Y a-t-il démocratie sans participation ?

Whilst a net tendency towards lower electoral participation can be observed in all European countries, a very visible difference exists between the West and the East. In the new democracies, those discovering multi party elections after nearly fifty years of sole communist party rule, the decline observed in electoral participation is more important than that observed in Western democracies; moreover, the decline is even more decisive during the twenty years that followed the fall of the Berlin wall in spite of, certainly, some important differences between the countries of the region. This article attempts to establish why commitment to participating in political life and in elections, both essential characteristics of the democratic regime, is in such evident decline in the new PECO democracies whilst being less important in the older democracies. The particular reasons concerning the region studied are linked to its recent communist histoire, to the post-communist transition processes and to its interaction with more recent phenomena inseparable from the globalization process