782 SEER, 79, 4, 2001 indeed of civil society), seeing it as a potential threat to a unified economic reform process. It was not until late I997 that the territorialdivision of the country into fourteen (small)provinces was resolved, but with their functions and finance still undefined. In both Hungary and the Czech Republic a 'politicalvacuum' emerged because of the weaknessof the intermediatelevel. In Slovakia the 1996 restructuringof the country's regions and districtswas certainly not final either: it was not only politically controversial but representeda clear attemptboth at partisangerrymanderingand to dilute the strengthof the Hungarian minority. Aside from the core studies a number of chapters cast differentangles on questions of decentralization. Issues of inequality surface in Andrzej Kowalczyk 's discussion of the development of Polish-German Euroregions, which notes the problems arising from economic differences between Poland and Germany. Successful cooperation can bring enormous benefits, as with the cooperation between Frankfurt-on-Oderand Stubice within the ProEuropa Viadrina Euroregion. Stubice became one of the wealthiest towns in Poland, thus magnifyinginternalinequalitieson the Polishside, while also castinginto starkreliefthe lack of comparablemotors of development on Poland'seastern borders. In other respects, however, this is a disparatecollection. It seems unlikely thatreaderswould expect to locate studiesof EU-Polish trade(Zielinska-Glebocka ) or European security and Polish debt finance (Sperling)in a study of decentralization;and these two sit especiallyuneasilyin thisvolume. They do not support or indeed refer to the questionable thesis that economic reforms have outpaced democratization in the Visegrad states (Kirchnerand Christiansen , p. I) The discussionof the WesternEuropean experience and the EU could have been better integrated,but they do help to set the development of the Visegrad statesinto a wider discussionof state (re)organization,including the recognition that decentralization has nowhere been a simple matter of administrativechange. Department of Government FRANCES MILLARD University ofEssex Cohen, Shari J. PoliticsWithout a Past. TheAbsence of Histogyin Postcommunist Nationalism. Duke University Press, Durham, NC, and London, I999. Xiii + 28I Pp. Notes. Chronology. Bibliography.Index. /37.??; C12.99. THIs book attempts to explain the main tendencies in Slovak politics from 1990 to I992 from the perspective of historical and national consciousness. The rapid rise to power of Vladimir Meciar and his Movement for a Democratic Slovakia(HZDS) is linked to the legacy of the Leninistprojectof 'organized forgetting', whereby three political generations were not exposed to truthful,criticalaccounts of recent history and thereforedid not develop a propersenseeitherof nationhood orofresponsibilityforanti-Semiticatrocities duringWorldWarII. The rareexceptions of dissidentdemocratsand Catholic nationalistsnotwithstanding,Slovaksexitedfromcommunism asanundefined mass of egoists, with no ideological bearings and attractedto populist figures REVIEWS 783 (the 'mass-elite')who shared their lack of fixed principles. The resultwas the rapid marginalization of any politician of conviction and the triumph of Meciar and his ilk. The most refreshingaspect of this book is its refusalto explain the Meciar phenomenon as the result of a Slovak rebellion against the federal economic reform programme. The author, Shari Cohen, has an acute sense for the ideological porridge that was both the Prague Spring and the subsequent 'normalization', which indeed left many disoriented and open to the reassuringlycentrist synthesis of HZDS. Even better, perhaps the strongest feature of the book, is her account of Jan Carnogursky and his Christian Democratic Movement; she capturesmarvellouslythe awkwardposition and limited electoral prospects of a committed, clerical but non-1'udak nationalist in post-Communist Slovakia. Three majorshortcomings,unfortunately,gravelydetractfromtheachievements of thisbook. The firstisthatverylittleof thepost-I989 period is actually covered. It is peculiar that a book published in I999 would stop with the late summer of I992 and not say anything about the experience of independent Slovakia under Meciar. Conspicuously absent is any discussion of the outrageous attempt by Meciar's government to use Milan Durica's Definy Slovenska a Slovackov v chronologickom preh'ade as a history textbook. Cohen also makes no use of Slovenska republika, the pro-HZDS newspaper after the shutdown of Koridor in January 1993. This is regrettable because Slovenska republika (and later the HZDS website)tried, in a concerted if ham-fistedway, to give itsreadersa syncreticideology thatwould makesenseof theirexistence. The second flaw is the book's tendency to make, without the slightest empiricalbasis, sweepingpronouncements about the ordinarySlovak'sbeliefs and attitudes at various times in history. We are told...