In light of the sudden collape of communist systems in Eastern Europe in 1989-90, this book attempts to explain their democratization from a variety of theoretical perspectives.

This book is an attempt to tackle the problem of democratization in East-Central Europe from a variety of theoretical perspectives. Its contributors look at the process of change within a comparative framework, discussing the emergence of multi-party and new electoral systems, comparing democratic transition in other parts of the world with that of Eastern Europe and analysing that region's relationship with the Soviet Union. Democratization in Eastern Europe will be indespensable to upper-level students of East European Politics, and will also be useful for those with more comparative and theoretical interests.

This is the first comprehensive study of the transition to democracy in Eastern Europe which includes the processes in party-formation, political culture-building, institution-building and economic transformation, and to differentiate between areas and countries. East and southeastern Europe are included as well as the Republics of the former Soviet Union. The theories of transformation to democracy developed in former transitions, such as 1919, 1945 and the 1970s are tested in the case of Eastern Europe. In many areas the picture developed by the author is not very optimistic. He feels that 'Anocracy', a mixture between democracy and authoritarian regimes, is likely to develop in many countries.

What is the relationship between democracy and political culture in countries undergoing major systemic change? Have subjective political orientations of citizens been important in shaping the development of democracy in central and eastern Europe after the fall of communism? These core questions are tackled by an impressive range of twenty political scientists, sixteen of which are based in the central and eastern European countries covered in this essential new book. Their analyses draw on a unique set of data collected and processed by the contributors to this volume within the framework of the World Values Survey project. This data enables these authors to establish similarities and differences in support of democracy between a large number of countries with different cultural and structural conditions as well as historical legacies. The macro-level findings of the book tend to support the proposition that support of democracy declines the further east one goes. In contrast, micro-level relationships have been found to be astonishingly similar. For example, support of democracy is always positively related to higher levels of education – no matter where an individual citizen happens to live. This new book builds a clear understanding of what makes democracies strong and resistant to autocratic temptation.

The revolutions of 1989 swept away Eastern Europe's communist governments and created expectations on the part of many observers that post-communist media would lead the liberated societies in establishing and embracing democratic political cultures. Peter Gross finds that it was utopian to hold such expectations of the media in societies in transition. On the one hand, those countries' media professionals had all learned their jobs under the communist regimes and could not instantly transform themselves into guides for a politically enabled populace, Gross argues. On the other hand, newcomers to the media world, even those who were notable literary figures, viewed themselves as social and political leaders rather than mere informers and facilitators of the resocialization required to form new democracies. The news media have remained highly politicized and partisan. So how are the media, civil society, and political culture related in societies in transition? And can changes in these relationships be anticipated? To address these questions, Entangled Evolutions examines media in post-1989 Eastern Europe. It studies the effects of privatization of the media, journalists' relations to political figures, institutional structures such as media laws, professional journalistic culture, and the media's relation to their market. Sources include interviews with journalists and politicians, sociological and political data from national surveys, and media audience studies.

This second volume in a series of books on democratic consolidation in Eastern Europe analyzes the external parameters of such a consolidation in thirteen Eastern European countries. It explores how different international actors and various economic, cultural, and security types of transnational pressures have shaped democratic politics in the region, especially over the last decade.