Bringing Society Back into Democratic Transition Theory after 1989: Pact Making and Regime Collapse
Bringing Society Back into Democratic Transition Theory after 1989: Pact Making and Regime Collapse
Author(s): Daniel V. FriedheimSubject(s): Civil Society, Political history, Government/Political systems, Politics and society, Transformation Period (1990 - 2010), Post-Communist Transformation, Sociology of Politics
Published by: SAGE Publications Ltd
Keywords: Post-1989; political history; Eastern Europe; democracy; political reforms; postcommunist transformation; transition period;
Summary/Abstract: Like echoes of the Philippine "people power" revolution of 1986 , spontaneous mass protests reverberated through Eastern Europe in 1989. In Poland , a series of wildcat strikes led to semi-free elections by June. A crowd chanting "no more shall we be slaves" at the re-burial of martyred Communist reformer Imre Nagy pushed Hungarian democracy forward. Tens of thousands of refugees undermined East German leader Erich Honecker in October, and hundreds of thousands of demonstrators forced open the Berlin Wall overnight on November 9. Later that month , and undeterred by violent security force tactics , student protests on Prague's Wenceslas Square ousted an entire Communist party leadership in a few days. Following such unexpected occurrences , social scientists need to bring society back into the center of their theories about democratization. The question is, how? [...]
Journal: East European Politics and Societies
- Issue Year: 07/1993
- Issue No: 03
- Page Range: 482-512
- Page Count: 31
- Language: English
- Content File-PDF