The reconstitution of civil society in the postcommunist world is misunderstood. Commonly diagnosed as weak and ineffective, really existing civil societies vary widely across the region. They differ from each other along several dimensions: constitution of public space, organizational composition, patterns of behavior, and normative orientations. Such differences result from dissimilar legacies of communism, diverging patterns of transformation, and different regime types. In Central Europe civil societies are generally as developed as in some countries of the West. In Central Asia incipient civic organizations are constrained in a manner resembling the pre-1989 Eastern Europe. In other parts of the former communist world, associational life has intensified despite many obstacles, but civil societies are politically impotent.

During the last two decades, scholars from a variety of disciplines have argued that civil society is structurally deficient in postcommunist countries. Yet why have the seemingly strong, active and mobilised civic movements of the transition period become so weak after democracy was established? And why have there been diverging political trajectories across the postcommunist space if civil society structures were universally weak? This article uses a new, broader range of data to show that civil societies in Central and Eastern European countries are not as feeble as commonly assumed. Many postcommunist countries possess vigorous public spheres and active civil society organisations strongly connected to transnational civic networks able to shape domestic policies. In a series of time‐series cross‐section models, the article shows that broader measures of civic and social institutions are able to predict the diverging transition paths among postcommunist regimes, and in particular the growing gap between democratic East Central Europe and the increasingly authoritarian post‐Soviet space.

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The article reconstructs and explains the patterns of collective protest in four Central European countries: former East Germany, Hungary, Poland, and Slovakia during the early phases of democratic consolidation (1989–93). The method of event analysis of protest behavior is employed. Content analysis of six major newspapers in each country provides empirical evidence. The examination of data reveals striking contrasts in the magnitude and forms of protests. In each country the policies of the new democratic regimes were contested by different groups and organizations, employing different repertoires of contention. The authors consider propositions derived from four theoretical traditions—relative deprivation, instrumental institutionalism, historical- cultural institutionalism, and resource mobilization theory—to determine which provides the best explanation for the patterns observed in the data set. Three main conclusions are reached. First, the levels of "objective" or "subjective" deprivation are unrelated to the magnitude and various features of protest, which are best explained by a combination of institutional and resource mobilization theories. Second, democratic consolidation is not necessarily threatened by a high magnitude of protest, since the two seem to be unrelated. Third, if the demands of collective protest are moderate and the methods routinized, then protest may contribute to the robustness of a new democracy.

This article explores various dimensions of the issue of transition to democracy in East Central Europe, focusing on the question of how past experiences shape the process of political change and on the limits of democratization in the region. The first part reviews scholarly debates on the relationship between the political crisis and processes of democratization in the region, arguing that new analytical categories are needed to account for different dimensions of the current transition process. The second part proposes a new framework for analysing changing relations between the party–state and society across time and in different state-socialist societies. The third part examines some recent political developments in countries of the region in order to identify those factors that may contribute to or impede a possibility of the transition to democracy in these countries. It concludes that in all East Central European countries the rapid collapse of party–states and the multidimensional social, political and economic crisis has initiated a parallel process of diminution of power of both the state and civil society, which may significantly endanger the transition to a democratic political order.