ABSTRACT
The transformation of the political and economic systems of the Eastern European countries after the 'unprecedented fact' of the end of communism (Kennedy 1994, p. 3) was widely treated as a return 'to normality' (Outhwaite & Ray 2005, p. 3) or a return to Europe. Nonetheless, these countries have not followed a simple model of transition to capitalism and cannot easily be made to fit 'the familiar Western moulds' (Bryant & Mokrzycki 1994). Theories of transformation were constructed with a simplified vision of communist-led societies as a more or less homogeneous group (Kennedy 1994, p. 2). The existing literature illustrates that, as the transition process advanced, the general development in transition countries became a story of increasing divergence (Humphrey & Mandel 2002). Moreover, this account of divergence is not limited to regional differences between Central and Eastern European countries and the former Soviet republics, as 'variation occurs even within these main categories' (Aidis 2005) and at the micro level of community and family (Burawoy & Verdery 1999, p. 7). The combination of several factors including the general environment, the state of the economy, the capacity of the state, the level of openness to political processes, and the activities of civil society have been taken into account in an attempt to arrive at a more complex understanding of the diverging paths of transitions (Bonker et al. 2002, p. 26). However, it has been acknowledged that the direction and the nature of the transitional path are dependent above all on 'the socio-political and cultural context' (Rutland 2002, p. 214).
