The Transition to Democracy in Central Europe: A Comparative View

The collapse of Communist regimes in Eastern Europe has also caused the collapse of old-fashioned studies of Communist systems that subscribed to a simple notion of totalitarian uniformity, or a static belief in the continuance of self-equilibrating cycles within socialist states. To understand what is happening in Central and Eastern Europe today we need to be discriminating in a choice of paradigms. European conceptions of democracy as having a socio-economic as well as political dimension are more relevant than formalist American definitions. Moreover, Europe, in the form of the European Community, is also a much more immediate influence than the United States upon what is happening in Central or Eastern Europe. The transition to democracy in Southern Europe provides encouraging models for ex-Soviet satellites. The failure of Latin American countries to democratize provides warnings, such as the risk that Presidential government can produce dictatorship or instability, a risk that is present in new democracies in Europe too.