International Political Science Review

Was democracy invented by the Greeks to replace the anarchy and imperial rule characteristic of earlier Near Eastern societies? Although what was explicitly borrowed from antiquity by modern political thinkers looks Athenian, there was democracy before the polis. Egyptian and Mesopotamian politics relied on public debate and detailed voting procedures; countless assemblies convened at the thresholds of public buildings or city gates; disputed trials were submitted to superior courts; countervailing powers reminded leaders that justice was their responsibility. This was not full democracy, but the Greek version was not perfect either. In this article, “archeopolitics” is used to contrast this efficient form of pluralistic regime (“hypodemocracy”) with truly egalitarian ones (“hyperdemocracies”) and group interests’ polyarchies.

This article proposes that transfrontier diplomacy, based on what is termed a consociative model of peacemaking, can ameliorate relations not only between border communities but also between central governments and even entire societies—if several conditions are met. The first is that the nations in question must “face,” or consciously confront, one another, and thus have one another’s full diplomatic attention. The second is that their domestic political systems must be so structured as efficiently to transmit border-community perspectives to national decisionmaking centers, which in turn must keep in touch with peripheral communities. The third is that international agreements, including “good neighborhood” or bon voisinage treaties, should be concluded to bind countries legally to a regime of border cooperation. Such bilateral border agreements can be elicited and also reinforced by multilateral “frame-work” cooperation pacts that cover larger regions.

Since 1991 Italy has witnessed the crisis of its post-war consensual model of democracy. While in other democratic countries consensualism has been justified by ethnic or linguistic or religious cleavages, in Italy it is ideological cleavage that has justified the politics of accommodation among the leaders of the main parties. Consequently, as in the other consensual democracies, postwar Italy was unable to experience the alternation in government between opposed political options. The formation of a power-sharing political system at the governmental level was supported by the institutionalization, at the level of policy-making structures, of a sort of oligarchic pluralism, through which a network of organized minorities (in the public administration and in the interest groups) ended up by controlling the huge resources of the Italian state. These institutional and policy-making structures conflicted with the requirements imposed by the process of European integration. Different social actors were activated to challenge the legitimacy of that power-sharing system. A political change followed, indicated by the collapse of the postwar party system. But given the timing and the nature of the crisis, and the ambiguity of the new electoral law introduced by the old parties before their final collapse, the new parties proved able to resist the pressure for institutional transformation, although they had to agree with important policy changes in order for Italy to meet the Maastricht criteria for adopting the new European common currency. But these policy changes continue to be jeopardized by the institutional inertia of the old governmental system.

Across the advanced industrial polities, there exists a wide range in the percentage of women in national parliaments. However, the range is in fact wider still for women in cabinets. Moreover, whereas the literature on comparative female representation in parliament is now well established, comparative analysis of women in cabinets is rather limited. This article will examine both phenomena, using the most recent national elections (through the end of 1998) and subsequent governments in 28 nations. For each of “women in parliament” and “women in cabinet” a model is produced which explains most of the variance. An additional “Scandinavian effect” is found for women in cabinet, but not for women in parliament.

As English emerges as the first world-wide lingua franca, countries whose native language is not English increasingly face the following dilemma: either they will have to lose their soul (by switching off the protection of their national language and culture) or they will have to lose their heart (by scaling down the redistributive component of their welfare state). This conclusion rests on the following premises, which the article presents and vindicates: (1) If weaker languages are to survive, the countries in which they are spoken will have to insist on the linguistic territoriality principle. (2) Plurilingual portfolios do now and increasingly will tend to include English. (3) If some area’s native language emerges as a world lingua franca and if the territoriality principle is in place elsewhere, the migration of the high-skilled will display a growing bias towards the lingua-franca countries, here called for this reason the ground floor of the world. (4) If there is a significant asymmetric skill drain, then the other countries’ governments will have no real option but to reduce net taxation on high-skilled labour income. The article closes with a brief discussion of various conceivable strategies for avoiding, or at least softening the dilemma.