Democracy in Central and Eastern Europe: test of early impact

Abstract

Ten years after European Union (EU) enlargement, democracy in the East European new member states is still a topic of discussion. This paper focuses on the initial years of democratisation in these countries, and asks what economic, political, and social processes explain its variation. Cross-sectional time series analysis (1990-2002) shows the impact of political orientation of ruling parties to reform, electoral institutions, size of ethnic minorities, and the extent of EU integration, but not economic development. Further, we disaggregate the effect of EU integration and find that early Europe Agreements signing has a more significant effect than the pre-accession membership negotiation stage.

Keywords:

• democratisation
• EU integration
• post-communism
• institutions
• conditionality

Acknowledgement

We gratefully acknowledge support from the Center for the Study of Democracy at the University of California, Irvine. We thank the East European Politics editor and anonymous reviewers for their valuable suggestions.

Notes on contributors

Nina Bandelj is professor of sociology and faculty associate at the Center for the Study of Democracy, University of California, Irvine. Her research examines the social and cultural bases of economic phenomena, determinants and consequences of globalisation, and social change in post-socialist Europe. Her books include From Communists to Foreign Capitalists: The Social Foundations of Foreign Direct Investment in Postsocialist Europe (Princeton University Press, 2008) and Socialism Vanquished, Socialism Challenged: Eastern Europe and China, 1989–2009 (with Dorothy Solinger, Oxford University Press). She currently serves as Editor of Socio-Economic Review and is Past-Chair of the Economic Sociology Section of the American Sociological Association.

Katelyn Finley is a Ph.D. Candidate in Political Science at the University of California, Irvine, where she serves as a Graduate Fellow at the Center for the Study of Democracy. She is interested in the role of the European Union in democracy and inequality in post-communist countries.

Bogdan Radu received his MA in European politics from the University of Manchester (MA) and his Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of California, Irvine, USA. Since 2007, he holds a lecturer position in the Department of Political Science at Babes-Bolyai University. In 2012, Bogdan joined the Center for European Union Enlargement Studies at Central European University as a Visiting Researcher. His research revolves around issues of political culture, democratic transition, and consolidation, and comparative studies of public opinion in the context of an enlarged Europe.

Notes

1 We refer to these countries as Central and Eastern Europe (CEE).

2 We are aware of the debate about different indicators of democracy, and realise that the Freedom House rankings are not ideal. We use them to be consistent with other research that uses them (Kurtz and Barnes 2002; Schimmelfenning and Scholz 2008). Also, Bollen (1993) showed that most available indices of democratisation are highly correlated. We do stay very close to what these Freedom House democracy scores really measure, which is not consolidation of a political democratic culture but assessing progress in establishing the infrastructure of democracy, including the electoral process, political pluralism, and functioning of government.

3 Given that the time points in our sample are greater than the number of countries, the GMML estimation used by Schimmelfennig and Scholtz (2008), for instance, is not appropriate in this case.