Framing Democracy: Civil Society and Civic Movements in Eastern Europe

At the close of the 20th century, democracy appeared to have overcome the Cold War partition of the world, as countries across the globe had deposed autocratic regimes and held free elections. Nowhere were these developments dramatized more brightly than in Eastern Europe in 1989, as newly formed civic movements replaced long-standing Leninist regimes with democratic governments. Yet it is clear that the waves of democracy that initially seemed similar have led to widely varying outcomes. This title offers a critique and reformulation of existing theories of democratization, as well as of earlier understandings of the fall of communism. By contrasting the negotiated pact in Poland with the collapse in Czechoslovakia, it provides a theoretical framework to explain how different paths of democratization affected the prospects for sustainable democracy. The book also emphasizes the transformation of networks associated with the birth of a democratic nation, and analyses how paths of change structured political competition in new democracies in both the short and the medium term.