This study deals with the quality of democracy, and its purpose is to examine which factors affect the varying levels of the quality of democracy in the stable democracies in the world. The research question posited in the study is: what explains the varying levels of the quality of democracy in the democratic countries in the world, and do political institutions matter? Theoretically, the quality of democracy is distinguished from other similar concepts employed in comparative politics, and what the quality of democracy stands for is clarified. The quality of democracy is defined in this study as: the level of legitimacy in a democratic system with respect to democratic norms such as political participation, political competition, political equality, and rule of law. In total, four dimensions of the quality of democracy are included that are considered to be very important dimensions of the quality of democracy. These dimensions are political participation, political competition, political equality, and the rule of law. To explain the variation in the quality of democracy, an explanatory model has been developed. The explanatory model consists of five different groups of independent variables: political institutional variables, socioeconomic variables, cultural variables, historical variables, and physical variables. Methodologically, a large-n, outcome-centric research design is employed and statistical analysis is used to examine what effect the five groups of independent variables have on the four dimensions of the quality of democracy. Empirically, the results show that cultural variables and political institutional variables outperform socioeconomic, historical, and physical variables in relation to their effect on the quality of democracy. Consequently, cultural and political institutional variables are the two most important groups of variables when explaining the variation in the quality of democracy in the democratic countries in the world. In relation to the other groups of variables, historical variables are slightly more important than socioeconomic variables when explaining the variation in the quality of democracy. The physical variables constitute the group of variables that has the least importance out of the five groups of variables when explaining the variation in the quality of democracy. In summary, the findings from the study show that the best way of increasing the level of the quality of democracy may be to choose political institutions such as parliamentarism as the executive power system and a proportional system as the electoral system. To put this clearly, to increase the possibility of democratic countries achieving a high level of the quality of democracy they should avoid majority electoral systems and presidential or semipresidential executive systems.

O presente trabalho traz um estudo sobre um tema importante para a qualidade da democracia, especialmente para novas democracias, como são o Brasil e a Argentina. Referimo-nos à participação política não eleitoral, materializada em abaixo-assinados, manifestações, greves, boicotes e atividade partidária. Distintas teorias buscam entender os determinantes que levam os indivíduos a se envolverem nesses modos de participação, dentre os quais destacamos as características individuais, a cultura política, a experiência com o sistema político e a racionalidade da ação. Diante disso, nosso objetivo é investigar a dinâmica da participação política desses países nos últimos vinte anos, visando explicar como se relacionam fatores sociodemográficos, políticos, econômicos e de cultura política com as diferentes modalidades de participação, assumindo-se que qualquer mudança que mexa nesse conjunto de fatores, junto com o funcionamento efetivo da democracia, afeta também as percepções e comportamentos dos indivíduos, fornecendo as bases para uma reaproximação dos cidadãos com o sistema politico e tornando-os mais críticos acerca do que demandam da democracia. Para isso, no primeiro capítulo revisamos o debate teórico a respeito dos condicionantes da participação, lançando mão das abordagens clássicas da cultura política e daquelas que defendem uma mudança rumo a sociedades pós-materialistas, críticas e comprometidas politicamente; das perspectivas que focam nos fatores político-institucionais; das abordagens que levam em conta os recursos para participar; e da teoria da escolha racional. Reconhecendo a necessidade de se considerar a realidade das sociedades onde a participação política ocorre, no segundo capítulo identificamos características da cultura política local e as principais mudanças estruturais ocorridas. Utilizando dados produzidos pelo projeto World Values Survey, no terceiro capítulo analisamos empiricamente por meio de regressão logística como um conjunto de fatores afeta a participação em 1991, 2006 e 2013. Sem encontrar diferenças significativas entre Argentina e Brasil, destacamos quatro pontos principais. Verificou-se a importância da educação, o interesse político e o pós-materialismo em todos os tipos de participação, o que apresenta um cenário promissor uma vez que ambos os países tendem cada vez mais à universalização da educação, fator desencadeante de um círculo virtuoso. Ainda, apesar do aumento das capacidades e a diminuição dos custos para participar, ao olhar para as motivações confirmamos a necessidade de se considerar as expectativas quanto ao funcionamento institucional, que encorajam ou desestimulam o comportamento, sendo que o bom desempenho da democracia aumenta as chances de o indivíduo participar. Terceiro, à exceção da atividade partidária, são os jovens nascidos em democracia que participam mais, e apesar de existirem várias particularidades que não se encaixam nos modelos teóricos tradicionais, confirma-se uma mudança na cultura política que traz boas notícias para a qualidade da democracia. Finalmente, a despeito de a educação, o interesse e as preferências ideológicas especialmente de esquerda afetarem positivamente todas as modalidades de participação, verificamos que há diferenças entre elas, sendo que os abaixo-assinados e as manifestações foram as melhor explicadas pelos nossos modelos, sugerindo que nos outros tipos pesaram mais os fatores contextuais. / This paper presents a study of an important issue for the quality of democracy, especially for new democracies, as are Brazil and Argentina. We refer to the non-electoral political participation, through petitions, demonstrations, strikes, boycotts and partisan activity. Different theories seek to understand the determinants that lead individuals to engage in these forms of participation, among which we highlight the individual characteristics, the political culture, the experience with the political system and the rationality of action. Therefore, our aim is to investigate the dynamics of the political participation of these countries in the last twenty years, trying to explain how socio-demographic, political, economic and of political culture factors relate with the different forms of participation, on the assumption that any changes that modifies this set of factors, along with the effective functioning of democracy also affects the perceptions and behaviors of individuals, providing the basis for a rapprochement between citizens and the political system and making them more critical about what they expect from democracy. In order to do that, in the first chapter we reviewed the theoretical debate about the conditions of participation, making use of traditional approaches to political culture and those who advocate a shift towards post-materialist, critical and politically committed societies; perspectives that focus on political and institutional factors; approaches that take into account the resources to participate; and the theory of rational choice. Acknowledging the need to consider the reality of societies where political participation takes place, in the second chapter we identify some local political culture characteristics and the major structural changes. Using data gathered by the World Values Survey project, in the third chapter we analyze empirically - through logistic regression - how a set of factors affects participation in 1991, 2006 and 2013. Without finding significant differences between Argentina and Brazil, we highlight four main points. We confirm the importance of education, political interest and post-materialism in all kinds of participation, which provides a promising scenario since both countries increasingly tend to universalize education, trigger of a virtuous circle. Still, despite the increased capacities and lower costs for participating, looking at the motivations we confirm the need to consider the expectations regarding the institutional functioning that encourage or discourage the behavior, and it is the good performance of democracy that increases the chances of the individual to participate. Third, except for partisan activity are young people born in democracy that participate more, and although there are several characteristics that do not fit the traditional theoretical models, we confirm a change in the political culture that brings good news for the quality of democracy. Finally, regardless of education, interests and ideological preferences - especially the left side - positively affect all modes of participation, we find that there are differences between them, and the petitions and demonstrations were best explained by our models, suggesting that in other types of participation contextual factors weighed more.

O tema desta dissertação é o patrimonialismo como um estilo político ainda atuante nos dias de hoje. Sob o ponto de vista da cultura política, o patrimonialismo pode ser entendido como um tipo de comportamento que deriva de crenças e valores tradicionais cultivados na história brasileira. Além da sua sobrevivência por meio da cultura, é argumentado que a ideologia do Estado autoritário também seja um meio sustentador e disseminador do fenômeno. O estilo político patrimonialista é caracterizado pelo poder arbitrário legitimado por uma tradição em tratar a coisa pública como privada. Sustenta e é sustentado pela cooptação política e pelas relações clientelistas e assimétricas entre os atores políticos. Esse comportamento antirrepublicano e antidemocrático é composto por uma lógica corrupta em sua essência podendo ser um estimulador da desmobilização social (que culmina na baixa participação política) e da reduzida qualidade democrática em nosso país. O objetivo é apontar alguns vínculos teóricos entre patrimonialismo, cultura política, ideologia do Estado autoritário, participação política e qualidade democrática. / The theme of this dissertation is the patrimonialism as a current political style. According to the theory of political culture, patrimonialism can be understood as a type of behavior that derives from traditional beliefs and values maintained alive during Brazilian history. Besides its survival through culture, it is argumented that the ideology of the authoritarian State is another way of sustaining and disseminating the behavior. The patrimonialist political style is characterized by the arbitrary power legitimated by a tradition used to treat the public as a private matter. It sustains and is sustained by political co-option and by client-based and asymmetric political relationships. This anti republican and antidemocratic behavior carries within a corrupt logic that can stimulate social demobilization (which results in low political participation) and the reduced democratic quality of Brazil. The objective is to point a few theoretical ties between patrimonialism, political culture, ideology of the authoritarian State, political participation and the quality of democracy.

The aim of this thesis is to numerically evaluate democratic consolidation in Eastern European countries of the former Eastern Bloc. To compare these countries with each other and decide which of these countries can be considered as consolidated democracies. Secondary aim is to find which factors supported this consolidation or at least correlate with it. Theoretical basis of this work is Wolfgang Merkel's theory of democratic consolidation. He divides democratic consolidation into four levels: constitutional consolidation, representative consolidation, behavioral consolidation and democratic consolidation of the political culture. Each level of democratic consolidation is numerically expressed, with usage of Bertelsmann's transformation index data, separately for all states in two-year intervals since 2005 to 2015. Based on that, overall democratic consolidation is calculated. Therefore, we can compare countries between each other and in time. Correlation between factors supporting consolidation and overall democratic consolidation is expressed by Pearson correlation coefficient. This work is beneficial in creating and describing method, which can be used for numerical expression of democratic consolidation in any state since 2005 to 2015 without author's subjective influence. Another benefit is...