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Milada Anna Vachudova, Europe Undivided: Democracy, Leverage and Integration After Communism, Oxford and New York, Oxford Univ

Europe Undivided and The Enlargement of the European Union present contrasting, but complementary, attempts to integrate the compartmentalised literatures on postcommunist politics, democratisation and European integration. Vachudova compares six Central and Eastern European states, which initially took divergent paths after 1989. Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic, Vachudova argues, followed a ‘liberal’ pattern of change characterised by open political competition and alternation between left and right, extensive marketisation and a broadly effective rule of law. ‘Liberal’ patterns were produced, where strong opposition elites existed under communism capable of challenging communist elites in 1989 and defeating them in at the polls. Often, as Poland and Hungary, this was a consequence of communist regimes’ weakness or reformism, which also laid the basis for these ruling parties to transform into credible social democratic parties after 1989. Such post-communist centre-left groups provided stiff competition for the parties of ex-opposition right and later formed responsible centre-left government that kept reform on track. Where Communists remained hardline, as in the Czech Republic, the emergence of a strong centre-left was delayed. Here the ex-opposition liberal right succumbed to clientelism due to lack of effective early opposition, despite the impeccable democratic credentials of the dissidents leaders of the 1989 revolution. Slovakia, Bulgaria and Romania, by contrast, initially became ‘illiberal democracies’, where used clientelism, economic populism, media domination and scapegoating of national minorities to maintain their hold on power. Here strong opposition elites were weak or absent in 1989, transition took the form of a ‘pre-emptive strike’ by nomenklatura factions, as in Bulgaria and Romania, or was rapidly captured by nationalist forces with similarly illiberal, rent-seeking strategies, as in Slovakia