This essay deals with democracy promotion & protection by established democracies. It first describes how the dynamics and understanding of regime transitions changes from the first to the present fourth wave of democratization. Subsequently, it defines democracy promotion & protection and...

While the strategies of political actors and institutions have been largely analyzed with reference to cases of democratic breakdown in inter-war Europe and other contexts, democratic survival has often been viewed as a consequence of socio-economic and cultural "preconditions". The analysis of...

This paper examines the imitation of models in the Polish transition. The reconstruction of an economic and political order in 1989 has widely been interpreted as the imitation of capitalism and democracy. This paper conceives of imitation as aiming to overcome the distance to a desired model....

This article is part of ongoing research on the left in Italy, and attempts to explain the origins, significance and outcome of the key issue at the PDS's 2nd Congress: the future of the party itself.

The paper presents in a simple model the possible choices and constraints facing democratic governments when confronting an anti-democratic party challenge that is able to seriously endanger the survival of the democratic system.

Presidentialism has been long defined as a regime type based on the principle of separation of power. I will start by adopting a restricted definition of presidentialism and advancing a typology of democratic regimes, just to thereafter apply it to the two largest South American countries:...

Putnam's civil society is the idea that good government performance aas well as economic development is a product of 'civic community', i.e. the networks of trust, reciprocity, and habits of co-operation that arise in the associational micro-spheres of civil society such as the soccer club, the...

In this paper, the author writes about Alexis de Tocqueville and his implication in the debate in the apparent tension between liberty and equality. Alexis de Tocqueville thinks that a new political science would no longer be necessary at all.