ABSTRACT
Political scientists were unable to predict the great movement of democratization in Eastern Europe from 1989-90. The problem we examine in this chapter concerns the question whether there are any systematic and structural explanations for the collapse of hegemonic regimes and the sudden breakthrough of democracy in Eastern Europe. Was it due to some unique local or historical factors, say, the personality of Gorbachev or to the reforms introduced by him, or was it due to some more universal factors that preceded Gorbachev’s rise to power? And would it have been possible to predict the great wave of democratization in Eastern Europe on the basis of some explanatory variables? Our inquiry is based on Tatu Vanhanen’s two comparative studies of democratization (1984 and 1990) and his later attempt to explain democratization in Eastern Europe by using different combinations of his explanatory variables (Vanhanen 1991a), and on Richard Kimber’s parallel attempt to solve the problem by using a different method to analyse the same empirical data (Kimber 199la). We have attempted to present the results of statistical analyses in a way that makes them comprehensible also for readers who are not familiar with the statistical methods used in these analyses.
