Political events at the very end of the 1980s and the beginning of the 1990s led to collapses of political regimes in countries throughout the CEE region (Central and East European region). Although they did not start to build new pro-democratic institutions from the same starting line, many of them achieved remarkable progress in transformation in a relatively short time. On the other hand, an internal heterogeneity among themselves in terms of their pace as well as introduced policy measures was significant, and this diversity has not been decreased since then. On the contrary, it seems that now, three decades later, the countries of this region vary a lot not only in terms of their economic and/or administrative achievements but also in terms of principles and values that are essential within their ordinary policy making.

 

From the research point of view, this group of countries offers a wonderful chance to analyse individual and unique transformation attempts of various countries to become democratic regimes. However, these "living laboratories” show various outcomes. Some of them are intended, but there are many others which are rather unintended or unexpected at least. In addition, it seems that there are countries, where transformation has been stuck or even rejected due to political turbulences as well as crises.