The concept of representation, as developed in Hanna Pitkin's seminal work, is a complex structure, whose multiple dimensions are hypothesized to be closely interconnected. Most empirical work, however, ignores the integrated character of representation and examines its several dimensions in isolation. The picture of representation that results is not so much incorrect as incomplete. This research tests an integrated model of representation linking formal, descriptive, substantive, and symbolic representation. Data on the representation of women in 31 democracies confirms the interconnections among the several dimensions of representation. The structure of electoral systems exerts powerful influences on both women's descriptive representation and symbolic representation. Descriptive representation, in turn, increases legislatures' responsiveness to women's policy concerns and enhances perceptions of legitimacy. The effects of substantive representation, however, are much less than theory anticipates.

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Popular trust in political institutions is vital to democracy, but in post-Communist countries, popular distrust for institutions is widespread, and prospects for generating increased political trust are uncertain given disagreements over its origins. Cultural theories emphasizing exogenous determinants of trust compete with institutional theories emphasizing endogenous influences, and both can be further differentiated into micro and macro variants. Competing hypotheses drawn from these theories are tested using data from 10 post-Communist countries in Eastern and Central Europe and the former Soviet Union. Aggregate data on economic and political performance are combined with survey data on interpersonal and political trust, political socialization experiences, and individual evaluations of national performance. Results strongly support the superiority of institutional explanations of the origins of political trust, especially micro-level explanations, while providing little support for either micro-cultural or macro-cultural explanations. This encourages cautious optimism about the potential for nurturing popular trust in new democratic institutions.

Although normative questions about the role of the Supreme Court as a countermajoritarian institution have long excited controversy in democratic theory, empirical questions about how far the Court acts contrary to majoritarian opinion have received less attention. Time series analyses for the period 1956–89 indicate the existence of a reciprocal and positive relationship between long-term trends in aggregate public opinion and the Court's collective decisions. The Court's ideological composition changes in response to previous shifts in the partisan and ideological orientation of the president and Congress. The Court also responds to public opinion at the margins even in the absence of membership change. Since 1981, the relationship has vanished or turned negative in direction. The Court's ideological balance has been upset by an unbroken string of conservative-to-moderate appointments, thereby undermining the dynamics that promote judicial responsiveness and raising questions about the majoritarianism of the contemporary and future Court.

When the Soviet Union collapsed, most Russians had lived their entire lives in a quintessentially authoritarian culture. Having been socialized in this environment, how could citizens acquire the attitudes and behaviors necessary to support a new, more pluralistic regime? Cultural theories of political learning emphasize the primacy of childhood socialization and hold that altering initial attitudes is a decades-long process that depends on generational replacement. Institutional theories emphasize adult relearning in response to changing circumstances regardless of socialization. Lifetime learning integrates the competing perspectives. Multilevel models using New Russia Barometer data from 1992 to 2005 confirm the persistence of some generational differences in Russian political attitudes but demonstrate even larger effects resulting from adult relearning. Lifetime learning provides the most comprehensive account and suggests that Russians would quickly acquire the attitudes and behaviors appropriate to democracy-if Russian elites supply more authentic democratic institutions.H ow can citizens, socialized by authoritarian regimes in quintessentially authoritarian cultures, learn the attitudes and behaviors necessary to become loyal and effective citizens of new democratic regimes? The rapid emergence of democracies in much of postcommunist Europe has revived interest in processes of political learning and relearning. It also has rekindled debate about the strength and durability of generational differences in political socialization, the adaptability of adults to political change, and the length of time necessary for significant change to occur.Two theories dominate: cultural theories of learning emphasize the importance of early life socialization. the participants in the ECPR workshop, and the several anonymous reviewers for this journal. 1 We use the term "cultural theories" throughout to refer to a variety of loosely related, theoretical constructs that seek to explain political institutions and behavior in terms of the shared customs, values, and beliefs of a social group. While generalizing for simplicity's sake, we recognize that there are important differences among different conceptions of culture. More traditional cultural theorists (for example, Eckstein 1988; White 1979) advance a deeper, more fundamental, holistic and viscous conception of culture. More contemporary conceptions of political culture (such as Gibson, Duch, and Tedin 1992;Gibson 1996;Miller, Miller, and Reisinger 1994) adopt a much thinner, more individualist, micro-oriented, and malleable conception of culture that is largely synonymous with public opinion (see Mishler and Pollack 2003, for a fuller discussion). Our discussion of cultural theory draws primarily on the deeper, more traditional conception of culture since this is the one emphasized in most research on Russia and other authoritarian societies. Our treatment of cultural theories is, thus, consistent with Eckstein's (1988, 789) claim that "Political culture theory may pl...