Remembering the bad old days: Human rights, economic conditions, and democratic performance in transitional regimes
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.
Introductory Remarks 2 Part I. National and Regional Context of Policy-Making 2 Section 1. National context of policy-making 2 Section 2. Regional context 6 Section 3. SNA implementation 9 Part II. Europeanization Processes 11 Section 1. Adaptational pressures 11 Section 2. Resistance to change 13 Section 3. Evolution of central state policy-making structures 16 Section 4. Non-state actors 16 Section 5. Civic culture 18 Part III. Assessment of Learning Capacity 18 Section 1. Outcome 18 Section 2. Patterns of learning and adaptation 19 Section 3. Policy recommendations 21 References 22 Appendix 1: Interviewed actors / stakeholders and quantitative SNA results 25 Policy Area: Regional Policy. Case Study Region: Southern Transdanubia 25 Policy Area: Environmental Policy / Waste Management. Case Study Region: Central Hungary 29 Appendix 2: Map of Hungary with the two case study regions 24