Richard I. Hofferbert

Democracy and Its Discontents in Post-Wall Germany

This article traces the political behavior intentions of “satisfied democrats,”“dissatisfied democrats,” and “non-democrats” in West and East Germany. Dissatisfaction is most commonly expressed in support for the loyal opposition, with some minor tilt toward parties of the ends of the spectrum. Non-democrats, a very small percentage of the populace, more commonly express their disapproval through withdrawal rather than through active extremism. Based on a 1997 general population survey, the analysis reveals some differences in the magnitude of western versus eastern conceptions of the elements that make up “democracy.” But most of those differences get channeled into seemingly benign forms of political participation. The core of the findings is that dissatisfaction with democracy may well be a healthy stimulant rather than a threat to the vitality of either established or emerging democracies.

Social Science Archives and Confidentiality.

ances. Legally, regarding privileged communication, social scientists occupy a status more akin to journalists than to physicians, attorneys, or religious counsellors. That is, the right and obligation to protect sources is legally ambiguous (Carroll and Knerr, 1975). But the political and ethical necessity is nonetheless a matter of importance to the scholarly community. Storage and dissemination of social data in machine-readable form does not affect the ethical or moral nature of that obligation. But such storage and dissemination does raise technical and policy considerations not customarily of concern, for example, to the physician or journalist. The obligation to honor assurances of confidentiality-both as a matter of self-interest among social scientists and as a matter of ethical

THE APPLICATION OF GENERAL SYSTEMS METHODOLOGY TO THE COMPARATIVE STUDY OF PUBLIC POLICY

Abstract The authors have three purposes in this article:—To review and critique the field of comparative policy output research, as an example of applied systems analysis; —To identify gaps in knowledge and understanding which could be foreshortened by modest conceptual and methodological adjustments suggested by general systerrts analysis; and, —To propose specific conceptual and methodological techniques to that end. Two major steps are identified as required to enable comparative policy analysis to take advantage of general systems methodology:—Adoption of various analytical tactics employing a cross-time/cross-jurisdictional (“pooled”) data matrix; and, —Methodological developments that transform the dominant form of analysis from concern with fixed independent and dependent variables to the analysis of time-relevant relationships.