ABSTRACT
This part conclusion presents some closing thoughts on the key concepts discussed in the preceding chapters. The part provides a sharp decline in the perception of external threat, despite, and perhaps partly because of, the collapse of the socialist world system. From a normative standpoint regarding the prospects for democratization in the former Soviet republics, it is important that the system-alienation so marked among the population take forms that ameliorate rather than exacerbate the general crisis of authority. Politics in most former republics is in a transitional phase between a single-party and competitive-party system. In short, the amorphousness of Soviet social structure, with the middle groups of skilled workers, lower administrative personnel, and technical intelligentsia poorly articulated and organized, seems to be reflected in the lack of well-defined social blocs of support for emerging parties. Powerful popular antipathy to machine politics inhibits the establishment of permanent organizational staffs to run parties and attain electoral successes.
