Abstract
Democratic consolidation is no longer an appropriate paradigm for di
recting research efforts in the set of consolidated democracies of eastcentral Europe. These states have entered the post-consolidation era.
Scholars studying them should be posing similar questions to those in
Western, consolidated democracies. We should also be considering
how the consolidated democracies of east-central Europe contribute
to our knowledge of processes in other functioning democracies.
Further, the tools that we use to analyze and the questions we ask
should be those used for Western-style liberal democracies. This will
permit us to consider how these states contribute to the development of
theory. In short, a new paradigm is needed. In this and the following
chapter, I demonstrate how rational choice might suggest itself as one
possibility.