Developments in Central and East European Politics 2 [antikvár]

Preface It used to be easy to define 'Eastern Europe'. Broadly speaking, it was a group of states on the far side of what was for many years an Iron Curtain. Most of them bordered on the Soviet Union, and most of them were bound to the Soviet Union by economie and military alliances as well as by a close interconnection at the level of their communist party leaderships. Their fate, it appeared, had been largely determined at the end of World War II, when Europe had been divided - however provisionally — into rival spheres of influence. Yugoslavia had successfully separated itself from the Soviet alliance in the late 1940s, and from the 1960s Albania and Romania were increasingly independent. All of the states in the region none the less remained under communist leadership, state ownership was dominant, and public life was framed by the requirements of Marxism-Leninism. The dramatic changes of the late 1980s and early 1990s shattered these earlier patterns, and brought an end to the division of Europe and - at least in its original form - to communist rule itself. The changes that began in 1989 took a variety of forms, and governments changed more quickly than forms of ownership, still less the habits and practices that had developed over the forty years of communist rule, and in many cases over a much longer period. By the late 1990s, none the less, the Central and East European states were facing a largely similar set of challenges. Could they develop forms of rule, including party systems and structures of participation, that would replace the authoritarianism of the communist years? Could they find a balance between effective leadership, often through a presidency, and accountability, typically to an elected parliament? Could they reverse the economie decline of the late communist years, and could they best do so through 'shock therapy' or by a more gradual process? And could they carry out programmes of change with popular support, notwithstanding the sacrifices that were involved and the increasingly difficult position of the elderly, handicapped, the un-employed and the marginal? These are just some of the issues that are addressed in this collection, which (like its predecessor in 1993) brings together a group of leading specialists from the European countries and from North