caa a22 4500 388107014 CHVBK 20180307125341.0 cr unu---uuuuu 161130e199903 xx s 000 0 eng 10.1017/S0008423900010118 doi S0008423900010118 pii (NATIONALLICENCE)cambridge-10.1017/S0008423900010118 Siaroff Alan University of Lethbridge Democratic Breakdown and Democratic Stability: A Comparison of Interwar Estonia and Finland [Elektronische Daten] [Alan Siaroff] Two of the new states of interwar Europe were Estonia and Finland. Both arose out of the Russian Empire and both were literate, Protestant nations. Yet democracy broke down in Estonia but survived in Finland. These outcomes would seem ironic, given that Finnish independence involved a brutal civil war and Finland was linguistically divided—factors not present in Estonia. This study, however, examines not just the nature of independence but also the constitutional structures, party politics and regime crises of these two neighbouring cases. In terms of the factors commonly cited as favouring stable democracy, the Estonian-Finnish contrast shows the particular explanatory importance of political culture, the speed of democratization, the views of elites and the nature of the party system. What happened in Finland also implies that a presidential, or at least a balanced semipresidential, system cannot be considered as inherently dangerous for democratic stability. Copyright © Canadian Political Science Association (l'Association canadienne de science politique) and/et la Société québécoise de science politique 1999 Canadian Journal of Political Science Cambridge University Press 32/1(1999-03), 103-124 0008-4239 32:1<103 1999 32 CJP https://doi.org/10.1017/S0008423900010118 text/html Onlinezugriff via DOI 1 research-article jats NATIONALLICENCE 856 40 https://doi.org/10.1017/S0008423900010118 text/html Onlinezugriff via DOI NATIONALLICENCE 100 1- Siaroff Alan University of Lethbridge NATIONALLICENCE 773 0- Canadian Journal of Political Science Cambridge University Press 32/1(1999-03), 103-124 0008-4239 32:1<103 1999 32 CJP CC0 http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0 nationallicence BK010053 XK010053 XK010000 NATIONALLICENCE NATIONALLICENCE NL-cambridge