Abstract
The collapse of Communist Party rule in eastern and east-central Eu
rope held out the promise that scholars studying the political systems of
the region could escape their isolation from mainstream political sci
ence. Much of that promise has been realized. The previous dominance
of area studies emphasizing idiosyncratic explanations rooted in his
torical and cultural understanding has given way to a diverse array of
social science approaches. Statistical analyses, comparative assessments,
and in some cases even explicitly theoretical pieces have emerged along
side of and complemented the more traditional case studies approach.
In the process, post-communist studies has had a much closer relation
ship to political science than did the former soviet studies and commu
nist studies.