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5 - Bringing Down Dictators

Waves of Democratic Change in Communist and Postcommunist Europe and Eurasia

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 August 2013

Martin K. Dimitrov
Affiliation:
Tulane University, Louisiana
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Summary

It was amazing that the “Serbian revolution” unfolded in such a velvety, Czech way.

We Children of 1968 Have Worthy Children

There are no miraculous events here, but many years of concerted action.

CLUSTERED COLLAPSE

Why did communism end in some countries, but not in others? The purpose of this volume is to present a range of specialists in both former and more durable communist regimes in order to provide answers to this question. The usual approach in explaining variations in political outcomes, such as regime durability and departure, is to treat countries as separate units and compare them with one another – through either the use of case studies or more quantitative approaches – in order to assess the explanatory power of rival hypotheses. Although a perfectly logical way to proceed and one that has certainly served the test of time, such an approach may not always be warranted. This is particularly the case when there are reasons to think that political outcomes in different countries might be connected to one another. In this situation, the assumption of separate political trajectories is problematic; international and transnational influences must be taken into account; and methodologies need to be readjusted to recognize the interlinked nature of political change.

Type
Chapter
Information
Why Communism Did Not Collapse
Understanding Authoritarian Regime Resilience in Asia and Europe
, pp. 123 - 148
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2013

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