Democracy Under Construction: Patterns from Four Continents

The book compares five newly emerged democra¬cies in Europe, South East Asia, Latin America and Africa. Cutting across vastly different historical and cultural backgrounds it tells the story of how societies come to terms with a painful past and how politics, culture and the economy intertwine in the process of creating new democratic nations. The volume pioneers a new approach to the study of democrati¬sation. It does so by combining comparative and interdisciplinary analyses of South Africa, Poland, (East) Germany, South Korea and Chile, that is, five countries where a similar general thrust of democrati¬sation is set against the most diversified cultural and historical backgrounds. From the Contents: Political Society Institutional engineering; post-autocratic party systems; citizen support for democracy. Economic Society Economic policy and performance. Civil Society Civil society and democratic consolidation. Historical Memory Historical memory and democracy.

The editor: Prof. Ursula J. van Beek: Transformation Research Initiative (TRI), Stellenbosch University, South Africa. The authors: Dirk Berg-Schlosser, Faculty of Social Sciences and Philosophy, Philipps University, Marburg, Germany ● Hans-Dieter Klingemann, Institut d’Etudes Politiques de Paris, France ● Jörn Rüsen, Kulturwissenschaftliches Institut, Essen, Germany ● Susanne Fuchs, Department of Sociology, New School University, USA ● Edmund Wnuk-Lipinski, Institute of Political Studies, Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw, Poland ● Radek Markowski, Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw, Poland ● Marek Ziolkowski, Sociology Department, Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznań, Poland ● Philip Mohr, Department of Economics, University of South Africa, Pretoria, South Africa ● Hennie Kotze, Faculty of Arts, University of Stellenbosch, South Africa ● Bernard Lategan, Stellenbosch Institute for Advanced Study (STIAS), South Africa ● Prof. Pierre du Toit, Department of Political Science, University of Stellenbosch, South Africa ● Jorge Heine, Ambassador of Chile to India.