The European Union (EU) may be presiding over the most successful democracy promotion program ever implemented by an international actor. Among postcommunist states with a credible EU membership perspective, we can see a significant - though far from complete - convergence toward liberal democracy. This is all the more interesting since ten years ago many of these states had illiberal or authoritarian regimes. I focus in this article on the sources of political change in previously illiberal regimes before and after 'watershed elections,' especially in the Western Balkans. I argue that over time the EU's leverage strengthened the hand of liberal forces against illiberal ones by way of four mechanisms: creating a focal point for cooperation, providing incentives for adapting, using conditionality, and serving as a credible commitment for reform. Consequently, most political parties have eventually changed their agenda to make it compatible with the state's bid for EU membership. I investigate the domestic conditions that have caused these mechanisms to function only weakly in Serbia and Bosnia.

The wave of democratic electoral revolutions in the Eastern Europe and post-Communist Eurasia revived one of the most appealing and at the same time disputable arguments in the theory of democratization: that is, that successful democratic breakthroughs in one of several places help to shape the timing and dynamic of transformation in others, where the regime change has yet to occur. This interconnectivity of transitions in time (and space) is described in terms such as 'contagion,' 'diffusion,' or 'demonstration effect.' Indeed, although hardly a decisive factor, the evidence that contagion played certain important role in transmitting the spirit of democracy and techiques for achieving it from Serbia in 2000 to Georgia in 2003 to Ukraine in 2004 to Kyrgyzstan in 2005 is evident. Needless to say that there is more than enough evidence that a large community of activists, policy advisors, local and international NGOs, and media, were purposefully involved in translating the experience, strategy and tactics of successful revolutions to the new territories. This often led to a feeling of deja vu once an observer saw TV scenes of yet another autocrat being ousted and a new democratic leader being installed by the people's power.

In the broader sence, contagion is definitely facilitated by the proximity of historical experiences and present-day concerns and dilemmas staying for the societies in the region: in other words, as far as they face similar problems, they audiences throughout the post-Communist world may have immediate understanding of what sort of solutions are suggested to them by the roaming revolutionaries.

But democrats and revolutionaries are not the only ones who can learn from the past and apply the knowledge to fulfill their political goals. Indeed, their antagonists appeared to have mastered the science and crafts of democratic transitions in order to stop them at their borders. What is more, they are becoming increasingly aware that, paraphrasing George W Bush's second inaugural address, 'survival of autocracy at home increasingly depends upon the failure of democracy abroad.' The first trend, learning to combat the democratic contagion, is an essential element of the new political trend in post-Communist Eurasia, defined by the author as preemptive authoritarianism. The second trend, joining efforts to combat democratic contagion, is reflected what can be defined as authoritarian international, which is rapidly emerging in the post-Soviet space.

This paper consists of three parts. The first explains the concept of preemptive authoritarianism. The second gives an overview of preemption may be done in a nearly perfect manner in the case study of Belarus, the country where it was used most extensively and proficiently. The third highlights the international dimension of preemptive authoritarianism on the example of Belarus-Russia cooperation, that increasingly spreads into the area of combatting democracy.

In addition to domestic political and economic restructuring, most of the former state-socialist countries opted to establish political and economic relations with "the West" as a step to make the transition to liberal democracy and a market economy irreversible in the immediate term, and to acquire a new "home" in the international system in the long run. Consequently, they sought membership in almost all "Western" international organizations and, most important, in the European Union (EU), which made an explicit link between membership and the adoption of a certain set of norms and values. Accordingly, the EU began to play an important role in the transitions of Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) by helping these countries meet its membership criteria. Important, then, becomes the question about the effects of this international cooperation on the democratization process in CEE. This paper focuses on the impact the EU has had on CEE applicant parties.

After its spectacular 1989 'televised Revolution,' Romania has spent most of its political transition struggling with its own past. For political scientists, these confusing times only confirmed what they had already labelled as Romanian 'exceptionalism,' a pattern dissimilar from Central European countries. However, in the early 1990s, Romania's ways were not so exceptional when compared to Belarus or Albania - it was just another case where the exit path from a totalitarian regime did not lead to democracy, but instead to some form of mild authoritarian populism.

With the benefit of hindsight, what is exceptional and needs some explanation in Romania's case is not her difficult separation with its communist past, but the final positive outcome: the signing of the Accession Treaty with the European Union (EU) in April 2005. Despite important similarities with countries such as Belarus and Albania at the beginning of its transition, why has Romania done so well by comparison? In McFaul's classification, Romania is the only post-communist country which succeeded in becoming a consolidated democracy with a balance of power clearly in favour of the former communist elites. This invites some explanation.

The transitions to democracy in the postcommunist region over the past decade and one-half share a common dynamic, featuring the interaction between two sets of factors. The first is the long-term development of both civil society and a liberal opposition. The second is more short-term: an expansion of international support for regime change, clear demonstration by mass publics that they reject incumbent illiberal regimes (through protests and voting), and the victory of the liberal opposition in competitive elections. Successful democratization in the postcommunist world, therefore, seems to rest upon mass mobilization, a supportive international environment, and a sharp break with the authoritarian past, rather than the model that emerged in Spain and parts of Latin America; that is, a largely domestic dynamic combining bargaining between incumbent and opposition elites and elections and policies in the early stages of transition that bridged the old and the new order.

This paper primarily deals with later postcommunist transitions to democracy. In particular, we compare the decisive turn to democratic politics in Slovakia in 1998 with a similar dramatic political turn in Serbia in 2000. Such a comparison is instructive because of the importance of the model of democratization that was developed and applied in these cases, and because of the insights these two countries offer as a consequence of variations in both political-economic context and the nature of their electoral revolutions.

When Vladimir Putin was elected President of Russia in March 2000, the country bequeathed to him by his predecessor, Boris Yeltsin, was an unconsolidated, often disorderly and raucous electoral democracy. Gradually though, the Russian political system under Putin came to be described as first "managed democracy" then "illiberal democracy" or "delegated democracy" and finally, by 2005, a non-democracy.

What happened? Why did the fourth wave crash on Russia's shores, and what prospects are there for external factors to play a role in bringing about a rejuvenation of democracy in Russia in the next decade? Is Russia immune to the diffusion effect of democratization that purportedly swept the East in the late 1980's and that is again moving eastward in the last 4 years? What are the implications for this apparent resistance to the fourth wave for Russia's fragile newly democratic neighbors in Ukraine, Georgia and Serbia? In this essay, I will explore these and other questions as I try to assess the internal and external factors that might help us to understand why Russia has undergone a "reverse wave" in democratization even as its smaller neighbors have apparently resisted the authoritarian tide that struck parts of the post-communist world in the late 1990s.