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\"This book offers a fascinating, thought-provoking and ground-breaking study of post-communist political life. It is published just as the countries of Central and Eastern Europe mark 30 years since gaining freedom and have embarked on the path of democracy. This book is one of the first full-length academic works to explore the question of how informal structures, headed by bosses, godfathers and oligarchs, affect formal party politics and democracy. The unique post-communist transition is observed as a specific historical moment of disorder, offering a window of opportunity for the large-scale exploitation of public resources in the sense of a kind of \"Klondike Gold Rush.\" Phenomena of corruption, clientelism, patronage, party capture and state capture are topical themes that are deeply explored. This text will be of key interest to scholars and students of Central and Eastern European politics, democratisation, transitional societies, clientelism, party systems and more broadly of comparative and European politics\"-- Provided by publisher.

This book examines in depth the impact of the EU on aspects of the quality of democracy in eight selected post-communist countries. Considering both the political and legal aspects of the dynamics among institutions and focussing on inter-institutional accountability, the book analyses how constitutional designs have been effectively implemented to achieve this, and to what extent this was the result of EU action. In order to make a comparative assessment of the EU on democracies, the book features detailed case studies according to their different status vis-à-vis the EU, including older new member states: Poland and Hungary; newer new member states: Romania and Bulgaria; potential candidates: Albania and Serbia; and neighbour and remote neighbour states: Ukraine and Armenia. Each chapter addresses a range of dimensions and most relevant domains of inter-institutional accountability, that is: executive-legislative relationships; constitutional justice; decentralisation and regionalism; and the role of ombudsman or other relevant authorities. Seeking to assess how important the role of the EU has been in influencing the modes and characteristic of democracies and fundamental rights established in these regions, this book will be of interest to students and scholars of comparative politics, EU politics, Post-communist studies and democratization studies. Leonardo Morlino is Professor of Political Science at the Istituto di Scienze Umane, Florence, Italy and President of the　International Political Science Association (IPSA). Wojciech Sadurski is Challis professor of Jurisprudence in the University of Sydney, Australia. 1. Introduction Leonardo Morlino and Wojciech Sadurski Part 1: \"Old-new\" Member States 2. Poland: EU Driven Democracy? Adam Bodnar 3. Hungary: High Hopes Revisited Renata Uitz Part 2: \"New-new\" Member States 4. Romania: A Personalistic Approach to Accountability Alina Stanciulescu 5. Bulgaria: Discontents and Frustrations of a Newly-Consolidated Democracy Daniel Smilov Part 3: Potential Candidate and Neighbour Countries 6. Serbia in Search of Stability and Accountability Cristina Dallara and Irena Marceta 7. Albania and its Struggle to Consolidate Democracy Darinka Piqani 8. Ukraine: A Constitutional Design Between Façade Democracy and Effective Transformation? Oleksandr Serdiuk and Roman Petrov 9. Armenia: Constitutional Design, Accountability and European Integration Armen Mazmanyan 10. Conclusions Leonardo Morlino and Wojciech Sadurski. Bibliography

Finding the Right Place on the Map is an international comparison of the media systems and democratic performance of the media in post-communist countries. From a comparative east-west perspective, this groundbreaking volume analyzes issues of commercial media, social exclusion, and consumer capitalism. With topics ranging from the civil society approach, public service broadcasting, fandom, and the representation of poverty, each chapter considers a different aspect of the trends and problems surrounding the international media. This volume is an up-to-date overview of what media transformation has meant for post-communist countries in the past two decades.   

The concept of social capital has been used by political scientists to explain both the transition to democracy in Eastern Europe and the decline of social cohesion in Western societies. This edited collection presents the latest quantitative research on how post-communist countries are adapting to Western models of society. The book combines theoretical and institutional analysis with detailed case-studies looking at Russia, Poland, Bulgaria, Lithuania, Romania and the former East Germany. Gabriel Badescu is Associate Professor of Political Science at the Babes-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca, Romania. Eric M. Uslaner is Professor of Government and Political at the University of Maryland, College Park.

In the years after the breakthrough events of 1989, the concept of Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) came to be widely used as a synonym for the group of ten countries from the former Eastern Bloc aspiring to EU membership. This book is an attempt to demonstrate and assess the changes resulting from the EU enlargements of 2004 and 2007 and European integration processes, identifying both the similarities and the differences in the countries of the region.This volume is addressed to those interested in Central and Eastern Europe. It has two main aims: first, to present the recent alterations in the region resulting from the processes of European integration; second, to offer an account of the process of Europeanisation in the countries occurring after accession to the EU that goes beyond just conditionality mechanisms. The collection also attempts to reflect on and contribute to the discussion on how the changes taking place in CEE influence theorisation on Europeanisation - a concept initially constructed in order to tackle the changes taking place in response to the processes of European integration in the old member states. The book is divided into four parts, each concentrating on an area where the changes seem to be most profound and most interesting from the point of view of theorising on the impact of the European integration processes: democratic consolidation in the region, collective identity construction, functioning of civil society and studies on foreign policy and international relations.

This book provides a thorough introduction to East Central Europe and its renewed emergence since the momentous changes in the former Soviet bloc. By carefully differentiating between Central Europe, East Central Europe and the Balkans, (ac)Attila Agh shows how the term `Eastern Europe′ was a political misnomer of the Cold War. Drawing on theories of democratization to develop a common conceptual and theoretical framework, this textbook is the first to place the political and social changes of this complex region in a genuinely comparative perspective.

Since 1995, Freedom House's Nations in Transit series has monitored the status of democratic change from Central Europe to Eurasia, pinpointing the region's greatest reform opportunities and challenges for the benefit of policymakers, researchers, journalists, and democracy advocates alike.

Informal relations have been one of the major research topics of the social sciences since the 1990s. In order to allow for meaningful comparisons between different combinations of the positive and negative effects of informal relations on democratic representation, this book focuses on post-socialist Central and Eastern Europe as a particular region where formal democratic rules have been established, but competing informal rules are still strong. A broad spectrum of related analytical concepts is discussed from different perspectives and from different academic disciplines, then empirical cases of the relationship between informal relations and democratic representation are analyzed. The contributions span the whole continuum, as we perceive it, from civil society networks seen as supporting democratic representation to the perversion of democratic representation through political corruption. The final part of the book takes a closer look at corruption through four case studies from Russia.

This volume elaborates on a number of issues that seem particular important for the people in Central and Eastern Europe: the development and working of democracy, the public support for, legitimacy and efficacy of democracy and the free market economy, and of course the stability of the newly established political culture.