Promotion öf democracy in post-war and post-conflict societies became a hot topic during the 1990s. External actors Iinked their peace-building efforts to the promotion of democracy. FoUl' modes of promotion of democracy by external actors can be distinguished: first , enforcing democratization by enduring post-war occupation (mode 1); second, restoring an elected government by military interve...

recent years have witnessed the rise of populism and populist leaders, movements and policies in many pluralist liberal democracies, with brexit and the election of trump the two most recent high profile examples of this backlash against established political elites and the institutions that support them. this new populism is underpinned by a post-truth politics which is using social media as a...

Many scholars have argued that British colonial rule promoted post-independence democracy, but there has been considerable debate over the robustness of this result and its causes. We show that this relationship follows a strong temporal pattern. Although former British colonies were considerably more democratic than other countries immediately following independence, subsequent convergence in ...

modernity has been interpreted from different angles. scholars such as derida and lyotard talk about the end of modernity and the beginning of a new era called post-modernism, though thinkers like habermas do not believe in that.habermas who do not believe in the end of modernity and the beginning of post-modernism, finds modernism as the only way to human liberty who has chosen a wrong path an...

Why are some states more corrupt than others? More specifically, why is post-communist Romania significantly more corrupt than post-communist Hungary even though both transitioned to democracy from USSR satellite states in 1989 and both went on to enter the European Union? This paper argues that though the implementation of communism in political institutions at the time of transition cannot se...

Events since I published my book Post-democracy in 2004 suggest that democracy continues to decline in effectiveness in those parts of the world where it has been most strongly established. The global financial crisis, the consequent euro crisis, the likely shape of a Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) and growing evidence of the political power of giant mass media corporatio...

Does Democracy Foster Trust? The level of trust inherent in a society is important for a wide range of microeconomic and macroeconomic outcomes. This paper investigates how individuals’ attitudes toward social and institutional trust are shaped by the political regime in which they live. The German reunification is a unique natural experiment that allows us to conduct such a study. Using data f...