1st Edition
Challenges of Democracy in the 21st Century Concepts, Methods, Causality and the Quality of Democracy
The effectiveness and capacity of survival of democratic regimes has been recently and widely questioned in the public and political debate. Both democratic institutions and political actors are increasingly confronted with rapid economic and societal transformations that, at least according to some observers and commentators, they not seem to be ready or equipped to manage effectively.
This book evaluates and challenges recent scholarly literature on the quality of democracy. It provides a critical assessment of the current state of the studies on the subject, identifying the key questions and discussing open issues, alternative approaches, problems and future developments. Bringing together some of the most prominent and distinguished scholars who have developed and discussed the topic of the quality of democracy during the last decade, it deals with a highly relevant topic in political science and extremely sensitive subject for our democratic societies.
This text will be of key interest to scholars of democracy and democratization and more broadly to comparative politics, electoral studies, political theory, power and comparative political institutions.
The Quality of Democracy: Towards a New Research Agenda [Luca Tomini and Giulia Sandri]
Part I: Concepts and Methods
1. Some Critical Thoughts on Researching the Quality of Democracy [Philippe C. Schmitter]
2. Aggregating a Multi-Dimensional Concept: The Quality of Democracy [Dirk Berg-Schlosser]
Part II: Causality and the Quality of Democracy
3. Accountability through Stages of Democratization: A Causal Explanation of Quality of Democracy [Luca Tomini]
4. Democratic Quality and Democratic Survival [Aníbal Pérez-Liñán and Noah Smith]
5. Economic Crisis and Democracy: How to Analyze the Impact of the Former on the Latter [Leonardo Morlino]
6. The Cornerstone of the Quality of Democracy: Electoral Accountability in EU Member States [Stefano Rombi and Fulvio Venturino]
Part III: Beyond the State: Territorial Dimensions of the Quality of Democracy
7. Patterns of Regional Democracy: Government Forms and Performance in Federal and Decentralised West-European Countries [Régis Dandoy and Giulia Sandri]
8. Protecting the Rule of Law and the State of Democracy at the Supranational Level: Political Dilemmas and Institutional Struggles in Strengthening EU’s Input, Output, and Throughput Legitimacy [Ramona Coman]
Biography
Luca Tomini is FNRS Postdoctoral Researcher at the Université libre de Bruxelles, Brussels, Belgium.
Giulia Sandri is Associate Professor of Political Science at the Université Catholique de Lille in France.
