Democracy and Post-Communism

The collapse of communism was widely heralded as the dawn of democracy across the former Soviet region. However, the political outcome has been much less uniform. The post-communist states have developed a range of political systems from democracy to dictatorship. Using examples and empirical data collected from 26 former Soviet states, Graeme Gill provides a detailed comparative analysis of the core issues of regime change, the creation of civil society, economic reform and the changing nature of post-communism. Within these individual cases, it becomes clear that political outcomes have not been arbitrary, but directly reflect the circumstances surrounding the birth of independence.