How People View Democracy: A Diverging Europe

Issue Date January 2001
Volume 12
Issue 1
Page Numbers 93-105
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Read the full essay here.

Citizens of postcommunist countries not only want to be free to say what they think and to vote their conscience; they also want a government that obeys the rules it lays down and is not steeped in corruption.

About the Author

Richard Rose is director of the Centre for the Study of Public Policy at the University of Aberdeen, Scotland, and creator of the New Europe Barometer surveys of mass response to transformation in postcommunist countries. His latest book, coauthored with William Mishler and Neil Munro, is Russia Transformed: Developing Political Support for a New Regime (2006).

View all work by Richard Rose

Further Reading

Volume 6, Issue 1

Italy’s Civic Divide

A review of Making Democracy Work: Civic Traditions in Modern Italy, by Robert D. Putnam, with Robert Leonardi and Raffaella Y. Nanetti.

Volume 30, Issue 1

How the Populists Won in Italy

In 2018, Italian voters produced Europe’s first populist majority. Lega and the Five Star Movement, each populist in its own way, collectively won just over half the vote. Now they…

Volume 28, Issue 3

The Rise of Referendums: Elite Strategy or Populist Weapon?

Political elites once held referendums to fend off challenges to European integration. More recently, Euroskeptic parties have employed referendums to batter down the walls of elite consensus. But the spread of referendums threatens to undermine the legitimacy…