What has Eastern Europe taught us about the Democratization literature (and vice versa)?

Abstract

The relationship between Eastern Europe and democratisation studies so far has been highly asymmetric. In contrast to the vast contribution, both in data and theory, of Eastern Europe to the democratisation literature, the latter has been of only modest use to the understanding of the democratisation processes in post-communist Europe. Despite the growing number of empirically grounded assessments, most notably of degrees of democratic consolidation within East-Central Europe, there is still very little agreement on what exactly is democratic transition and consolidation or on what explains the seemingly widening gap between East-Central Europe on the one hand and the Balkans and post-Soviet republics on the other hand. We believe that at least part of the answer lies in two underdeveloped topics of the democratisation literature: state and nation-building (the 'third' transition) and the international dimension. Moreover, to uncover the answers democratisation studies would greatly profit from expanding its disciplinary and geographical constraints, i.e., by integrating research from, most notably, nationalism studies, international relations as well as democratisation studies of the 'first wave'.

Community Engagement: Participation on Whose Terms?

“…In the advanced industrial societies, a more 'society-centred' rethinking of social democracy emerged in the late 1980s, together with so-called 'Third Way' approaches to government-society relations and greater openness to market choices in services (Giddens 1998). In Eastern Europe a major stimulus has been the debate over the institutional and cultural requirements for effective transition to democratic regimes and efficient market economies following the collapse of former communist regimes (King 2000;Kopecky and Mudde 2000), and consideration of the specific conditions on which new member-states would be admitted to an expanded European Union. Even before the fall of communism, some researchers discerned a trend towards the rediscovery and revitalisation of civil society (Keane 1988a(Keane , 1988b, participation and partnerships.…”

Democratization through the looking-glass

“…Rather, much of the debate has moved on to issues of consolidation, although difficulties have been encountered even there in identifying what it means and how it might be empirically assessed -and in many cases the problem has just not been fully confronted at all. Both and Kopecký and Mudde (2000) emphasize the critical failure to distinguish between the sustainability of democracy and its quality in any particular case. One of the earliest major studies argued that democracies needed five 'interacting arenas' in place which had to be mutually reinforcing for consolidation to exist (Linz and Stepan 1996: 7).…”

The EU's Transformative Power

“…For example, scholars working on democratisation have tended to assume that the EU vigorously encouraged democratisation by pressing the CEE countries into implementing democratic human rights regimes and open political systems (e.g. Linz andStepan 1996, Kopecký andMudde 2000). However, this book suggests that although the EU had enormous potential influence, scholars should not prejudge the extent to which the EU actually shaped governance overall.…”