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  • Note from the Chair
  • Harold James

The editorial committee would like to report on some institutional changes that will accompany the transition to the new system of electronic and on-line processing of manuscripts. The committee will be reduced in size, with editors serving three-year terms and then rotating off, so that others can serve. In addition, editorial tasks have been restructured so that members of the committee will be able to follow individual articles from submission through external review and evaluation, initial committee decisions, revisions, and final decisions with greater attention. We expect the speed of the review process to improve as a consequence of these institutional and organizational changes.

The articles in this issue are concerned with aspects of institutional change and innovation and, in particular, with the relationship between democracy and varying forms of authoritarianism and between democracy and its social foundations in well-being and in trust. Azar Gat revisits the literature on democratic peace and finds that peaceful behavior is associated not simply with democratization but also with other features of modernization, above all increased living standards. The consumer society that follows from these changes places a greater premium on the avoidance of hardship, but also of pain and death, and makes for a lower social proclivity for military mobilization. Bo Rothstein and Eric M. Uslaner examine how trust is undermined by high levels of inequality and how a move to egalitarianism can be seen as promoting higher levels of trust. Henry E. Hale is less confident about the momentum of favorable changes and evolves an explanation of postcommunist and postauthoritarian development that is cyclical rather than linear, to account for the rise of new types of authoritarian regime. Edward L. Gibson looks at democratization, using comparative material from Latin America, to show how nation-level democratization is accompanied by a new authoritarianism on a regional or provincial level. Elliot Posner's examination of institutional innovation in the European Union moves away from national players and instead focuses on supranational bureaucratic processes.

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