Book Cover -- Title -- Contents -- List of figures and tables -- List of contributors -- Preface -- Introduction -- Democratic transitions in theory and practice: Southern European lessons for Eastern Europe -- Groups, parties and political change in Eastern Europe from 1977 -- Predicting and explaining democratization in Eastern Europe -- Building party systems after the dictatorship: the East European cases in a comparative perspective -- The founding electoral systems in Eastern Europe, 1989 91 -- The emergence of multi-party systems in East-Central Europe: a comparative analysis -- The Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, 1988 9:interactions between domestic change and foreign policy -- Democratization in Eastern Europe: the external dimension -- Conclusion -- Index.