ABSTRACT
This “sea-change” in political life has been accompanied (some what belatedly) by the gradual and unobtrusive development of two proto-sciences: transitology and consolidology. The claim of these em bryonic subdisciplines is that by applying a universalistic set of as sumptions, concepts and hypotheses, they together can explain and hopefully help to guide the way from an autocratic to a democratic regime. The initial “tentative conclusions” of transitology were limited to a small num ber of cases within a relatively homogenous cultural area: southern Europe and Latin America.1 With the subsequent ex
pansion in the num ber of transitions and the extension of democra tization to o ther cultural areas, the founders of these two subdiscip lines and their acolytes have had to confront the issue of “conceptual stretching,” i.e., of the applicability of their propositions and assump tions to peoples and places never imagined initially.2 Nowhere has the resistance to their pseudoscientific pretensions been greater than among North American specialists in the politics of the former Soviet Union and eastern Europe; hence, the subtitle of this article which invites reflection on whether it is safe to travel eastward with these allegedly universal and scientific concepts.
