This title was first published in 2001. This series brings together the most significant journal articles to appear in the field of comparative politics since the 1970s. The aim is to render accessible to teachers, researchers and students, an extensive range of essays as a basis for understanding established terrain and new ground.

Transformation is still the order of the day in the polities of the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe as they emerge from decades of communism and try to forge new identities, new economies, new societies. The Political Analysis of Postcommunism offers the perspectives of prominent political scientists, historians, sociologists, philosophers, and others, each writing on a particular aspect of the transformation of society from communist to postcommunist forms. Originally published, in English and Ukrainian, in 1995 in Kiev by the editors of the Ukrainian journal Political Thought, this volume is written by those who have themselves lived through the changes. Political scientists, sociologists, and others interested in the progress of postcommunist society in the independent, formerly communist nations of Eastern Europe and Central Asia will profit from reading these thought-provoking early insights into the world to come.

Elections, Parties and Representation in Post-Communist Europe 1990-2002 stresses the ways in which the development of political parties affected the quality of democracy, the nature of political representation, and political accountability in the early stages of post-communist politics. It also analyzes the nature and consequences of the corpus of parliamentary candidates and deputies for the representation of social classes, women and minorities. In contrast with the wide social profile of communist parliaments, politics largely became the playground of new highly educated male elites.

Poor people everywhere are politically weak, and yet poverty in some developing countries has gone down dramatically. Why is this? Using nine country case-studies this book provides answers by examining government alliances, the role of aid donors and NGOs, and policies on labour, tax and expenditure.

Why do some violent conflicts endure across the centuries, while others become dimly remembered ancient struggles among forgotten peoples? Is nationalism really the powerful force that it appeared to be in the 1990s? This wide-ranging work examines the conceptual intersection of nationalist ideology, social violence, and the political transformation of Europe and Eurasia over the last two decades. The end of communism seemed to usher in a period of radical change-an era of "extreme politics" that pitted nations, ethnic groups, and violent entrepreneurs against one another, from the wars in the Balkans and Caucasus to the apparent upsurge in nationalist mobilization throughout the region. But the last twenty years have also illustrated the incredible diversity of political life after the end of one-party rule. Extreme Politics engages with themes from the micropolitics of social violence, to the history of nationalism studies, to the nature of demographic change in Eurasia. Published twenty years since the collapse of communism, Extreme Politics charts the end of "Eastern Europe" as a place and chronicles the ongoing revolution in the scholarly study of the post-communist world.

The Routledge Handbook of East European Politics is an authoritative overview that will help a wide readership develop an understanding of the region in all its political, economic, and social complexity. Including Central Europe, the Baltic republics, South Eastern Europe, and the Western Balkans, as well as all the countries of the former Soviet Union, it is unrivalled in breadth and depth, affording a comprehensive overview of Eastern European politics provided by leading experts in the fields of comparative politics, international relations, and public administration. Through a series of cutting-edge articles, it seeks to explain and understand patterns of Eastern European politics today. The Routledge Handbook of East European Politics will be a key reference point both for advanced-level students developing knowledge about the subject, researchers producing new material in the area, and those interested and working in the fields of East European Politics, Russian Politics, EU Politics, and more broadly in European Politics, Comparative Politics, Democratization Studies, and International Relations.

"A useful text and reference book. These essays are at their best in serving both area study and political sociology."--Slavic Review --

The most comprehensive and up-to-date analysis of the successes and failures of 27 countries post-communism transformation. Looking at life after the fall of the Berlin wall in 1989, the book examines and contrasts why some countries have virtually completed their transformation to a liberal polity and economy, while others lag behind.

Tracing both economic and political developments through the prism of history as well as more recent developments, this book casts new light on the role of communist history in setting the different regional successes in post-communist transition.

"A joint publication of the Social Science Research Council and New York University Press."