ABSTRACT
Most of the literature analysing the democratization process (or redemocratization as the process is often referred to) of Italy and the Federal Republic of Germany in the 1940s, Spain, Portugal and Greece in the 1970s and a number of countries in Latin America in the 1970s and the 1980s, gives expression to the belief, or to the conclusion, that external actors played no more than a marginal role in these countries’ transitions towards democracy. Based on that, a defensible presumption would be that the democratization processes within East and Central European countries are merely domestic processes, in which international actors and structures did not, and cannot, play any significant role. It would therefore be beside the point to focus on the role of external actors or structures in order to gain knowledge of the development in Central Europe. That conclusion is, however, premature, since these cases may well differ from earlier cases, in some significant respects.
