The transition to democracy in Central and East Europe: experiences of model countries, Poland and Czech Republic.

Abstract

This report is concerned with an investigation of the transition to democracy in Eastern Europe in the final stage and the collapse of the Soviet Union through the examination of two case studies: Poland and Czech Republic. Nowadays we can speak for two democratic states which experienced huge transformation in the last decades and still they aim to be a part of Europe and to fulfill the Western-modernized model of a state. Such cases, especially Poland are case studies which can demonstrate through their transformation and experiences how we proceed in general in International Politics. With the combination of Czech Republic we can analyze which is their status in Europe today and how this happened after the democratization process. Historical evidence can prove the final transformation in several arias inside the two states and also we can investigate how internal politics worked in order to install democracy after the existence of a total different regime. Poland is a special case which as a matter of fact was one of the war scenes in the WWII and it is quite interesting to see how was consolidated in the Soviet Union. On the other hand Czech Republic was united with Slovakia and after the dissolution two different States came out. Critical analysis of data related to both periods, with communism and after communism are presented, the differences are shown and the important role that how this transition to democracy finally achieved is highlighted in both cases. Also, after the collapse of the Soviet Union it was not only Poland and Czech Republic but a number of a new states that emerged, following a different path in each case, trying to survive in the arena of the international system. The map of Europe changed dramatically after the two world wars and the end of cold war. All the former satellite states are working the process of democratization until today.