Remembering the bad old days: Human rights, economic conditions, and democratic performance in transitional regimes

Hans-Dieter Klingemann and Richard I. Hofferbert

Discussion Papers, Research Unit: Institutions and Social Change from WZB Berlin Social Science Center

Abstract: Using the natural laboratory of 18 post-communist Central and Eastern European countries, this article presents a basic model for democratic transition, specifically testing two alternative explanations for the degree of citizen satisfaction with the performance of their fledgling democracies: 1) virtues of omission, which include bad actions from which the state refrains, namely violations of individual human rights, and 2) virtues of commission, which include positive state actions, in particular actions enhancing economic well-being. The findings clearly indicate that, during the transition period, citizens' sense of the condition of human rights is consistently more important than are perceived economic prospects as predictors of democratic performance.

Date: 1998
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/48985/1/250909987.pdf (application/pdf)

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

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:zbw:wzbisc:fsiii98203

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Discussion Papers, Research Unit: Institutions and Social Change from WZB Berlin Social Science Center Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics ().