Newsletter - Sozialwissenschaften in Osteuropa 1999-4
WESTEUROPA
Consolidating Russian Democracy? The third-round
elections
The election of the Russian Duma in December, 1999 and the scheduled election
of a President in summer 2000 is intended to consolidate the country's
post-Soviet system of government. But will Russia consolidate a democracy in the
West European sense or will Russia in 2001 still have serious deficiencies in
the rule of law, accountability, institutions of civil society and a market
economy? This ESRC-funded research project (www.russia-votes.org) will first
determine the extent to which Russians find their government a rule of law
democracy in the everyday delivery of services and how shortcomings in
performance affect attitudes and behaviour. Secondly, it will ascertain the
extent to which the electorate gives the winners a clear or a confused mandate
to act or avoid action. Thirdly, the research will determine the extent to which
dissatisfaction with the Yeltsin government has undermined support for the
existing Russian regime. Insofar as there are demands for change, are they for
strengthening democratic institutions of for undemocratic alternatives? Evidence
will come from two ESRC-funded nation-wide surveys of the Russian electorate
following the December 1999 Duma vote, and the year 2000 presidential election,
and previous Russian surveys and cross-national comparisons with 10 countries
now negotiating EU membership.
Project runs from August 1999 - January 2002.
Contact: Prof. Richard Rose
Centre for the Study of Public Policy
University of Strathclyde
Tel.: +44 1415483217
Internet: http://www.cspp.strath.ac.uk
Stocktaking of Comparative Databases in Survey Research
The project "Stocktaking of Comparative Databases in Survey
Research" is part of the EUREPORTING. EUREPORTING is a European-wide
project with the long-term objective to create a science-based European System
of Social Reporting and Welfare Measurement. It is financed by the European
Commission in the framework of the TSER-Programme for a three years period
starting in March 1998. The EUREPORTING-project is carried through in
collaboration with researchers from 13 European countries. For more information,
please see here.
The main goal of the subproject "Stocktaking of Comparative Databases
in Survey Research" directed by Prof. Dr. Rudolf Richter, Paul
Lazarsfeld-Society for Social Research (PLG) and University of Vienna, Institute
for Sociology, Vienna is to develop and establish a DYNAMIC INFORMATION CENTRE,
which is providing policy makers on the one hand and the scientific community on
the other hand with a retrievable data-base of survey data and survey questions
about social reporting and social welfare. This DYNAMIC INFORMATION CENTRE will
be established in close cooperation with the Austria Data Archive WISDOM on the
one hand and both other subgroups in order to ensure a common standard in
hardware and software and serve as a new online information system to make
social welfare and social reporting survey information accessible to
policymakers, enterprises and scientists. The main goal of that subproject is to
foster and document the measurement of social reporting in a cross-national and
comparative manner. Stocktaking of existing data bases includes information on
the content of and access to existing data in a multi-national, comparative
manner. But even more important is new work to strengthen the comparability of
existing data. So the emphasis on research in this subproject is the
international comparability of surveys in general and survey questions and
variables in particular. That subproject is concentrating upon cross-sectional
survey data and is not including panel data, which are taken care of by another
subproject of the EUREPORTING. In order to enhance the quality of available data
various processes have to be launched. Among those are conversion studies which
are needed to make existing variables and questions, that are assessed with
different scales, at all comparable. Validation studies are necessary to make
sure that a specific question measures the same concept in all European
countries under investigation.
The Researcher Dr. Ch. Haerpfer is the principal investigator of this
subproject. There are 6 other scholars involved in the research of this
subproject: Louis Chauvel (OFCE), Wolfgang Schulz (Vienna University), Richard
Rose (University Strathclyde), Karl Müller (IHS), Ruut Veenhoven (Erasmus
University), Jiri Vecernik (Academy of Sciences Czech Republic).
As an associated partner to the subproject, the Czech Academy of Sciences
(Dr. J. Vecernik) will contribute by documenting the survey data on social
reporting in the Czech Republic. The first task of the Czech partner is to find
and describe systematically cross-sectional national sample surveys, which were
conducted in the Czech Republic between 1990 and 1997 and cover the field of
social reporting. Those surveys are then documented in a source book in strict
comparison with the source books of this subproject. These Czech data on social
reporting are then integrated in the DYNAMIC INFORMATION CENTRE of the Paul
Lazarsfeld Society of Social Research, thus being available on the Internet at
the end of the project. The second task is to compare the Czech surveys from a
methodological perspective with surveys in other post communist countries,
especially in Poland and Hungary, in order to assess the homogeneity or
heterogeneity of social reporting survey data in the post communist buffer zone
of the three countries Czech Republic, Poland and Hungary, which are most likely
to join the European Union in the first wave of enlargement of the EU.
Source: http://mailbox.univie.ac.at/~haerpfc9/
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Ausgabe 1999-4: