Actors and Institutions

Abstract

Having assessed the standard of the institutional means of democratisation, the second dimension that needs to be considered is how important actors relate to the institutions. The actors are as vital as the institutions, given that democracy is about collective action and that institutions do not emerge and change by themselves. What the actors do is of course conditioned by the institutions as well as the relations of power. However, before we can turn to the analysis of the dynamics of democratic politics (in chapter 5), this chapter will focus on the identification of the actors and how they relate to the institutions, whereas the following (chapter 4) will discuss the actors’ capacity in the context of the relations of power.