9311403 Cohn This project will examine how the changing legal cultures may affect new democracies and other systems that are either in transition or authoritarian. This transnational study will compare orientations toward law and normative ordering in three new democracies in Eastern Central Europe (Hungary, Poland and Bulgaria) to those in more established democracies (Spain, France and the United States). This research represents the first phase of a project which will measure citizen rights consciousness, and attitudes toward procedural justice and rights and duties in these six countries. During this first phase, the investigator, working with U.S. collaborators and collaborators in various countries in Eastern Europe, will develop a survey questionnaire to measure attitudes towards law and normative ordering across the six countries. The questionnaire will be pretested in the U.S. and the five foreign countries and surveys conducted in two U.S. cities. Findings from this preliminary work will be analyzed and used to develop a larger study in the five foreign countries. %%% This research will increase knowledge about orientations toward law and normative ordering in countries which are in different stages of democratization. It will also contribute to our understanding of how to successfully conduct cross-cultural surveys. ***
