Embodying Democracy analyzes the politics of electoral reform in eight postcommunist states including Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Romania, Bulgaria, Russia, and Ukraine. By exploring the multiple factors that shaped the design of electoral institutions during the first ten years of postcommunist transition, it accounts for an important element of the postcommunist reform process and illuminates general features of institutional design in post-transition states.

The Prague Spring of 1968 was among the most important episodes in postwar European politics--one of the few pre-Gorbachev attempts to reform one-party communist rule. In this book Kieran Williams analyzes the attempt at reform under Alexander Dubcek and its suppression by the Soviet Union, using archive materials and other sources that have become available in the wake of the 1989 revolution. The book will provide new information for specialists as well as introductory analysis and narrative for students of East European politics and history and Soviet foreign policy.

The first account of the secret police in Eastern Europe and after 1989, this book uses a wide range of sources, including archives, to identify what has and has not changed since the end of communism. After explaining the structure and workings of two of the area's most feared services, Czechoslovakia's StB and Romania's Securitate, the authors details the creation of new security intelligence institutions, the development of contacts with the West, and forms of democratic control.