The importance of EU as an external factor on democratic consolidation. The cases of the Czech Republic and Slovakia

Abstract

The breakdown of communist rule in Central and Eastern Europe has offered scholars in the field of transition and regime change theory, and comparative politics in general, a major opportunity to test out former theories, but also formulate new ones. Obviously, no theory is alone applicable to the complexity of the transitions. There is a variety of cases, each with distinct developments before, during and after the transition to democracy has been completed. Some common features are still possible to extract when studying regime change in a region. As for Central and Eastern Europe, one of the most outstanding characteristics of the transition to democracy has been the visibility and importance of external factors. Previously the view was held that external factors were essentially secondary to domestic processes of regime change. The studies on Central and Eastern Europe carried out the last 15 years might show another picture, and that leads us to the core of this paper. How important have the external factors been? After providing the reader with some relevant theories on democracy and démocratisation, the focus is turned to the examination of external influences on transition in this region. In order to narrow down the complexity of the subject, the European Union has been chosen as the variable to...