Democratic Revolutions in post-Communist Europe and Post-Soviet Eurasia, 1989 - 2009.

This paper is describing and explaining the democratic revolutions and multidirectional regime changes, which occurred in the two decades between 1989 and 2009 in post-Communist Europe and post-Soviet Eurasia. It analyses at the beginning the decline of Communism and the failed attempts to reform Communist One-Party States in the period between 1970 and 1988 as stage one of democratization. The next section is dealing with the end of Communist regimes as second stage of democratization between 1989 and 1991. The following part is devoted to stage three of the democratization process, which is focusing on the creation of new democracies. The dynamics of post-Communist democratization is differentiated into three separate paths of development: the path towards consolidated and liberal democracies, the second path to partial and electoral democracies and finally the transformation of post-Soviet countries into illiberal autocracies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]