In the present essay we introduce the concept of macroculture as a complex of mutually supporting values, norms and beliefs in various areas of human activity, like war, religion, politics, athletics, etc. in a model. Then, by applying the concept of bounded rationality, we analyse how some...

In the present paper we undertake to link democracy with a set of indicators for economic freedom and financial crises, using panel data analysis. The sample covers annually the period 2000-2012 for the EU, the USA and Japan. The results point out, that political stability is positively related...

The ratings of political institutions are well-known and widely used in academic literature. These ratings are mostly based on expert evaluations. However, such evaluations can be subjective and occasionally driven by ideological considerations. In this paper we propose two new indicators of...

Since the end of World War II, the number of countries in the world has increased dramatically. Many of these newly independent countries are small both in terms of population and geography, and several are islands. The purpose of this paper is to explore the effects of island status and country...

We examine the impact of civil war on democratization. Using a theoretical bargaining model, we hypothesize that prolonged violence, war termination, the presence of natural resources, and international intervention influence democratization. We test these hypotheses using an unbalanced panel...

The ratings of economic and political institutions are well-known and widely used in the Social Science literature. These ratings are heavily relied on Experts' evaluations with subjective ordinal ranking (i.g., from -10 to 10 points). Such evaluations can be occasionally driven by ideological...

This article challenges recent findings that democracy has sizable effects on economic growth. As extensive political science research indicates that economic turmoil is responsible for causing or facilitating many democratic transitions, the paper focuses on this endogeneity concern. Using a...

Many episodes of extension of franchise in the 19th and especially in the 20th century occurred during or in the aftermath of major wars. Motivated by this fact, we offer a theory of political transitions which focuses on the impact of international conflicts on domestic political institutions....

Many episodes of extension of franchise in the 19th and especially in the 20th century occurred during or in the aftermath of major wars. Motivated by this fact, we offer a theory of political transitions which focuses on the impact of international conflicts on domestic political institutions....

Robert Michel's main work is "Political parties. A Sociological Study on the Oligarchical Tendencies of Modern Democracy", issued in 1911, which is an analysis on the internal organization evolving dynamics of the German Social-Democrat Party (SDP), to which the author was intensely attached for...