Organizing Democracy in Eastern Germany: Interest Groups in Post-Communist Society. By Stephen Padgett. Cambridge, UK and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000. 200p. $57.95 cloth, $21.95 paper
In: American political science review, Band 95, Heft 2, S. 505-506
ISSN: 1537-5943
Stephen Padgett is highly regarded for his scholarship on
parties and other aspects of politics in the Federal Republic
of Germany. In the present work he focuses on the "hesitant"
emergence of associational activity in the postcommunist
societies of eastern and central Europe, with particular
emphasis on economic interest groups in eastern Germany.
His tightly written book seeks to document and, above all,
explain this state of affairs. The retarded growth of interest
groups in the region is an important and relatively neglected
topic, at both the theoretical and empirical levels aimed for
here. It is also a development that has run counter to the
once widely expected emergence of a vigorous pluralist civil
society that would accompany the region's transition to
market economics and democratic politics.