Recent decades have seen a wave of institutional changes of the core democratic rules in advanced democracies. These changes include reforms of electoral systems; decentralization of power to sub-national governments; the creation or enhancement of direct-democratic institutions; a rise in...

Although it is generally seen as desirable that parties in government are both responsive and responsible, these two characteristics are now in increasing tension with one another. Prudence and consistency in government, as well as accountability, requires that governments conform to external...

This paper is intended to frame and describe a novel method of political party positioning within the European Union and beyond. Ever since the groundbreaking work by Downs in the 1950s, political scientists have derived a variety of methods to empirically determine the position of parties on...

Relying on the World Value Survey data, this paper explores what individuals consider as the most important problems in the world in a sample of about 50 countries. The paper focuses particularly on the fact to prioritize poverty as the most important problem, as poverty constitutes an important...

Relying on the World Value Survey data, this paper explores what individuals consider as the most important problems in the world in a sample of about 50 countries. The paper focuses particularly on the fact to prioritize poverty as the most important problem, as poverty constitutes an important...

Dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSCs) which are also called Graetzel cells are a novel type of solar cells. Their advantages are mainly low cost production, low energy payback time, flexibility, performance also at diffuse light and multicolor options. DSSCs become more and more interesting since a...

The wave of electoral volatility which swept across most of the West European polities in the late 1960s and 1970s has led many scholars to suggest that the European party systems are now experiencing a major transformation. Given such an emphasis in the contemporary literature, this article...

The 20th-century has been the century of mass politics, and the mass parties that emerged at the beginning of this century became deeply rooted within wider society. The passing of this golden age of the party has now been marked by two distinct processes of change. On the one hand, parties have...

Although we still celebrate the late twentieth-century ‘victory of democracy’, our understanding of what democracy entails in both theory and practice is increasingly subject to a variety of qualifying definitions, many of which now seem to devalue the role of elections and electoral...