ABSTRACT
Regime change in former Communist countries has been accompanied by farreaching international change. Indeed, this regime change provided the opening and stimulus for that transformation, and, in turn, the latter had a significant impact on continuing regime change, suggesting an overall dynamic of externaldomestic interactions. Most importantly, there was the reconfiguration of the international system with the disappearance of the global confrontation and the structures that marked the Cold War period from the late 1940s onwards. Soon there emerged new, more regionally focused forms of international conflict, some of which – notably the wars in the former Yugoslavia between 1991 and 1995 – influenced the nature of regime change, in particular delaying transitions to democracy in the countries affected, and helping to buttress quasiauthoritarian regimes in Croatia and Serbia.
