Political protest is seemingly a ubiquitous aspect of politics in advanced industrial societies, and its use may be spreading to less developed nations as well. Our research tests several rival theories of protest activity for citizens across an exceptionally wide range of polities. With data from the 1999–2002 wave of the World Values Survey, we demonstrate that the macro-level context – levels of economic and political development – significantly influences the amount of popular protest. Furthermore, a multi-level model examines how national context interacts with the micro-level predictors of protest activity. The findings indicate that contemporary protest is expanding not because of increasing dissatisfaction with government, but because economic and political development provide the resources for those who have political demands.

Drawing on recent insights in the nationalism and citizenship regime literatures, this article develops a macrotheoretical framework for understanding cross-national variations in tolerance of ethnic minorities. Specifically, it tests the hypothesis that the degree to which the dominant ethnic tradition or culture is institutionalized in the laws and policies of a nation-state affects citizen tolerance of ethnic minorities. Employing a multilevel regression model, it systematically tests the framework, as well as competing individual and country-level explanations, for all member states of the European Union in 1997. Results confirm a strong relationship between the laws governing the acquisition and expression of citizenship, that is, citizenship regime type, and individual tolerance judgments. Moreover, citizenship regime type has a strong mediating effect on three individual-level variables previously shown to predict tolerance: ingroup national identity, political ideology, and satisfaction with democracy.

Party identification, the psychological bond between citizens and a political party, is one of the central variables in understanding political behavior. This article argues that such party ties are also a measure of party system institutionalization from the standpoint of the public. We apply Converse’s model of partisan learning to 36 nations surveyed as part of the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems. We find that electoral experience and parental socialization are strong sources of partisanship, but the third-wave democracies also display evidence of latent socialization carried over from the old regime. The results suggest that party identities can develop in new democracies if the party system creates the conditions to develop these bonds.

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This study examines a long-standing concern in democratic theory: the relationship between polity size and democratic participation. Size is thought to have a direct effect on the individual's proclivity to take part in collective action, as well as indirect effects through increased bureaucratic complexity and group heterogeneity – two factors often related to group size. The study operates at two levels. At the nation-state level, it examines the relationship between size and party membership rates in 27 representative democracies. It then extends the analysis to the party organization level, examining the effect of party size on members' activism in 29 parties across 5 advanced industrial democracies. The results show that increasing size strongly diminishes participation at both levels.