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The contribution starts out from the question whether the political legitimacy of the Third Wave democracies has suffered in the wake of the Great Recession. The expectation of a damaging effect of an economic or political crisis on legitimacy is based on Lipset’s assumption that established democracies with a high degree of political legitimacy are better capable of coping with such crises than young democracies. The database includes two surveys of members of parliament conducted in 2007 and 2013 in Sweden, Germany and five Third Wave democracies located in different world regions (Chile, South Korea, Poland, South Africa and Turkey). Waves 5 and 6 of the World Values Survey that were conducted at about the same time were used for comparing the legitimacy beliefs among MPs and citizens. The data show that the scores for all indicators of political legitimacy are higher among MPs than among citizens and that the differences between the two groups of respondents are considerably larger in the five young democracies. Confidence in political parties is fairly low, especially among citizens, while the evaluation of the quality of democracy in the respondents’ country is much higher. Both evaluations have been rather stable over time. In the two established democracies, support for democracy among citizens is nearly as high as among MPs. In the five young democracies, the MP-citizen differential is larger and support for democracy in the population shows a steady increase only in Chile, while it has remained low in Poland and Turkey and even decreased in Korea and South Africa. This indicates that democracy has not taken deep roots in four of the five new democracies included in the study. In Korea and South Africa, the decline in support for democracy started already before the onset of the economic crisis and therefore cannot be attributed to the recession. This is confirmed by the lack of a statistical relationship between political legitimacy on one side and economic evaluations on the other side. A multiple regression analysis shows strong country-specific effects, while individual-level variables have only minor effects.

The threats, the potential enemies, the risks and, consequently, the strategies used in each context to face them have all changed. The comparison by countries between futures civil and military elite shows us the palpable differences that exist among both worlds in these questions. Broadly speaking, a very intense inclination among the university students toward the human security could be detected while the cadets are more inclined toward the hard security. Undoubtedly, such a redefinition and adaptation of military missions to the new demands of a globalised world will eventually take precedence.

The global society, today, is under serious stress. Among other things, this stress follows from a continuous breakdown of the rules of the game whereby one or two super‐powers have been trying to maintain their hegemony in different parts of the world. As a result, expenditure on armaments and means of human destruction has been mounting. It is estimated that the expenditure on the military in 1978 was 412 billion US dollars. Since then it has accelerated much faster. There is now such a large stockpile of destructive atomic weapons that it can destroy industrial civilisation — the creator of this stockpile — in a matter of hours.

Critiques of elites define populism, which conceives of power relations as a unified, conspiring elite exploiting the good people. Yet, populism itself is inherently elitist, calling for a strong leader to take power and channel the will of the people. Elite theory, surprisingly overlooked in scholarship on populism, can clarify this apparent paradox and elucidate the dimensions of populism and its risk of authoritarianism in new ways. In contrast to populist ideological conceptions of power relations in society, elite theory points to the possibility that several elites with diverging voices and interests exist. Furthermore, elite theorists argue that such elite pluralism is a necessary component of a well-functioning democracy. Much scholarship on populism, often aiming to understand its causes and focussing on Western Europe and North America, points to the similarities of populist movements. The focus on similarities strengthens the understanding of populism as a uniform phenomenon and populist elite critiques as homogeneous. However, broader comparative studies show that different populist movements target a range of various elite groups. Indeed, the empirical reality of populist elite critiques targeting diverse elite groups is more in line with elite theory than populist ideological conceptions of power relations in society. A key to grasping the democratic challenges posed by the power relations between elites and masses in both populist critiques and populist solutions is an understanding of the institutional conditions for elite integration versus elite pluralism. This central discussion in both classical and modern elite theory is applied to analyse populism in this contribution.

Does civic participation, especially in the arts, increase democracy? This chapter extends this neo-Tocquevillian question in three ways. First, to capture broader political and economic transformations, we consider different types of participation; results change by separate participation arenas. Some are declining, but a dramatic finding is the rise of arts and culture. Second, to assess impacts of participation, we include multiple dimensions of democratic politics, including distinct norms of citizenship and their associated political repertoires. Third, by analyzing global International Social Survey Program and World Values Survey data, we identify dramatic subcultural differences: the Tocquevillian model is positive, negative, or zero in seven different subcultures and contexts that we explicate, from class politics and clientelism to Protestant and Orthodox Christian civilizational traditions.

