DEMSTAR is a 5 year research program focusing on the role of the state and state administrations in countries undergoing rapid institutional change. The program is based on the belief that state and administrative capacities are important for economic and political development. While building on broader theoretical and comparative perspectives, the empirical focus is on the post-communist countries and on Africa. Both regions epitomize most of the issues, problems, and challenges also faced by other developing and by developed societies.

DEMSTAR conducts research on five topics in order to elucidate the role of the state and of administrative capacities in changing societies:

• Theories and concepts of state capacity, in particular the relationship between the capacity of administrative and legal systems and economic and political development;
  
  
• Comparative institutional analyses of state capacity focusing on the workings of central governments and state-society relations;
  
  
• Focused comparisons of policy processes in Central and Eastern Europe and the CIS countries: privatization of telecommunications, land privatization, and nationality and minority policies.
  
  
• Studies of the character and effect of legal reforms. Conceptualising legal culture and its impact on state capacity, administrative reform and democratization in post-communist countries.

   

• Case studies of individual countries focusing on ideographic factors that determine policy outcomes.
  
   
• Comparative analyses of public sector reforms in post communist countries
  

DEMSTAR was launched by the Danish Social Science Research Council under its priority area 'Democracy, Institutional Change and Political Regimes'. Research activities were initiated in the spring of 2000 and will run until 2005.The program is based at the Department of Political Science, University of Aarhus, Denmark.