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The idealistic rationale of European enlargement has a deeply practical side to it. When the European Community took in Greece, Spain, & Portugal in the early 1980s, the principal objective was to shore up the democracies that had emerged after the collapse of more authoritarian regimes. A similar objective lies behind the present enlargement. Specifically, the European Union's expansion to the East & South is an attempt at risk management: the major economic transformations underway in Eastern Europe have unleashed forces that -- while not unfamiliar in most advanced industrial societies -- could topple fledgling democracies. This challenge is different from that confronted in the case of Greece, Spain, & Portugal, not only because of the greater disparities in economic capacity between the candidate countries & existing member states, but also given the difficulty of stabilizing political regimes through the process of developing market economies. Adapted from the source document.