Using data from the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems, this paper examines differences between West and East European countries in their levels of satisfaction with the way democracy works. Compared to East European countries, satisfaction levels were considerably higher in Western...

There can be little doubt that Rational Choice Theory (RCT) - with its emphasis on the 'instrumentally rational' individual as the foundation of the political process - has significantly enhanced the scope of political science. This paper details many of the areas of political science in which...

This paper proposes a general measure of the effective number of parties, based on the family of generalized entropy inequality indices. This measure encompasses existing measures in the sense that these can be derived, through an appropriate configuration of parameter values, from this general...

The measurement of unemployment, like that of poverty, involves two distict steps: identification and aggregation. In this two-step process, the issue of identifying the unemployed has received considerable attention but, once the unemployed have been identiified, the aggregation issue has been...

This study first uses a set of graphs and tables to present the pattern of democracy in the world, using the Gastil Index. Then a statistical analysis is conducted by two techniques: Regression techniques are used to analyze the effect on democracy of a handful of variables. It shows that...

This paper examines regional disparity in India from the perspective of the smallest geographical unit for which a consisent set of data is available: the district. By doing so, we are able to focus on pockets of deprivation rather than viewing deprivation as a phenomenon affecting a state or a...