ABSTRACT
Both in the academic as in the political debate the expression "Eastern Europe" has become a synonym for an intellectual as well as a political problem and challenge. For the political scientist, the Eastern European problem is not only a specific area or country issue but has revitalized and refocused transformation studies, 1 has become a major issue for theoretical as well as applied democracy studies,2 has given new thoughts for peace and conflict studies,3 and finally has emerged as an important issue for integration studies.4 For the politically concerned, Eastern Europe means on the one side a long-sought and peaceful change for the better and on the other side specific political challenges such as the Yugoslavian conflicts and the deterioration in Russia to which the European political community has not found adequate and effective prevention, control and solution yet. But although the management and solution of the Eastern European problem constitutes an important issue for Europe and specifically for the EU's political agenda, this also has a general and global dimension as well. The decline or the implosion of the superpower USSR, the reorganization of the European power constellation, and its effects on EU-US and other relations demand a definition of the notion, Eastern Europe as a regional but also as a global issue. Therefore - and in contrast to other views - it is seen as both politically legitimate as well as analytically necessary to regard the Eastern European problem not only as a European problem but as subject and object of the general formula not of globalization but of a dialectic interrelation between globalization, regionalism, and the nation-state. In order to do so, both the substantial as well as the theoretical dimension of the problem will be discussed with the aim to broaden both the debate on the Eastern European problem and on globalization.
