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Political Parties after Communism: Developments in East- Central Europe. By Tomáš Kostelecký. Washington, D.C.: Woodrow Wilson Center Press, 2002. xx, 213 pp. Notes. Bibliography. Index. Figures. Tables. $25.95, hard bound.

John Dewey, and others), amount to a quite detailed body of ideas that, if they were not formulated with the media of post-Warsaw Pact Europe precisely in mind, do at least allow us to say what their role should or could be in transitional societies of the eastern European type. In setting out these ideas, and in describing the many disappointments of the post-1989 years, Gross's work documents the extent to which the actual behavior of these transitory media systems has failed to conform to the theories of western analysts. It also allows a comparison to be made of how different countries, with their different traditions, have responded to the challenges of transition. While there is now quite a substantial body of literature in English that explores the recent history of the Russian media in these terms, Gross's focus on the less familiar countries of eastern and central Europe is welcome, especially since two of the countries discussed (Hungary and Poland) are on schedule to enter the European Union in 2004 and are expected to support free and independent media as one of the conditions of full acceptance into the European community. Separate chapters address the changing relationships between the media and the party in the six countries covered (given the cultural tradition of ideological partisanship imposed by Marxism-Leninism that is common to them all); the media and the state (and the efforts of the former to establish genuine independence); and journalistic professionalism (or the lack of it). Gross's conclusion is that "despite their faults and shortcomings, their politicized and tabloidlike journalism, their initially close, even symbiotic, relationships with politicians and political parties, and their overall lack of professionalism, the post-Communist media express and represent the existing political society" (146). To this degree they can reasonably be thought of as comprising, in the context of the difficult histories from which they have sprung, embryonic public spheres, contributing to the development of functioning civil societies, "however fragile and unconsolidated they currently may be" (146). In all of these respects these countries have much in common with the former Soviet Union, where democratic transition has also been hampered by what Russian journalists like to call the "genetic memory" of Stalinism, or neo-Stalinism—the tendency to journalistic commitment and partisanship, for example, rather than detachment and objectivity; the lack of professional training for media employees; and the lack of transparency in financial and regulatory matters affecting media ownership. The United States, Britain, and other countries have provided media assistance programs to Russia, such as the BBC's Marshall Plan of the Mind and USAID's Open Skies project. Some reference to these efforts and an assessment of their success in encouraging adoption of the western media models Gross so obviously favors would have contributed to the analysis, since these programs do appear to have made a marginal impact. A minor quibble about what is undoubtedly a useful and timely text: Gross tends to overload the text with footnotes (190 in chapter 1 alone), while undercutting this devotion to the appearance of academic rigor with hefty chunks of authorial tub-thumping. In the context of the inegalitarian impact of media commercialization, for example, he writes that "equality of the type advanced by idealistic, Utopian, or specifically left-wing ideologies comes only at the cost of restricting the individual freedom of some in the name of others" (157). He maybe right, but it is a big statement, inserted here without supporting evidence or even a developed argument. At the same time, he is entirely right to express impatience with those who bemoan the evils of commercialization in eastern and central Europe, observing that "the region's commercial media have helped establish the preconditions for democratization through their pluralism, diversity and freedom" (157).