Political scientists have long argued that low levels of citizen support can pose serious problems for democratic systems because both the functioning and the maintenance of democratic polities are intimately linked with what and how citizens think about democratic governance.
This is not only the case for more mature democratic systems; it is equally true for systems undergoing democratic transitions. In fact, questions of popular support for democratic governance are particularly important for emerging democracies because citizen support is of practical and immediate relevance for the continued stability of emerging democratic institutions. Understanding why democracies differ in their levels of public approval for democratic governance is thus important for theoreticians and policymakers alike.
While a theoretical case can be made for each perspective‘s independent as well as their combined ability to explain cross-national variation in system support, the overall empirical evidence in favor of each (or both) remains inconclusive.
There are several reasons for this. First, most studies of support for democratic governance has focused only on a small number of countries at any one time. In addition, such studies often have —loaded the dice“ in favor of their preferred explanation by focusing exclusively on finding support for one set of factors instead of examining the relative explanatory power of each while controlling for others. Finally, the vast majority of studies have focused on the mature democracies of Western Europe and North America.
Any one of these research strategies is appropriate under different circumstances-for example, to determine the face validity of an explanation or usefulness of a variable; when data constraints do not allow for the testing of hypotheses with a larger number of countries; or when these systems are virtually the only ones that can be studied.
As a consequence, students of comparative system support have yet to address the following questions in a very systematic fashion:
(1) what is the relative strength of civic culture-and performance-based explanations in models of system support? That is, when examined in tandem, which one provides greater empirical leverage?
(2) Are these explanations, which typically are put to use to explain differences in system support in older democracies, useful for understanding such differences across the emerging democracies of Central and Eastern Europe?
Applying old theories to new data-such as applying theories developed in the context of American politics to other countries or applying theories developed in established democracies to those undergoing transitions-is a common modus operandi, but also one that frequently has been fraught with conceptual and empirical problems.
The current phenomenal growth of government ethics is taking place on a worldwide scale. The consensus on the means of preventing corruption is becoming global in nature.
This was certainly reflected in the International Conference on Ethics in Government that was hosted by the U.S. Office of Government Ethics and the United States Information Agency in November 1994.
The International Conference was a gathering of 140 delegates from 52 countries, all searching for practical ways of making preventive government ethics programs more effective.
There was general recognition among the participants that codes of conduct, financial disclosure and ethics education were keys to effective prevention.
There have been other extremely significant developments that have heralded a new era in government ethics. One of the most notable recent events grew out of the Miami Summit of the Americas in 1994 that was given momentum by the November 1994 Washington International Conference on Government Ethics.
This development was the signing of the "Inter-American Convention Against Corruption." This treaty is perhaps one of the least heralded but most vital and important international developments in government ethics. The treaty was signed in Caracas, Venezuela on March 29, 1996 by 21 countries. In June 1996, five more countries, including the United States, signed the treaty.
As we all well know, the difficult work of implementation must now begin.
The treaty reflects the virtual unanimity among the countries of the Western Hemisphere that corruption must be controlled. Some might have thought that such an historic agreement would never be reached because corruption was too entrenched in the Americas. But the treaty has come into being.
Moreover, the treaty has teeth. It provides for extradition of persons charged with corruption. It makes transnational bribery illegal. It mandates preventive measures including: standards of conduct, ethics education, an obligation to report corrupt acts, protection for whistle-blowers, public financial disclosure systems, open and equitable systems of government hiring and procurement, and denial of tax benefits for corrupt payments.
Finally, the signatory countries agreed to provide mutual assistance to implement the actions required by the treaty.
Artur Victoria
References:
Kleinman, Daniel L., ed. (2000) Science, Technology and Democracy. Albany: SUNY- Press.
Latour, Bruno (2004). The Politics of Nature: How to Bring the Sciences into Democracy Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Salomon, Jean-Jacques (2000) “Science, Technology and Democracy,” Minerva 38: 33-51
Scott, James (1998) “Chapter 1: Nature and Space,” from Seeing Like a State (Yale: Yale Univ. Press).
Sclove, Richard E. (1996). Democracy and Technology. Washington, D.C.: Loka Institute.
