INTRODUCTION

Today, after more than two decades of democratization and economic liberalization in postsocialist Eastern Europe, one wonders at the extreme variation of its outcomes. Eastern European postsocialist pathways have led to results as different as democratic stability and economic development, on the one hand, and authoritarianism and economic backwardness, on the other; North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and European Union (EU) membership coupled with vicious ethnic conflicts; and vibrant societies alongside painfully slow national revival. Research related to Eastern European democratization has developed along two divergent lines, one holding a mainly inward outlook, the other predominantly outward. Some of the most prominent theorists have attempted to explain Eastern European democratization by applying theories built to explain the Latin American transformations of the late 1970s and 1980s. Existing theories were well positioned for studying democratization, since its third wave originated in Latin America; adding Eastern European cases would give scholarly efforts a comparative advantage (Bunce 2003). As a consequence, work conducted during the early and mid-1990s was an extension of models built to explain the Latin American and South Asian experiences. The latter claimed universality by discounting the contextual background of the political transformation process and perceiving democratization theories as applicable to any world region. Therefore, explanatory models related to Eastern European democratization mimicked the dominant characteristic of 1980s democratization literature: an ahistorical approach to transition and democratization (Lijphart and Waisman 1996; Haggard and Kaufman 1995; Karl and Schmitter 1991; Przeworski 1991; Di Palma 1990).

An alternative approach, however, emerged around the second half of the 1990s, and represents the current dominant trend among those studying Eastern European democratization. The contributors to this literature try to explain the processes that occur under specific historical conditions and find among those conditions potential explanatory variables. Efforts to expand the explanatory power of democratization theories have led some authors to highlight the similarities in the postsocialist world rooted in the peculiarities of communism. These peculiarities represent factors that set democratization in former communist countries apart from democratization in other world regions. For other authors, any comparison of nation building in 22 European postsocialist countries to other cases of the third wave of democratization would be inappropriate. Arguably, the most useful comparisons are those within the universe of the 27 postcommunist and post-Soviet countries, which share basic characteristics but differ in important political details (Bunce 2000a). Differences among Eastern European countries (EECs) and former Soviet Union sub-regions, as well as among individual countries, explain various postsocialist pathways, as they can show whether or not a socialist past helps produce a consensus about the political and economic successor regimes to state socialism.

The historical background of the region demands that we define peculiarities of postsocialist democratization. Elster, Offe and Preuss (1998, 1) categorize these conditions as (1) the material legacies, constraints and sets of habits and cognitive frames inherited from past socialist regimes; (2) a turbulent configuration of new actors and new opportunities for action; and (3) the foreseeable newly consolidated institutional order under which agency is institutionalized, as well as the measure of sustainability (or consolidation) of those agency-shaping institutions. Since the authors are able to distinguish these phenomena in a time axis, their suggestions can offer an accurate explanation of what is happening and expected to happen in Eastern Europe and its sub-regions as it undergoes reformation. Moreover, those authors have set a baseline for studying institutional reforms in the region. First, they employ the tabula rasa notion to describe the institutional and authoritative vacuum that succeeded what they call the communist abdication of power (see also Laar 2002). Second, in the case of weak institutions, agency chaos and chaotic gravity centers, deceptive and inapplicable Western models, rather than autochthonous preparatory work performed by the opposition upon the old regime, often dominated the public scene. Third, the tabula rasa notion applies to authority alone, not to power; and lack of agency refers to the lack of effective institutional and legal parameters, not to the individual actors along with the material resources attached to them, their formal and informal ties to other agents, political memories, habits, frames, feelings of guilt and pride, loyalties and hostilities and fears and hopes (Elster, Offe and Preuss 1998).

Rupnik (2002, 2000, 1999) suggests several factors that affect the pace of democratization in former communist countries in Eastern Europe: the nature of the old communist regime and the depth of its imprint on society; market and civil society, specifically the willingness of countries to embark upon radical economic reforms rather than postponing market reforms and privatization whilesimultaneously supporting the development of civil society; a tradition of the rule of law and the Habsburg factor, i.e. the influence of the Habsburg administrative and institutional political culture; nation-state building and an obsession with societal homogeneity, i.e. difficulties that democracy faces from deeply entrenched fears that democratization might endanger national sovereignty; the cultural argument that connects democratization with religion; and the presence of an international environment that favors democratization.

However, even though Rupnik's model encompasses most of the key variables that would explain differences in the pace of democratization between Central and Eastern Europe with countries from its southeastern peninsula, the lack of systematic empirical work leaves his theoretical argument untested.

A critical assessment of Rupnik's model using the model suggested by Elster, Offe and Preuss will help to distinguish some relevant contextual elements as prerequisites for determining successful...