The literature on civil society in postcommunist regimes highlights its weakness as
compared with civil society in other democracies. In this article the authors make a general …

The third wave of democratization has given way to a reverse wave of autocratization. A
critical question is what can be done to prevent democratic breakdowns and make …

What is the impact of dictatorships on postdictatorial civil societies? Bottom-up theories
suggest that totalitarian dictatorships destroy civil society while authoritarian ones allow for …

The importance of a vigorous civil society for democratic stability and performance has been
increasingly stressed during the last few years. In this article the authors draw on a broad …

The “elitist approach” to democratization contends that “democratic regimes that last have
seldom, if ever, been instituted by mass popular actors”(Huntington 1984: 212). This article …

This article investigates the cultural and behavioral legacies of dictatorship. It argues that the
experience of dictatorship can lead to a process of political learning in which social actors …

From the 1980s through the first decade of the twenty-first century, the spread of democracy
across the developing and post-Communist worlds transformed the global political …

Since Putnam published Making Democracy Work, his seminal work on the effect of civic
associationalism in promoting better institutional performance, many other studies have …

During the last two decades, scholars from a variety of disciplines have argued that civil
society is structurally deficient in postcommunist countries. Yet why have the seemingly …

Influential voices contend that democracy is in decline worldwide and threatened in the US.
Using a variety of measures, I show that—while there has been some recent backsliding …