The Political Significance of Insignificant Class Voting?" that they presented at the 2002 annual meeting of the Association for Asian Studies. The Institute for National Policy Research (INPR, Taiwan, www.inpr.org.tw) organized several major research conferences in 2002. In June INPR and the Hoover Institution of Stanford University cosponsored a two-day meeting in Taipei entitled "Challenges to Taiwan's Democracy in the Post-Hegemonic Era." Panel sessions included such topics as "The Evolution of Democratic Institutions," "The Transformation of Political Parties in the Post-Hegemonic Era," "Democratic Governance," and "Political Economy." The full conference program and proceedings are available at www.inpr.org.tw. A follow-up meeting was held at the Hoover Institution on October 31-November 1, 2002. For more information about the Hoover event, visit www-hoover.stanford.edu/research/conferences/taiwan/agenda.html. On January 24-25, 2003 INPR cosponsored a conference with the Hoover Institution entitled "New Leadership, New China?" Eleven papers on the political implications of the Sixteenth Party Congress and the leadership changes in China were presented by leading China experts from the United States and Taiwan. The papers will be published in a book to be edited by Yun-han Chu, Chi-cheng Lo, and Ramon Myers. Roland Rich, director of the Centre for Democratic Institutions (CDI, Australia, www.cdi.anu.edu.au), spoke on "The Dynamism of Democracy in Asia" at the August 2002 Asia Pacific Democratic Cooperation Forum in Taipei, which was convened by Taiwanese nongovernmental organizations and universities to examine democracy promotion in Taiwan, in China, and in the region. Additional information about the Forum and the full text of Mr. Rich's remarks are available at www.cdi.anu.edu.au/asia_pacific/Asia-PDemoCoopForum_Aug02-2.htm. CDI scholars participated in a September 2002 meeting in New York that helped develop a research project on "The UN's Role in Democratization: Capacity-Building in Transition and Consolidation." The project, organized by the United Nations University Peace and Governance Program in New York, will examine the effectiveness of UN assistance in democratic transition and consolidation, with a special focus on postconflict societies like Kosovo, East Timor, and Afghanistan. A background paper and additional information about the project are available at www.cdi.anu.edu.au/research_publications/research_UNUCDI_Workshop.htm. The Democracy Forum for East Asia, a collaborative project of the International Forum for Democratic Studies (United States, www.ned.org) and the Sejong Institute (South Korea, www.sejong.org) organized the final two in its series of conferences on problems of democracy in East Asia. Both meetings were held in Seoul. A July conference entitled "The Role of the Media in Fighting Corruption: Perspectives from Asia and Beyond" featured journalists, scholars, government officials, and civil-society activists from China, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Korea, the Philippines, Taiwan, and Thailand, plus a number of their counterparts from Argentina, Australia, Peru, Romania, the United Kingdom, and the United States. A November conference on "Improving Governance and Accountability through Research: The Role of East Asian Think Tanks in the Policy Process," focused on the contributions that public-policy research institutes make toward improving governance, reforming and deepening democracy, and promoting more transparent and accountable political systems. Conference participants included policy researchers, managers and administrators of think tanks and of other nongovernmental organizations, and academic experts on democracy and public policy. Reports from these (and all previous) Democracy Forum conferences are available at www.ned.org/asia/index.html. 2.3 EASTERN EUROPE AND THE FORMER SOVIET UNION The Centre for Liberal Strategies (Bulgaria, www.cls-sofia.org) and the Institute for Market Economics (also based in Bulgaria) copublished The Inflexibility Trap: Frustrated Societies, Weak States, and Democracy. The edited book (full text available online at www.cls-sofia.org/publications/index-en.htm) explains why it has been so difficult to consolidate democracy in the Balkans. It includes introductory chapters on public opinion, political economy, and constitution making, plus area studies of Albania, Bulgaria, Kosovo, Macedonia, Montenegro, and Serbia produced by locally based research institutes, including the Center for Democracy and Human Rights (CEDEM, www.cedem.cg.yu/cedem.htm), an NDRI member in Montenegro. Ivan Krastev, director of the Centre for Liberal Strategies and one of the principals of the project, also published an article summarizing its findings entitled "The Balkans: Democracy Without Choices" in the July 2002 Journal of Democracy. In cooperation with Alpha Research and BTV, the Centre organized the first National Deliberative Poll in Eastern Europe on October 12-13, 2002. Organizers brought a random sample of Bulgarian citizens to the capital to deliberate with legislators and government officials on the best ways to deal with the country's crime problem. Participants were