Democracy in the Post-Communist World: An Unending Quest?

The views presented here are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official position of the Club of Madrid.

See also David Cameron , “The Quality of Democracy in Postcommunist Europe” (Paper presented at the 101st annual meeting of the American Political Science Association, Washington, D.C., August 2005).]

See also Guillermo O'Donnell , “Delegative Democracy,” in Larry Diamond and Marc Plattner , eds., Global Resurgence of Democracy (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1995), 94-108; Steven Levitsky and Lucan A. Way, “The Rise of Competitive Authoritarianism,” Journal of Democracy 13:2(2002): 51-65; and Wolfgang Merkel, “Embedded and Defective Democracies,” Democratization 11:5(2004): 33-58.

See for example Juan J. Linz and Alfred Stepan , Problems of Democratic Transition and Consolidation: Southern Europe, South Africa, and Post-Communist Europe (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996); Valerie Bunce, “The Political Economy of Postsocialism,” Slavic Review 58:4(1999): 756-93; Valerie Bunce, “Rethinking Recent Democratization: Lessons from the Postcommunist Experience,” World Politics 55:2(2003): 167-92; Milada Anna Vachudova and Timothy Snyder, “Are Transitions Transitory? Two Types of Political Change in Eastern Europe since 1989,” East European Politics and Societies 11:1(1997): 1-35; Joel Hellman, “Winners Take All: The Politics of Partial Reform in Postcommunist Transitions,” World Politics 50:2(1998): 203-34; M. Steven Fish, “The Determinants of Economic Reform in Post-Communist World,” East European Politics and Societies 12:1(1998): 1-35; David Stark and Laszlo Bruszt, Postsocialist Pathways: Transforming Politics and Property in East Central Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998); Herbert Kitschelt et al., Post-Communist Party Systems (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999); Bela Greskovits, “Rival Views of Postcommunist Market Society,” in Michal Dobry, ed., Democratic and Capitalist Transitions in Eastern Europe: Lessons for the Social Sciences (Amsterdam: Kluwer, 2002), 19-49; Michael McFaul, “The Fourth Wave of Democracy and Dictatorship: Noncooperative Transitions in the Postcommunist World” World Politics 54:2(2002): 212-44; Grzegorz Ekiert and Stephen E. Hanson, eds., Capitalism and Democracy in Central and Eastern Europe: Assessing the Legacy of Communist Rule (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003); Leszek Balcerowicz, “Understanding Postcommunist Transitions,” in Larry Diamond and Marc Plattner, eds., Economic Reform and Democracy (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995), 86-100; Anders Aslund, Building Capitalism: The Transformation of the Former Soviet Bloc (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002); Jan Svejnar, “Transition Economies: Performance and Challenges,” Journal of Economic Perspectives 16:1(2002): 3-28; Nauro Campos and Fabrizio Coricelli, “Growth in Transition: What We Know, What We Don't and What We Should,” Journal of Economic Literature 40:3(2002): 793-836; and Grigore Pop-Eleches, Crisis Politics: IMF Programs in Latin America and Eastern Europe (Manuscript, 2007).

See Richard D. Anderson Jr. et al., Postcommunism and the Theory of Democracy(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001).

See also Stephen Holmes , “Cultural Legacies or State Collapse? Probing the Postcommunist Dilemma,” in Michael Mandelbaum , ed., Postcommunism: Four Perspectives (New York: Council on Foreign Relations, 1996). See also M. Steven Fish, Democracy Derailed in Russia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005); and Anna Grzymala-Busse and Pauline Jones Luong, “Reconceptualizing the State: Lessons from Post-Communism,” Politics and Society 30:4(2002): 529-54.

See, for example, Milada Anna Vachudova , Europe Divided: Democracy, Leverage, and Integration after Communism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005); Anna Grzymala-Busse, “Authoritarian Determinants of Democratic Party Competition: The Communist Successor Parties in East Central Europe,” Party Politics 12:3(2006): 415-37; Conor O'Dwyer, “Runaway State Building: How Political Parties Shape States in Postcommunist Europe,” World Politics 56:4(2004): 520-53; Anna Grzymala-Busse, “Political Competition and the Politicization of the State in East Central Europe,” Comparative Political Studies 36:10(2003): 1123-1147; Timothy Frye, “The Perils of Polarization: Economic Performance in the Postcommunist World,” World Politics 54:3(2002): 308-37; Mitchell Orenstein, Out of the Red: Building Capitalism and Democracy in Postcommunist Europe (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2001); and Hellman, “Winners Take All.”

Grzegorz Ekiert and Jan Kubik , Rebellious Civil Society: Popular Protest and Democratic Consolidation in Poland, 1989-1993 (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1999).

Leslie Armijo , Thomas Biersteker , and Abraham Lowenthal , “The Problems of Simultaneous Transitions,” Journal of Democracy 5 (October 1994): 161-175.

Hellman , “Winners Take All.” See also Stephen E. Hanson, “Analyzing Postcommunist Economic Change: A Review Essay,” East European Politics and Societies 12:1(1998): 145-70; Hilary Appel, A New Capitalist Order: Privatization & Ideology in Russia and Eastern Europe(Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2005); John Gould, “Out of the Blue? Democracy and Privatization in Post-Communist Europe,” Comparative European Politics 1:3(2004): 277-311; and David Woodruff, Money Unmade: Barter and the Fate of Russian Capitalism(Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1999).

Vachudova , Europe Undivided. See also Heather Grabbe, The EU's Transformative Power: Europeanization through Conditionality in Central and Eastern Europe (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006); Rachel Epstein, Embedding Liberalism: International Institutions and the Transformation of Postcommunist Europe (Manuscript, 2008); Judith Kelley, Ethnic Politics in Europe: The Power of Norms and Incentives (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004); Wade Jacoby, The Enlargement of the European Union and NATO: Ordering from the Menu in Central Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004); Frank Schimmelfennig and Ulrich Sedelmeier, eds., The Europeanization of Central and Eastern Europe (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2005); Liliana Andonova, Transnational Politics of the Environment: The EU and Environmental Policy in Central and Eastern Europe (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2003); Beate Sissenich, Building States without Society: The Transfer of EU Social Policy to Poland and Hungary (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2007); and Jan Zielonka, Europe as Empire: The Nature of the Enlarged European Union (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006). On the role of international factors, see Jan Zielonka and Alex Pravda, eds., Democratic Consolidation in Eastern Europe, vol. 2, International and Transnational Factors (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001); Geoffrey Pridham, Designing Democracy: EU Enlargement and Regime Change in Postcommunist Europe (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005); and Jan Kubik and Grzegorz Ekiert, “Civil Society and Democratization in Poland: Forms of Organization and Types of Foreign Assistance,” in Gerhard Mangott, Harald Waldrauch, and Stephen Day, eds., Democratic Consolidation: the International Dimension: Hungary, Poland, and Spain (Baden-Baden, Germany: Nomos, 2000), 257-92.