Post-Communist Transition As A European Problem

When international research on the post communist transition in CEI (the "Central European Initiative", promoted by the Italian government in 1989 and originally known as "Quadrangolare") countries started in 1999, the issues analysed in this book were not on the agenda. They emerged, unexpectedly, in the course of the project, which involved about fifty European and American scholars.
 
This book, the first in a series of four, deals innovatively and provocatively with a crucial question: to what extent has the post-communist transition in CEI countries gradually turned into a difficult transformation, which cannot be isolated from the process of European integration? In other words, is the post-communist transition an integral part of a transition which has involved Europe as a whole, since the end of the cold war, in the reconstruction of its political unity?
 
The overcoming of the separation caused by bloc politics interacts with the process globalisation and localism, making the European scenario much more interdependent and dynamic than the now obsolete interpretations based on the East-West divide are capable of investigating. This book provides readers with interpretation tools which defy facile current opinions, looking at post-communist Europe from the point of view of Europe, tout court.