Democracy and Authoritarianism in the Post-Communist World

Valerie Bunce is the Aaron Binenkorb Professor of International Studies and Professor of Government at Cornell University. Bunce is the author, most recently, of Subversive Institutions: The Design and the Collapse of Socialism and the State (Cambridge, 1999), and her articles have appeared in the American Political Science Review, Comparative Politics, Comparative Political Studies, Politics and Society, and International Organization, together with a variety of area-based journals and edited volumes. Michael A. McFaul is the Peter and Helen Bing Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution and Professor of Political Science at Stanford University. He is also a non-resident Senior Associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. He is the author and editor of several monographs, most recently Revolution in Orange: The Origins of Ukraine's Democratic Breakthrough (with Anders Aslund, 2006), Between Dictatorship and Democracy: Russian Postcommunist Political Reform (with Nikolai Petrov and Andrei Ryabov, 2004), and After the Collapse of Communism: Comparative Lessons of Transitions (with Kathryn Stoner-Weiss, 2004). Kathryn Stoner-Weiss is Associate Director for Research and Senior Research Scholar at CDDRL, Stanford University. She is the author of Resisting the State: Reform and Retrenchment in Post-Soviet Russia (2006) and Local Heroes: The Political Economy of Russian Regional Governance (1997). She is also co-editor of After the Collapse of Communism: Comparative Lessons of Transitions (with Michael McFaul, 2004).

Examines in depth three waves of democratic change that took place in eleven different former Communist nations.

Prologue Valerie Bunce, Michael McFaul and Kathryn Stoner-Weiss; Part I. Waves of Regime Change: From Dictatorship to Democracy ... and Back?: 1. The missing variable: the 'international system' as the link between third and fourth wave models of democratization Michael McFaul; 2. A regional tradition: the diffusion of democratic change under communism and post-communism Valerie Bunce and Sharon Wolchick; Part II. Encouraging Democracy: The Role of the EU: 3. When Europeanization meets transformation: lessons from the unfinished East European revolutions Alina Pippidi; 4. Democratization in post-communist Europe: illiberal regimes and the leverage of the European Union Milada Vachudova; Part III. Choosing Regime Change: Democratizing Elections: 5. A post-communist transition in two acts: the 1996-97 antigovernment struggle in Bulgaria as a bridge between the 1989-92 and 1996-2007 democratization waves in Eastern Europe Tsveta Petrova; 6. Defining and domesticating the electoral model: a comparison of Slovakia and Serbia Valerie Bunce and Sharon Wolchik; 7. Georgia's rose revolution: from regime weakness to regime collapse Cory Welt; 8. Importing revolution: internal and external factors in Ukraine's 2004 democratic breakthrough Michael McFaul; Part IV. Resisting Reform: Backsliding Democracies and Enduring Autocracies: 9. Resistance to contagion: sources of authoritarian stability in the former Soviet Union Lucan Way; 10. Comparing oranges and apples: the internal and external dimensions of Russia's turn away from democracy Kathryn Stoner-Weiss; 11. Contagion deterred: preemptive authoritarianism in the former Soviet Union (the case of Belarus) Vitali Silitski; 12. A horse of a different color: revolution and regression and Kyrgyzstan Scott Radnitz; Epilogue: the changing character of the global struggle for democracy Valerie Bunce, Michael McFaul and Kathryn Stoner-Weiss.