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.

The collapse of communism did not lead smoothly or quickly to the

consolidation of liberal democracy in Europe and the former Soviet

Union. At the time of regime change, from 1989 into the first few years

of the 1990s, popular democratic movements in the three Baltic states,

Hungary, Poland, Slovenia, Eastern Germany, and western Czechoslovakia

translated initial electoral victories into consolidated liberal

democracy. These quick and successful democratic breakthroughs were

the exception, however. Bulgaria, Croatia, Romania, and eastern

Czechoslovakia (after 1992 known simply as Slovakia) failed to consolidate

liberal democracy soon after communism collapsed. Yet in time,

the gravitational force of the European Union did much to draw these

countries onto a democratic path.

Expanded version published in Russian as " Path of Postcommunist Transformation: Comparative Analysis of Democratic Breakthroughs in Serbia, Georgia, and Ukraine,"

in Pro et Contra, No. 2 (29) 2005, pp. 92-107

The enlargement of the EU to Central and Eastern European Countries (CEEC) candidates, Turkish candidacy and the Stabilization and Association Process in the Balkans, provides researchers with intriguing opportunities for exploring the effects of international actors on democratic and rule of law reforms in a diverse group of countries.

The last quarter of the twentieth century was marked by two dramatic political trends that altered many of the world's regimes: the global resurgence of democracy and the collapse of communism. Was the process that brought down communism in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union fundamentally different from the process that gave birth to new democracies in other regions of the world? Were the transitions away from communism mostly like or mostly unlike the transitions away from authoritarianism that took place elsewhere? Is the challenge of building and consolidating democracy under postcommunist conditions unique, or can one apply lessons learned from other new democracies? The essays collected in this volume explore these questions, while tracing how the countries of Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union have fared in the decade following the fall of communism.

Contributors: Anders Åslund, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington, D.C.; Leszek Balcerowicz, Warsaw School of Economics; Archie Brown, Oxford University and St. Antony's College; Zbigniew Brzezinski, Johns Hopkins University, a former U.S. national security advisor; Valerie Bunce, Cornell University; Nadia Diuk, National Endowment for Democracy in Washington, D.C.; M. Steven Fish, University of California-Berkeley; Charles H. Fairbanks Jr., the Johns Hopkins University; Bronislaw Geremek, former foreign minister of Poland; John Higley, University of Texas at Austin; Judith Kullberg, University of MichiganAnn Arbor; Mart Laar, prime minister of Estonia; Michael McFaul, Stanford University; Ghia Nodia, Tbilisi State University; Jan Pakulski, University of Tasmania in Australia; Richard Rose, University of Strathclyde in Glasgow; Jacques Rupnik, College of Europe in Bruges; Lilia Shevtsova, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington, D.C.; Aleksander Smolar, Stefan Batory Foundation in Warsaw and Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique in Paris; G.M. Tamás formerly of Georgetown University; Vladimir Tismaneanu, University of Maryland at College Park; Grigory Yavlinsky, member of the Russian State Duma (parliament).

Western analysts have become increasingly alarmed with Russia's assertive foreign policy -- in both the economic and the political/strategic spheres -- toward the new states of the former Soviet Union. Many have cited Russia's military interventions in Georgia, Tajikistan, and Moldova as signals of Russia's new imperialist designs. Russian policy toward the Baltic states has also spurred alarm. While Russian troops pulled out of the Baltic states as planned, the Russian Foreign Ministry has nonetheless threatened economic sanctions against Estonia and Latvia if citizenship rights for Russians are not further delineated in these states. Beyond the territory of the former Soviet Union, Russian assertiveness regarding sanctions against Serbia, NATO expansion, and arms trade with developing countries has compelled several analysts to speak of a renewal of Russian expansionist tendencies and hence a return of Cold War tension between West and East.