Carlos Garcia Rivero

University of Valencia | UV

En este artículo se revisa la teoría elitista de la democracia que afirma que las elites muestran actitudesmás democráticas que la ciudadanía en general. Se analiza la teoría tanto en países democráticoscomo no democráticos en África, usando dos encuestas de opinión diferentes: una encuestaaplicada a las elites y otra al público general. El estudio...

Sub-Saharan Africa is the region where democracy has encountered the most difficulties in establishing itself, where the most military coups have occurred and, in addition, where public demonstrations of support on the streets are common after a coup d’état. In fact, the last 15 years has seen growing popular support for military rule. This study a...

Historically, ethnicity has been considered to play a fundamental role in voting behaviour in Africa. However, researchers on the issue have found contradictory conclusions. The most recent research concludes that the African voter is more rational than expected. Overall ethnicity seems to be less influential than theory used to suggest. Against th...

Over the past century, political Islam has taken the form of political parties and entered the electoral realm to gain institutional power. The Arab Spring sparked an unprecedented electoral advance of Islamists. New elections gave rise to new govern- ments under the control of Islamist in several countries in the region which created a new politic...

The concept of ideology has been related to economic inequality, state intervention in the economy, party identification, moral values and, more recently, to post-materialist values. It is also argued that the general public has a perception of this concept similar to that of the elites. This article analyses the left-right continuum at the elite a...

South Africa entered the Third Wave of democracy in 1994. Since then it has successfully faced many challenges, the last one being the global financial crisis of 2008–2009, without much damage to its democratic institutions. Pessimism about its democratic trajectory is largely the result of unfortunate policy choices resulting in very low economic...

RESUMEN: Históricamente ha habido un debate sobre el resultado del proceso democrático que se centra en si el producto de las democracias deben ser derechos políticos y libertades civiles o por el contrario deben ser bienes y servicios básicos a los ciudadanos. La crisis económica global que comenzó en 2007 ha tenido un impacto en las políticas ec...

There is ample consensus in the literature that institutional confidence by the public is needed in democracies and at the same time elites, particularly political elites, need to share this confidence in their guidance of state institutions, if political stability in established democracies and the consolidation of new democracies are desired. The...

Como otras disciplinas de las ciencias sociales, el aprendizaje en ciencia política y de la administración ha estado tradicionalmente basado en el trabajo individual del alumno, y en la docencia magistral por parte del docente, más alejado de los trabajos en grupo más característico de las ciencias experimentales cuyas prácticas en laboratorios hac...

The so-called “Arab spring” has swept throughout Middle East and North Africa against authoritarian forms of government, overthrowing regimes from West to East. After several aborted and repressed attempts, by Islamic parties, to access the institutions through the elections, mainly in the early 2000, the society rose in arms against the Arab State...

The existence of a healthy, respected and respectful opposition is a common feature of democratic politics. For a democracy to function properly, it needs an opposition to provide political contestation and electoral competition, thus limiting the power of the ruling party. In other words: no opposition – no democracy. In this regard, Africa has a...

The Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region is often regarded as an area where it is difficult to stabilize democracy. This notion is reinforced by the fact that, in the most recent set of elections held in the region, Islamic-orientated political parties perceived to be anti-democratic have achieved important electoral victories. This article a...

The study of Arab political culture has been developed extensively in recent times in an attempt to test whether the lack of democracy in the Arab world can be ascribed to its political culture, in which religion plays a major role. There are divergent conclusions with regards to this question. In this article, using quantitative techniques, we hav...

The advent of multi-racial elections inaugurated democracy in South Africa in 1994. The results of subsequent elections in 1999 and 2004 differed little from those of 1994, except that the Democratic Party gained ground and the National Party lost support. In all three of these elections, there was an important correlation between race and vote. Ho...

Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf ha abierto en Liberia un nuevo ciclo para los partidos de oposición en África.

Se cumplen 10 años de democracia multirracial en Suráfrica. Las próximas generaciones, que nacerán en libertad, podrán exigir cambios y resultados de la actuación de su gobierno.

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South Africa joined the 'third wave of democracy' in 1994, when the country conducted its first democratic elections. Since then, much debate about the extent of democratic consolidation has taken place. The present article analyses the possibilities for consolidation of South Africa's democracy in terms of the indicators of political culture most...

Learning quantitative methods is, generally, a hard duty for political science students, mainly due to their humanities educational background. This articles deals with the improvement that can be gained in this task, if students are engaged in real practical work. It is presented a public opinion survey conducted biannually by Department of Politi...

El Norte de África es una de las zonas del mundo donde la democracia ha encontrado más obstáculos para su introducción y asentamiento. En este artículo se realiza un estudio de la cultura política en el Magreb en un intento de determinar si la cultura política árabe supone una limitación para la democratización en la zona. El estudio es un análisis...