South Korea (Korea hereafter) and Taiwan are widely recognized as the two most successful third-wave democracies in Asia (Chu, Diamond, and Shin, 2001; Diamond and Plattner, 1998; Shin and Lee, 2003). For more than a decade, these two new democracies have regularly held free and competitive elections at all levels of their respective governments. Both nationally and locally, citizens choose the heads of the executive branches and the members of the legislatures thorough regularly scheduled electoral contests. Unlike many countries in the region, moreover, the two countries have peacefully transferred power to opposition parties, the Millennium Democratic Party in Korea and the Democratic Progressive Party in Taiwan. Accordingly, there is little doubt that the political regimes of Korea and Taiwan fully meet the democratic principle of popular sovereignty featuring free and fair elections, universal adult suffrage, and multiparty competition. Nonetheless, little is known about how well their current regimes meet other important principles of liberal democracy and uphold its basic values such as freedom, equality, and justice.

While the Third Wave of Democracy swept through many African countries in the 1990s, South Africa and Ghana stand out as two of the continent’s real success stories politically. Beginning in the late 1980s, South Africa’s leaders successfully steered the country out of the shadow of apparently irreconcilable conflict and unavoidable racial or ethnic civil war to create a common nation. Since 1994, they have negotiated two democratic constitutions, and held four successful nation-wide elections for national and local government. South Africa’s Constitution has become the darling of liberals and social democrats the world over because of its inclusion of an extensive set of political and socio- economic rights.ii Starting in 1993, Ghana has enjoyed ten years of democratic, constitutional rule, holding three successful multi-party elections (with the third producing a peaceful electoral turnover).

Equality points to one of the critical dimensions along which the quality of democracy varies. 1 What is at stake is political equality, not equality in everything human beings have reason to value, nor equality in the most important structures of social inequality – in class, status, and power. However, political equality is intertwined with, and profoundly shaped by these structures. Political equality is affected by social and economic inequality in two broad ways: dominant groups can use their social and economic power resources more or less directly in the political sphere, and they can shape the views, values, and preferences of subordinate groups by virtue of their status and their influence on education, cultural production, and mass communication, exerting “cultural hegemony”. Political equality will be extremely limited unless these effects of social and economic equality are substantially contained.

In his organizing essay, Leonardo Morlino (2003) offers a minimal definition of democracy, based on multiple information sources and the competitive election of those who dominate the policymaking process. He then suggests five dimensions of “quality” on which working democracies might vary. One of these dimensions is “the responsiveness or correspondence of the political decisions to the desires of the citizens (3).” He suggests that this dimension is closely connected to accountability, but evaluates more substantively how government policies correspond to citizen’s demands. While some democratic theorists have defined democracy itself in terms of such responsiveness, I shall follow Morlino’s general suggestion that we think of it is a desirable quality of performance, rather than as part of the definition of democracy. This approach is also in line with Dahl’s suggestion that citizens inducing the government to do what they want is a justification for democracy, not a definition of it (1989, 95).

There is a reading of democracy in both these countries that is not optimistic. In a recent assessment of the nature of Brazil's democratic regime, Kurt Weyland characterized Brazil's democracy as "low quality." He bases this characterization on Brazil's gross level of inequality and the incapacity of Brazilian civil society effectively to demand that government redress inequality. He goes on to argue that it is precisely because Brazil's democracy is of "low quality" that it can survive so well.

This paper will assess the "quality of democracy" in India and Bangladesh. This paper we will argue that the democratic successes and failures are in large measure a function of the socio-political milieu within which the democratic transitions took place in both states. It will also argue that despite a range of striking shortcomings India has made significant progress in a number of arenas toward enhancing the quality of democracy. Bangladesh, on the other hand, has failed to make similar progress. Instead there is much evidence that suggests that the quality of democracy in Bangladesh is actually regressing.

For much of the past decade I have been engaged in assessing the level or quality of democracy in a number of countries, both for the UK Democratic Audit and for the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance (IDEA) in Stockholm. As a culmination of this work so far I and colleagues have published a handbook on democracy assessment (Beetham et al., 2002a), a comparative summary of eight assessments from developed and developing countries and our latest democratic audit of the UK, updated to include the Iraq war and its consequences.

When is a democracy perfect? Even if we subscribe to the minimalist definition ofdemocracy, or to a more demanding one, the answer remains difficult. We usually struggle to control difficulties by assigning the dimension of time to this definition: this is the notion ofconsolidation. The notion of quality is even more evasive, and inseparable from a comparative touch: if, as many utopists dreamed, the world would be united in only one political unit, wherepolitical office would be accessed via some form of competition, the meaning of quality would become impossible to grasp. And when is a democratic society perfect? Spooling the democraticpolicies of the most advanced democracies of our time the temptation is to answer that perfection of a democratic society is attained when equal opportunity becomes truly the rule of the game,not only in national politics, but also in every sector of life. Of course, nobody has reached this ideal yet. However, we do tend to consider some democratic societies better than others, thoughhere again the opinions are divided. Are post-material societies, as Ronald Inglehart calls them, or feminine societies, as they are labeled by Geert Hofstede, better than the average Westerndemocracy as we know it, and do these differences reveal something on their nature as democracies, or rather on their nature as societies? Again the answer is elusive: post-materialsocieties are wonderful if a country is already developed and soft power is great, as long as nobody wages war on one’s country.

Twice in the winter of 1999-2000, citizens of the Russian Federation flocked to their neighborhood voting stations and scratched their ballots in an atmosphere of uncertainty, rancor, and fear. This book is a tale of these two elections - one for the 450-seat Duma, the other for President.

Despite financial crisis, a national security emergency in Chechnya, and cabinet instability, Russian voters unexpectedly supported the status quo. The elected lawmakers prepared to cooperate with the executive branch, a gift that had eluded President Boris Yeltsin since he imposed a post-Soviet constitution by referendum in 1993. When Yeltsin retired six months in advance of schedule, the presidential mantle went to Vladimir Putin - a career KGB officer who fused new and old ways of doing politics. Putin was easily elected President in his own right.

This book demonstrates key trends in an extinct superpower, a troubled country in whose stability, modernization, and openness to the international community the West still has a huge stake.

Brookings Institution Press

Russia, once seen as America's greatest adversary, is now viewed by the United States as a potential partner. This book traces the evolution of American foreign policy toward the Soviet Union, and later Russia, during the tumultuous and uncertain period following the end of the cold war. It examines how American policymakers -- particularly in the executive branch -- coped with the opportunities and challenges presented by the new Russia.

Drawing on extensive interviews with senior U.S. and Russian officials, the authors explain George H. W. Bush's response to the dramatic coup of August 1991 and the Soviet breakup several months later, examine Bill Clinton's efforts to assist Russia's transformation and integration, and analyze George W. Bush's policy toward Russia as September 11 and the war in Iraq transformed international politics. Throughout, the book focuses on the benefits and perils of America's efforts to promote democracy and markets in Russia as well as reorient Russia from security threat to security ally.

Understanding how three U.S. administrations dealt with these critical policy questions is vital in assessing not only America's Russia policy, but also efforts that might help to transform and integrate other former adversaries in the future.

James M. Goldgeier is professor of political science and international affairs at George Washington University. He is also a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.

Michael McFaul is a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment, the Peter and Helen Bing senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, and an associate professor of political science at Stanford University.