East Central Europe in the Modern World The Politics of the Borderlands from Pre- to Postcommunism

While the historical experience of East Central Europe in the modern world may be described as one of endemic political change - from Western liberalism to corrupted parliamentarism, from fascism to state socialism, and now to fledgling new liberalism under Western auspices - all these political systems faced the same problem of the region's economic backwardness, the debilities of small nationhood, and the cultural divide between the lands of eastern and western Christianity. Providing a new interpretation of the politics of the region in the modern period, this book also contributes to the ongoing dialogue among disciplines by attempting to strike a better balance between cultural and economic explanations of conflict, between structural and institutional approaches to politics, and, above all, between intra- and extra-societal forces that shape power and politics in national states.