polled before and after the sessions so that researchers could measure the effects of such deliberations on public support for the death penalty, tougher sentencing for juvenile offenders, reforming police investigation procedures, and respecting the rights of the accused. For more information on the project, visit www.cls-sofia.org/events/index-en.htm. The Centre also published (in Bulgarian only) The Economic Twentieth Century of Bulgaria by Roumen Avramov. Information about these and other publications is available at www.cls-sofia.org/publications/index-en.htm. In 2002 the Romanian Academic Society (SAR, Romania, www.sar.org.ro) published seven issues of its Early Warning Report, a project initiated and funded by the United Nations Development Programme to provide Romanian policy makers with analysis and recommendations in economics, social affairs, and political and legal reform. (Full texts are available in Romanian and English at the SAR Web site.) In 2003 SAR launched a new series of Policy Warning Reports, including economic statistics, public opinion data, and essays on political and social reform. SAR also publishes the Romanian Journal of Political Science, whose April 2002 issue featured a collection of articles on democratic theory, most of which originally appeared in the Journal of Democracy. Among the works translated into Romanian were essays by Robert Dahl, Samuel P. Huntington, Amartya Sen, Thomas Carothers, Guillermo O'Donnell, Marc F. Plattner, and Larry Diamond. The September 2002 issue of the Romanian Journal included a cluster of articles on democracy assistance, including presentations from a May 6 SAR conference in Bucharest (described below), plus reviews of recent books in political science. Alina Mungiu Pippidi, director of SAR, and Denisa Mandruta also published a paper entitled "Was Huntington Right? Testing the Civilization Border between Central Europe and the Balkans" in the June 2002 issue of International Politics. The study drew on public-opinion research in three countries that were bypassed in the first wave of European Union enlargement and concluded that attitudes toward democracy and nationalism, or nostalgia for communism, were fundamentally the same in Slovakia, Romania, and Bulgaria, despite the fact that Roman-Catholic Slovakia had been a part of the Habsburg Empire, while Orthodox Christian Romania and Bulgaria had been parts of the Ottoman Empire. In May 2002 SAR organized and cosponsored a five-day series of meetings that focused on think tanks, Balkan democracy, and reinvigorating the social sciences in postcommunist Eastern Europe. On May 3-5 SAR hosted a "Transatlantic Forum on the Role of Think Tanks in the New Millennium" at Constanta on Romania's Black Sea coast. The conference opened with an address by Emil Constantinescu, former president of Romania, and included panel discussions of the contributions that think tanks make during international crises and in debates over governmental accountability and European Union enlargement. On May 6 SAR and the New Europe College cosponsored a conference in Bucharest entitled "Balkan Exceptionalism or Theory Failure? Unsettled Questions of Democratization in Eastern Europe." And on May 7 SAR and the Goethe Institute in Bucharest convened a one-day meeting entitled "Reinventing Social Science in Eastern Europe: The Case of Romania," in which Romanian and international scholars examined the current state of and future prospects for three key disciplines-history, sociology, and political science. The Caucasian Institute for Peace, Democracy, and Development (CIPDD, Georgia, www.cipdd.org) published Ethnic-Confessional Groups and Challenges to Civic Integration in Georgia: Azeri, Javakheti Armenian, and Muslim Meskhetian Communities. Edited by Ghia Nodia, the Institute's director, the book contains sociological studies of the problems confronting several important ethnic groups plus recommendations on how such groups might be better integrated into Georgian society. The full text of the book is available online at www.cipdd.org/cipdd_g/pdf/nedeng.pdf. The Institute for Public Affairs (IVO, Slovakia, www.ivo.sk) published seven books in 2002 and organized conferences and meetings to present most of them to the Slovak policy community. Slovakia 2001: A Global Report on the State of Society, edited by Grigorij Meseznikov, Miroslav Kollár, and Tom Nicholson, is the sixth annual English-language edition of the Institute's flagship publication. The book contains twenty-eight essays by prominent Slovak social scientists analyzing the year's most important developments in domestic politics, foreign affairs, the economy, and society. Visegrad Countries in an Enlarged Trans-Atlantic Community, edited by Marek Stastný, includes eight essays on the current and likely future relationships among the Visegrad Four countries (Poland, Hungary, Slovakia, and the Czech Republic) against the backdrop of enlargement of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and the European Union. Contributors include scholars from Germany, Austria, Italy, Slovakia, and the Czech Republic. The remaining five books, published only in Slovak, include the 2002 edition of the Global Report