What Is the State of Democracy in the Post-Communist Countries?

f we were to issue a report card on the state of democracy in the world today, how would the twenty or so post-Communist states rate? And, while we are at it, how well do our professional efforts to understand the new states of the former Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact (as well as other former authoritarian states) measure up? The two sets of questions are inevitably related, for reality is always in the eye of the beholder. But it is perhaps especially hard to see clearly when the past carries as much ideological and intellectual baggage as it does with the Western study of the former Soviet empire.