Designing Democracy: EU Enlargement and Regime Change in Post-Communist Europe

by Geoffrey Pridham

Designing Democracy is the first systematic and in-depth study of the effects of the EU's democratic conditionality, originally set out in the Copenhagen conditions of 1993, on the new political systems of Central and Eastern Europe. Using new material drawn from extensive elite interviews in several of these countries as well as in Brussels, the book throws much light on how far the EU enlargement process has really strengthened these new post-Communist democracies following their transitions in the 1990s.

293 pages, Hardcover

First published May 11, 2005

About the author

Professor Geoffrey Pridham is Emeritus Professor and a Senior Research Fellow in Sociology, Politics and International Studies at the University of Bristol, England.

Reviews

[Scott · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a professor at my University who wrote this one. I read because my paper on Serbia made me consider democratization and he is a leading scholar on the issue in the EU and the Balkans. It was good for me to understand the EU integration phases and how a nation can become eligible for all the EU has to offer. But it fails to answer the question about after they have been integrated and then fall apart, for example Hungary. I guess they think that democracy will solve the problems, but how can they when they are exploited by the stronger countries with the investment capabilities?