Democracy support in EU Candidate Countries

Vincenzo Memoli

Working Papers - Programa Europa from Argentine Center of International Studies

Abstract: In the EU candidate countries the citizens’ support for the democratic process is important for domestic democracy as well as the integration process. Many factors contribute to explain democratic support (Dalton 2004), and many aspects should be considered in order to have a good understanding of the democratic processes that characterize the new democracies. Focusing on economic expectations, political knowledge, political discussion and education, in this paper democracy support in Bulgaria, Croatia, Romania and Turkey is analyzed using two specific measures: support for political community and public institutions. The principal results show weak ties between citizens and State. This is more evident in ex-communist countries where the effects of past totalitarian regimes linger as mistrust of citizens towards their public institution and low support for the democratic process. On the contrary, in Turkey the explicative models of democracy support are significant and consistent with citizens’ support for the democratic process.

Keywords: Democracy; european union (search for similar items in EconPapers)
View list of references

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.caei.com.ar/es/programas/europa/16.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
Argentine Center of International Studies, Cafayate 1031, CP: 1408, Buenos Aires, Argentina.

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers - Programa Europa from Argentine Center of International Studies
Contact information at EDIRC.
Series data maintained by Ariel González (). This e-mail address is bad, please contact .