ABSTRACT
Processes of democratization took specific shape and dynamics in various clusters of the third wave countries. Post-Communist transitions and issues of democratic consolidation clearly manifest a number of peculiarities which distinguish this cluster from other third wave cases. Among these features contemporary scholarship points out at the specific nature of pre- transitional regime with its distinctive legacies, particular complexity of tasks on the post-communist agenda, the role played by nationalism and ethnic conflict and, finally, specific international context. Post-communist transitions has produced a vigorous controversy within academic circles about the sources of successful democratic consolidation in societies that have broken from authoritarian or totalitarian past. At its base the crisis of stateness has to do with the problem of boundaries and identities incorporated within the territorial state. The relevance of state effectiveness to ethnopolitics stems from the fact that state responses to communal grievances are crucial in shaping the course and outcomes of ethnopolitical conflicts.
