Democratization in Central and Eastern Europe

The enlargement of the European Union eastwards will be one of the dominant issues of the next decade, The European Council in Madrid, in December 1995, announced that the following Central and Eastern European countries (CEEC's) will be eligible for EU membership, provided they meet certain political conditions: Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Romania, Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Slovenia. The Amsterdam summit in July 1997 acknowledged that these ten countries have made impressive steps, toward democracy and invited five of them (Estonia, Poland, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Slovenia) to open negotiations or accession to membership.

The book is an attempt to develop a methodology for assessing the process of democratization as a condition of eligibility for EU membership. The contributors make an important distinction between formal (procedural) democracy and substantive democracy (i.e. democratic political culture) which is impossible to measure even though it can be described. They conclude that whilst the Central and Eastern European countries more or less meet the formal criteria for democracy, they all exhibit weaknesses in substantive democracy.