The purpose of this paper is to map, characterize and conceptualize the press discourse of NGO–school interactions within public education in Israel and in England.

The study is based on a corpus of articles published in key elite and popular daily newspapers in Israel and in England. The data were analyzed through two complementary methodologies, framing analysis (FA) and critical discourse analysis (CDA).

Significant differences were observed in the way the topic is framed in the articles, in particular between the different types of newspapers. The elite newspapers (Ha’aretz and The Guardian) tended to frame the events in a thematic manner even when they contained episodic discussions, while the popular newspapers (Yedioth Aharonoth and The Times) tended to cover the events episodically with no thematic coverage whatsoever. CDA of news items identified two major themes: financial issues, and problematization vs normalization discourse. Consistent with the FA, CDA revealed differences in the approaches advocated by popular and elite news outlets in covering news concerning NGO–school relations in each of the examined countries.

It is shown how popular newspapers offer the masses that depend on it a narrow and inferior coverage, of the problematic relations formed between NGOs and schools. A discussion of possible implications of the findings is presented, in light of the growing prominence of external entities in public education.

The world of military uniforms has always attracted attention by the rest of society. The film and literary image of the military in the history lays stress on power, honour, discipline, privileges, high social position of warriors and also dependence of the social welfare on military power and military campaigns. Those images impose to our minds that the military was an important institution and also that it was something really special. How does the society see the military today? And how does the military regard itself and its functions? Since the development of military sociology in the middle of the 20th century, there have been two opposing views on civil-military relations: one that strictly differentiates the military and society and the other that seeks the similarities between them. The recent military-sociological debate in the United States has also been devoted to the issue of the relationship between the military and its parent society. The experts found important differences between the US military and US society (including cultural ones) and some are very concerned about a growing gap between them. The classical antagonism between Huntington's uniqueness of the military and Janowitz's convergence of the military and civil society is renewed in debates about a so-called civil-military gap (e.g., Ricks, 1997; Holsti, 1998; Cohn, 1999; Snider, 1999; Hillen, 1999; Feaver, Kohn, & Cohn, 2001).

Around 2006, dissensus became predominant in the Hungarian elite concerning internal affairs. Regarding evaluations of the European integration, however, there were no considerable differences between elite groups at that time. The Hungarian political elite supported the integration process and trusted in EU institutions. The present chapter addresses the issue to what extent the elite attitudes regarding European integration prevailed following the economic crisis of 2008. After a brief overview of the Hungarian context, the authors discuss political elites’ (national MPs’) trust in supranational institutions in 2007 and 2014 in the European countries. Our analyses find that the Hungarian political elite became one of the most sceptical elites towards the EU.

Next, the supranational trust of political elite and other (economic, administrative and media) elite groups within Hungary is compared. Results reveal that among Hungarian elite segments there is a hidden tension: political elites are critical towards the EU, while economic and media elites are not.

Finally, turning to the international stage again, the elite–population opinion gap is investigated. It is usually the case that elites are more pro-European than the public. Recently, however, in some respects the Hungarian political elite has shown less trust in EU institutions than the population.

This study aims to explore the higher education expansion phenomenon and to what extent that expansion could reshape the pattern of gender.

We selected Taiwan's higher education as a research target. First, we describe the gender diversity patterns in the humanity, social science and STEM programs according to Trow's definition. Second, we identify discrepancies in gender in the major programs according to different indices. Becker’s D, Blau index, GPI, trend analysis and multiple comparisons were used to transform the comparison series data.

First, to assess system-wide gender diversity, it was shown that in the elite stage, the D is more sensitive than the Blau index in plotting trends. Second, neither the D nor the Blau index showed sensitivity in humanity and social science programs in the post-mass stage. Third, the GPI more accurately detects differences in gender patterns in the mass and universal stages.

This study illuminates gender diversity patterns with indices transformation in higher education. Considering higher education expansion is a global phenomenon, the fitted indices can be used to detect gender diversity issues in wider higher education settings.

This study provides an example for addressing the issue using different indices to identify previous and future trends in the higher education system. The study suggests alternative interpretations for gender diversity in various programs that will assist in modifying related gender policies in higher education.