Consolidated democracies involve structured linkages between citizens and political decision making elites that are typically organized via political parties. Given the economic and institutional instability and uncertainty in post‐communist emerging democracies, it has often been maintained that a structuring of party systems in such countries is slow to emerge. This paper demonstrates with data from a 1991 pre‐election study in Bulgaria that significant aspects of political structuring may in fact appear in post‐communist polities quite early. The structuring is based on citizens' individual resources which they expect to convert into economic benefits in the economic market economy, their market location in occupational terms, their general ideological dispositions, and their evaluation of the economic performance of the incumbent governments. While the structuring of party systems may still be weaker than in Western Europe, the Bulgarian evidence casts doubt on the tabula rasa hypothesis in the study of post‐communist politics. Of course, further comparative analysis of post‐communist democracies is required to buttress our conclusions.

The role played by Soviet ideology during the perestroika reforms has not been fully analyzed because ideology has not been seen as a structural force influencing Soviet political life. This paper charts the effect that this neglect of ideology has had on some explanations of perestroika and seeks to redress the balance. Various ways of dealing with ideology during perestroika are examined and an alternative approach to Soviet ideology (viewing it as a discourse) is developed. This approach to Soviet ideology shows that it was a vital, but unstable, element of the Communist Party's power. The approach is then applied to the Gorbachev reforms to show how ideology played a crucial part in breaking up the power of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) from 1985 onwards.

The Vlaams Blok, a ‘new’ extreme right‐wing party, grew substantially during the 1980s in the Flemish part of Belgium. Two alternative hypotheses about the motivation and attitudes of voters for extreme right‐wing parties are examined. Is the voters’ choice for such a political party inspired by substantive considerations about the programme of the party (the ‘rational choice’ model), or is right‐wing voting mainly an expression of protest? The Flemish part of the Voters’ Study relating to the 1991 General Election contains useful data for answering these questions. The likelihood of voting for the Vlaams Blok, as a function of thirteen relevant attitudinal variables, is analysed by means of logistic regression. Voting for the Vlaams Blok is determined by a negative attitude towards immigrants. Nationalist attitudes and feelings of social isolation seem to have a partial and moderate additional impact. In addition, there is some evidence that a vote for the Vlaams Blok should also be seen as a protest vote by some of the voters.

The so‐called ‘third wave’ of right‐wing extremism has taken both society and social science by storm. In contrast to the many studies that look for possible explanations for the success of this ‘wave’, this article focusses on right‐wing extremism itself. In the first part, the concept is defined on the basis of the existing literature, as a political ideology that consists of a combination of several features. In the second part, these features are first conceptualized and second used in a comparative analysis of the ideologies of three alleged right‐wing extremist parties (the Dutch CP'86, the German NPD and the Austrian NDP). This analysis shows a more differentiated picture of the ideology of this ‘party family’, and is a warning against too careless generalisations.

Scholars and policy makers have traditionally assumed that nations face a tradeoff between income equality and economic efficiency. Greater equality is believed to reduce investment and dampen work incentives. A heterodox view suggests that a more egalitarian distribution of income may have beneficial efficiency effects by augmenting consumer demand and/or encouraging workers to cooperate in upgrading competitiveness. This paper offers an empirical assessment of the relationship between equality and efficiency, based on cross‐sectional data from 17 advanced industrialized economies over the period 1974–90. The comparative evidence indicates no adverse impact of greater equality on investment or work effort, nor on growth of productivity or output, trade balances, inflation, or unemployment. On the contrary, higher levels of equality are associated with stronger productivity growth and trade performance, and possibly with higher investment and lower inflation.

Even though voting is not compulsory, Malta has the highest turnout of all democratic nations. This study examines characteristics of the Maltese electorate, the country's governmental institutions and electoral system, and the nature of its politics to identify the most powerful factors (or combination of factors) responsible for the high voter turnout. Among these are: (1) intense and pervasive partisanship; (2) concentration of political power in a single elective institution; (3) highly competitive elections resulting in one‐party governments despite P.R.; (4) maximization of the impact of a single ballot because the number of votes a candidate needs to be elected is very low and because the voter's lower‐order preferences count under STV, and (5) unusually intense campaigning by individual candidates because they compete against other candidates of the same party, and by parties because the electorate is polarized, which leaves few uncommitted voters while rendering voter conversion unlikely, thus making mobilization of all existing supporters vital to electoral success.