Review of Democracy and Its Alternatives: Understanding Post-Communist Societies, by Richard Rose, William Mishler, and Christian Haerpfer.
About the Author
Krzysztof Jasiewicz is professor of sociology at Washington and Lee University in Lexington, Virginia. In the 1990s, he was the founder of electoral studies at the Polish Academy of Sciences.
Once again, a reformist electoral victory has been followed by political setbacks. The key to understanding this paradoxical pattern lies in the unique theocratic constitutional structure of the Islamic Republic.
Such a comparison clearly shows a higher prevalence of democracy in Latin America and a better economic performance in East Asia. The two regions are likely to converge on both…
