ABSTRACT
This chapter responds to the claims about the incompatibility between democracy and various features of Eastern European reality through a concrete and quotidian investigation of the initiation of new democratic institutions in four East European countries: Poland, Hungary, Romania, and Bulgaria. It focuses on negotiations over, and choices among, specific new democratic institutions. A comparison of negotiations over institutional choice in Eastern Europe with those in Latin America emphasizes the strong similarities in the institutional preferences of similar political actors in the two areas. The chapter argues that post-Leninist politicians made more mistakes in their institutional choices than politicians with more democratic political experience would have, either because circumstances were changing too quickly or because they lacked a feel for democratic politics. To the extent that the cultural legacies of the Leninist experience are inconsistent with democratic institutions, they are currently being eroded in the countries of Eastern Europe in which democracy holds sway.
