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| Research Unit: Democracy: Structures, Performance, Challenges |
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Director: Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Merkel |
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The focus of the research program on ‘challenges, structures, and
performance’ of established and new democracies is on the
relationship between institutions and actors in order to be able to
explain performance from its input as well as its output side. The
varying institutional arrangements in democracies have to be
considered as the filter and the scope of action wherein the
relevant actors deal with challenges and problems. Thus,
institutional filters and actors' actions help to explain the
variance in the performances of democracies. Performance relates to
problem-solving capacity as well as to democratic performance.
Research questions are concerned with the stability and adaptability
of established democracies, with the success of democratic
transformation and consolidation, and with democratic defects of new
democracies.
The research program is based on the theoretical framework of embedded democracy which allows an integrated analysis of the constituent five partial regimes of democracy (electoral regime, political rights of participation, civil rights, horizontal accountability, effective power to govern) in relation to each other and in relation to the external challenges of democracy (primarily loss of political steering capacity, socioeconomic inequality, regionalization, and cultural heterogeneity). Prior topics on the research agenda are:
The unit undertakes research projects on all sub-regimes and problem-dimensions. The projects are located at the interface of external challenges and sub-regimes or at the interface between sub-regimes. They allow an analysis of the political process from the input to the output side in partial sequences of the whole process ranging from challenges to civil rights, participation, elections, accountability, and government to outcomes/outputs. |
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Last change: 2010-01-13 18:07 |
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