Democracy under scrutiny: Elites, citizens, cultures - Softcover

The starting premise of the study is the belief that the sharing of values builds bridges between the elites and the citizens, and that the closer the convergence of democratic values between them, the greater the potential for the strengthening of those democratic values and the quality of democracy in general (15), schreibt die an der Universität Stellenbosch in Südafrika lehrende Herausgeberin in ihrer Einführung zu diesem Band. Er resultiert aus einem internationalen Forschungsprojekt. In dessen Rahmen wurden die Wertvorstellungen von Eliten aus Parlament und Medien mit denen der sogenannten Normalbevölkerung eines Landes verglichen, um Rückschlüsse auf die Entwicklung der jeweiligen Demokratie ziehen zu können. Länderbeispiele sind Südafrika, Südkorea, Chile, Polen, die Türkei, Deutschland und Schweden. (pw-portal.de, 21.09.2010)

This book makes an important contribution to the study of political attitudes and all scholars who work in the field of political behaviour, as well as democratization ought to read it. (Prof. Amanda Gouws in: Politikon, March 2011)

Based on a cross-country evaluation this volume makes a major contribution to what could be labelled comparative consolidation of democracy literature. (Ulf Engel auf H-Net.org, April 2011)

This book reveals the diverse worlds of history, civic culture, and values in South Africa, South Korea, Chile, Poland, Turkey, Germany, and Sweden. It explores the similarities and differences between the values of the elites and the ordinary people to see how well democracy works in each of these countries, and how old and new democracies compare with each other. The study is based on analyses of value orientations of the parliamentary and media elites and those of the ordinary citizens, obtained from conducted research surveys. The first part of the book considers the quality of democracy in the context of the historical and cultural heritage of the seven countries, their civic culture and notions of citizenship, and their constitutions as foundations of the democratic political order. The second part assesses the quality of democracy by means of comparative analyses of the convergence and divergence in value orientations of the elites and the masses, both within each case and across all the seven cases. Written from various disciplinary perspectives and offering both empirical evidence and insiders' knowledge, Democracy under Scrutiny will be of interest to a wide variety of readers.