Electocracies and the Hobbesian Fishbowl of Postcommunist Politics
Electocracies and the Hobbesian Fishbowl of Postcommunist Politics

Summary/Abstract: All but two postcommunist countries (Tajikistan and Turkmenistan) have held at least one election that international observers have deemed to be largely free and fair. Fully 16 of the 27 postcommunist states have held multiple free and fair elections. Yet at the same time, fewer than half a dozen countries have made sufficient overall progress toward a full and self-sustaining democratic transition to justify inclusion in the first rounds of planned North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and European Union (EU) expansions. And beyond that, in as many as half of the sixteen states, democracy has been so fragile at one point or another in the last ten years as to speak of a total breakdown of the transition. Indeed, in some of these states, violence has not decreased, trust has not increased, and elections are treated by the population as an insufficient instrument for achieving the dramatic break with the past they feel is required. [...]

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