on the State of Society (forthcoming in English), a volume of essays on administrative reform from 1998 to 2002, a review of how well the Slovak government fulfilled its 1998 policy proposals, and an analysis of political party programs released during the 2002 election campaign. The Institute also published (in Slovak only) We Will Decide.sk: 333 Good Reasons Why to Vote. The small book was the brainchild of civic activist Pavol Demes, who asked 333 famous Slovaks from the worlds of business, journalism, sports, science, academia, and the arts to explain why they planned to vote in the 2002 parliamentary elections-without mentioning the name of a single candidate or political party. Additional information on Institute publications is available at www.ivo.sk/ipabooks.asp . The Center for Democracy and Human Rights (CEDEM, Montenegro, www.cedem.cg.yu/cedem.htm) greatly expanded its Web site in 2002, providing access to current and back issues of numerous CEDEM reports, including quarterly issues of the Center's newsletter, studies of public opinion, and a report on "The Nongovernmental Sector in Montenegro in 2002." CEDEM also published quarterly reports from its multiyear project on "Transition in Montenegro: Legislation, Media, Privatization," and in October 2002 it launched a new quarterly magazine called REPER (the name means Sign or Pattern), featuring essays in both Serbo-Croatian and English on politics, law, economics, and foreign policy. Richard Rose, director of the Centre for the Study of Public Policy (CSPP, United Kingdom, www.cspp.strath.ac.uk), and Neil Munro, research fellow at the Centre, published Elections Without Order: Russia's Challenge to Vladimir Putin (Cambridge University Press, 2002). The book draws on ten years of surveys conducted by the New Russia Barometer to explain how ordinary citizens feel about their elected officials, political parties, economic reforms, and the state of democracy in Russia today. The CSPP Web site also includes information about other books and book chapters, and it contains abstracts of almost 200 Studies in Public Policy that are available for purchase from CSPP. The Access to Information Programme (AIP, Bulgaria, www.aip-bg.org) published Access to Information Litigation in Bulgaria. The book contains the most significant decisions of the Bulgarian Supreme Administrative Court on access to information cases, complied and annotated by lawyer Alexsander Kashamov. The complete text is available at www.aip-bg.org/pdf/report02_eng.pdf. The AIP also published The Year of the Rational Ignorance (available at www.aip-bg.org/pdf/ignorance2.pdf), a survey report on how well government agencies are complying with Bulgaria's recent Access to Public Information Act. The International Centre for Policy Studies (ICPS, Ukraine, www.icps.kiev.ua) publishes a weekly electronic newsletter as part of its mission to promote democratic debate on public policy in Ukraine. Most issues focus on economic policy but a number of issues published in 2002 addressed topics in political reform, corruption and money laundering, and European integration. To request a free e-mail subscription, visit the Web site above or write to marketing@icps.kiev.uk. 2.4 LATIN AMERICA AND THE CARIBBEAN Following a January 2002 conference convened by FUNDAR (Center for Analysis and Research, Mexico, www.fundar.org.mx) and the Mexico City office of the Ford Foundation, the two organizations published Promises to Keep: Using Public Budgets as a Tool to Advance Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights. Jim Shultz, executive director of the Democracy Center, prepared the report summarizing three days of deliberations among international human-rights and budget activists. The document is available in English on the FUNDAR Web site, which also includes additional publications in Spanish on public budgets, transparency, and related issues. Congreso Visible (Colombia, http://cvisible.uniandes.edu.co) published several new issues of Congreso Visible, a Spanish-language bulletin that monitors legislative behavior in Colombia. The publication informs citizens about their elected representatives, including their political views and voting records, proposed legislation, and pending reform proposals. 2.5 MIDDLE EAST The Turkish Economic and Social Studies Foundation (TESEV, www.tesev.org.tr) published three monographs in 2002, including Enlarging the European Union: Where Does Turkey Stand? by Meltem Müftüler-Baç, Turkey and Europe After the Nice Summit by Christopher Brewin, and Justice and Home Affairs Issues in Turkish-EU Relations: Assessing Turkish Asylum and Immigration Policy and Practice by Kemal Kirisci. TESEV also organized a series of meetings in 2002 to present its new book, Household View of the Causes of Corruption in Turkey and Suggested Preventive Measures, the product of a multiyear research project based on face-to-face interviews with more than 3,000 respondents that probed attitudes toward graft, corruption, bribery, and trust in institutions of government. With the United Nations Development Programme and the Heinrich Böll Foundation, TESEV cosponsored meetings comparing the strengths and weaknesses of countries seeking