Development on the Periphery: Democratic Transitions in Southern and Eastern Europe by Howard J. Wiarda , Dale R. Herspring , Esther M. Skelley (review)

Abstract

REVIEWS 171 in the Czech KS6M could perhaps be interpreted as a symbolic gesture by the hardliners to distance themselves from the party's neo-Communist wing without much practical relevance. External inspiration, as it seems, is not very often translated into policy adoption. Both KSClM's Grebenicek and SDE's Weiss, for example, cite Italian post-Communists as a source of inspiration for their parties. The relevance of such inspiration is nevertheless questionable given the totally different trajectories of theCzech and Slovak CSPs. After reading the book one may wonder how fruitful it is to study pro grammatic and policy transferbetween political parties, ifeven in the critical case of the CSPs, that desperately tried to legitimate themselves after the regime change, only a rather weak and often even unconscious influence is detected. The book essentially shows how CSPs utilized knowledge of pro grammes and policies of other parties, and especially of transnational party groups (the Socialist International and the PES) without actually adopting them.However, as with the topic of Europeanization of political parties, it is the indirect and unacknowledged impact of external actors that seems to be more important and perhaps even more interesting than search for direct causal links.This iswhy Learning from the West? is a solid volume that should be of interest to students of party politics. Department of Political Science MarekRybar ComeniusUniversity, Bratislava Wiarda, Howard J. Developmenton the Periphery: DemocraticTransitions inSouthern andEastern Europe.With the assistance ofDale R. Herspring and Esther M. Skelley. Rowman & Littiefield Publishers, Boulder, CO, New York, Toronto, London and Oxford, 2006. ix + 269 pp. Notes. Suggested readings. Index. ?19.99 (paperback). Howard Wiarda's is certainly not the firstbook on democratic transitions inwhat he and the two of his co-authors (Dale Herspring and Esther Skelley) call the (European) periphery. Much has been written on both Southern and Eastern Europe in transition from authoritarianism (or 'transition to democracy', as normativists in the field of democratization studies prefer to call it).The relative novelty offeredby thisbook is in itscomparative approach ? although this too has already been seen before, not least in Geoffrey Pridham's edited volume on 'Transition to Democracy', published eleven years ago. The author(s) compare transitions from authoritarianism in South ern Europe (in the 1970s and 1980s) with that of the post-1989 'Eastern Europe' (whatever the concept means in post-1989 context). They conclude that political changes in both regions are among 'the most exciting and important events of our times' (p. 250), but 'we need to remember that many of these democratic transitions are still incomplete' (p. 250), and that 'three or four generations' might be needed before all of these countries (especially those in the former Eastern Europe) could be called democracies. This (rather pessimistic) conclusion is based on authors' reliance on the factor of 172 SEER, 87, I, JANUARY 200g political culture, which they consider to be very important yet cannot be changed overnight. The authors are, in particular, cautious when trying to predict further developments in former Eastern Europe. There are five possible scenarios, they argue in chapter seven (p. 175): a) successful transition to Western-style democracy (withprimary candidates being: Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Poland, Slovenia and the three Baltic Republics); b) 'the formal adaptation of democratic procedures but only limited implementation of genuine democracy' (likely to happen in Russia, Romania, Bulgaria, Belarus, and theUkraine); c) 'a reversion to full-scale Communism (without stating in which of the East European countries is this likely to happen); d) emergence of a 'new authoritarian regime', different from Communism, but still authoritarian (and authors see 'most of the states thatwere once a part of the Soviet Union but are now loosely organized as theCIS' as candi dates; and e) 'thepossibility for national breakdown, disintegration, civilwar' (in Serbia, Bosnia and Chechnya). The fact that some countries (forexample Croatia, Albania andMacedonia ? three candidates for themembership ofNATO) have not been mentioned here should be seen as a tacit recognition on the side of the authors that not all cases could be accommodated within their classification. Credibility of the arguments presented in thisbook is seriously undermined by interpretation of recent developments in Eastern Europe, as presented in chapter two...