Declining levels of turnout recently observed in some East European elections have generated concerns about the performance of the newly emerging democracies. Theories developed to explain turnout in industrialized democracies emphasize the importance of two major groups of factors: institutional and socioeconomic. This article argues that a comprehensive model of voter participation in post-Communist settings should also include a dynamic component to account for temporal changes generated by the transitional process. I test a model of voter turnout that incorporates explanations of temporal (sequence of elections) and spatial differences (electoral system type, party system characteristics and economic development). Multivariate regression is used to estimate the model, with data from fifteen East European countries over four consecutive elections. Turnout in democracies in transitionVoter participation in the East European transitional elections of the 1990s has been remarkably different from the high levels of turnout reported by Communist authorities prior to 1989. Post-Communist turnout rates vary. While over 90 per cent of registered voters participated in the first multiparty elections in Czechoslovakia, only about 66 per cent of Hungarian voters in 1990 and less than 50 per cent of Polish voters in 1991 went to the polls. Moreover, observers have expressed concerns about a decline in turnout in some of the countries in the region. These varying levels of engagement in electoral participation across space and over time are indicative of changing patterns of behaviour among East European voters.Voter turnout in new emerging democracies has its unique important dimensions. The process of political liberalization and democratization makes it possible for people to face unlimited but, very often, unknown and uncertain choices. Exposed to serious hardships, voters are challenged by many competing alternatives, and they have to decide whether and how to respond to the changing transitional environment. Since 'unequal participation spells unequal influence' (Lijphart 1997), changes in voting behaviour could have a disturbing impact on the fair representation of societal interests. Therefore, the problem of voter participation in times of fundamental political and economic transformation requires special attention.

This paper argues that corruption, threatening democratic governance in the new democracies of Eastern Europe, is another influential determinant of voter turnout. I hypothesize that its impact is complex in that it generates distinct incentives for participation. A recursive model of voting specifies a direct effect where voters get mobilized to bring to power politicians of greater integrity, and an indirect effect in which perceptions of corruption corrode faith in the democratic process and consequently, depress voting. The analysis uses CSES survey data from eight post‐communist countries and the results provide empirical support for the theoretical model. The results also suggest that at least in 2001‐05, the two opposing incentives for voting balanced each other out, with a slight gain for the mobilization effect. Este artículo argumenta que la amenaza de la corrupción dentro de los gobiernos democráticos de Europa del Este es un factor influyente en la participación de votantes. Planteo que su impacto es complejo puesto que genera incentivos contrapuestos para la participación. Un modelo de voto recursivo especifica un efecto directo donde los votantes se movilizan para llevar al poder a los políticos de mayor integridad, y un efecto indirecto en el cual las percepciones de corrupción corroen la fe en el proceso democrático y en consecuencia, reduce el voto. El análisis utiliza la investigación de datos del Estudio Comparativo de los Sistemas Electorales (CSES, por sus siglas en inglés) de ocho países post‐comunistas y los resultados proveen el respaldo empírico para el modelo teórico. Los resultados sugieren también que por lo menos en 2001‐05, los dos incentivos opuestos para el voto se equilibran mutuamente, con un ligero triunfo del efecto de la movilización.

Practitioners and scholars of postcommunist politics disagree on the accomplishments of administrative reforms in new Eastern European democracies. The transformation of the public sector after 1989 has aimed to consolidate the democratic process and enhance economic development. Skeptics, however, argue that administrative reforms face serious challenges in the context of economic liberalization, insufficient capacity for modernization, and cultural legacies of the past. The authors judge reform effectiveness by testing the impact of civil service reform on government transparency and foreign direct investment. The results of the empirical analysis confirm that once reform is adopted, administrations become more effective at reducing corruption and attracting investment. Despite the delays and difficulties of implementation, the adoption of reform is important in and of itself, and countries can expect positive results sooner than skeptics predict.

Scholars and policy makers have advanced conflicting hypotheses about the dynamics of voter participation in nascent democratic regimes. The authors advance the research program by examining 108 parliamentary elections in postauthoritarian Latin America and post-Communist Europe from 1978 through 2003. Institutional, political, and demographic variables shape turnout in new democracies, but there is also a strong temporal effect: voter turnout drops sharply after founding elections and continues to fall through the fourth electoral cycle. Moreover, after appropriate controls, rates of turnout in Eastern Europe are consistently higher than the equivalent rates for Latin America. The authors attribute these differences to historical legacies and the mode of transition to democracy.

The last few decades have been marked by the emergence of a number of environmental protection regimes in the international arena. We know little about the effectiveness of these regimes, however, largely because such evaluations face the formidable obstacles of a scarcity of time series data on environmental quality, a complex mix of nonpolicy factors that affect environmental quality, and the fact that participation in nearly all international environmental agreements is voluntary, which means that policy effectiveness must be estimated from self-selected samples. In this article we assess the effects of the 1985 Helsinki Protocol for reducing sulfur dioxide emissions in Europe, paying particularly close attention to the obstacles noted above. We find that while nations ratifying the Helsinki Protocol have experienced significant emission reductions, the protocol itself has had no discernible effect on emissions. We end the article by discussing the implication of these results for the effectiveness of international environmental regimes in general.