to join the European Union. The Israel Democracy Institute (IDI, www.idi.org.il) published The Elections in Israel: 2001. Political scientists Asher Arian and Michal Shamir edited the study of the February 2001 special direct election of the Israeli prime minister under the provisions of a 1992 law that was repealed shortly after the 2001 election. Contributors to the volume analyze factors influencing voter turnout, the impact of campaign propaganda, and postelection coalition politics in the Knesset. IDI also published Religion and State in Jewish Philosophy by Aviezer Ravitzky, which draws on Jewish thought from the twelfth through the fifteenth centuries to inform current debates in Israel; and Executive Governance in Israel (available in Hebrew only) edited by Asher Arian, David Nachmias, and Ruth Amir, which analyzes the growth of executive power and its impact on the Knesset, political parties, and other government agencies. On September 25, 2002 the International Forum for Democratic Studies (United States, www.ned.org) cosponsored a conference on "Liberal Islam" with the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. Two panels of distinguished Muslim commentators addressed the questions, "What is Liberal Islam?" and "How much support does Liberal Islam enjoy, and is this support likely to grow?" Conference speakers Abdou Filali-Ansary, Abdelwahab El-Affendi, Radwan A. Masmoudi, and Laith Kubba then prepared essays based on their presentations that were published in the April 2003 issue of the Journal of Democracy. 2.6 COMPARATIVE, THEORETICAL, AND GENERAL The Institute for Political Studies (IEP, Portugal, www.ucp.pt/iep/iep.htm) sponsored its tenth International Annual Meeting in Political Studies from November 3-5, 2002. The conference, entitled "Culture Wars in the West," drew participants from Europe and the United States to the Portuguese village of Cascais. João Carlos Espada, director of the Institute, wrote Ensaios sobre a Liberdade (Essays on Liberty). The book includes studies of the concept of liberty in the writings of Alexis de Tocqueville, Isaiah Berlin, and Ralf Dahrendorf, plus chapters on civil society, social capital, and the future of Europe. With Hugo Chelo and Miguel Morgado, Mr. Espada also wrote Riqueza e Pobreza (Wealth and Poverty). Both books were published in 2002 by Principia, a leading academic publisher in Portugal. The Institute for Political Studies also publishes Nova Cidadania (New Citizenship), a quarterly magazine of political commentary featuring original and translated essays and book reviews. Recent books published by scholars affiliated with the Center for the Study of Democracy (CSD, United States, www.democ.uci.edu) include The Evolution of Electoral and Party Systems in the Nordic Countries, edited by Bernard Grofman and Arend Lijphart (Agathon, 2002), Social Movements: Identity, Culture, and the State, edited by David Meyer, Nancy Whittier, and Belinda Robnett (Oxford University Press, 2002), and Martin Wattenberg's Where Have all the Voters Gone? (Harvard University Press, 2002). Numerous lectures and research papers published by CSD scholars from 2001 to 2003 are available at http://repositories.cdlib.org/csd/. The International Forum for Democratic Studies (United States, www.ned.org) released the two latest volumes in its Journal of Democracy book series published by Johns Hopkins University Press. The first book- Democracy after Communism, edited by Larry Diamond and Marc F. Plattner-contains 26 essays by experts on Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union who assess the challenges of building and consolidating democracy under postcommunist conditions. Contributors to the second volume-Emerging Market Democracies: East Asia and Latin America, edited by Laurence Whitehead-compare Latin America's strides toward democratization in the 1980s with the rapid economic growth of many East Asian countries in that same decade and attempt to determine whether the two regions are converging toward a model that combines economic and political liberalization. For more information about these and other Journal of Democracy books, visit www.ned.org/publications/publications.html. In June 2001 the Center on Democratic Performance (CDP, United States, http://cdp.binghamton.edu) convened an international conference of scholars and practitioners at Binghamton University in New York to assess how to improve the functioning of democracy around the world. One result of that conference is a book entitled Democratic Institution Performance: Research and Policy Perspectives (Praeger/Greenwood, 2002), edited by Center director Edward R. McMahon and Thomas A.P. Sinclair. Contributors examine how the performance of political parties, legislatures, civil society, and other institutions affects the development of stable democratic regimes. For more information, visit http://cdp.binghamton.edu/projects/publication.html. In October 2002 the Center held a symposium on "Losers' Consent: Elections and Democratic Legitimacy," part of a new CDP project that will study the attitudes of political minorities (or losers) in a variety of electoral systems. |
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