Post-Communist Democratization: Democratic Politics as the Art of the Impossible?

In: The review of politics, Band 71, Heft 2, S. 303-317

Abstract

Post-Communist democratization continues to generate high levels of interest and scholarly debate. The dominant rubrics for the study of post-Communist transformation since the early 1990s have been provided by "democratic transition" and "democratic consolidation" theories and concepts which were mainly developed in endeavors to analyze and explain very different experiences in the Western hemisphere during the 1970s and 1980s. Indeed, "the end of communist rule was unthinkingly (but almost universally) identified with the phase of democratic transition," and "transition and consolidation have been the main concepts around which the discussion of democratization has revolved." The books reviewed here offer stimulating changes of approach and challenge widespread "West-centric" assumptions about democracy and democratization.