The four chapters in this section are all fascinating insights into the democratic transitions in Central and Eastern Europe. They also widen our understanding of how the transitions in Eastern and Central Europe have interacted with any democratic deficit, balance or surplus that is to be found in the wider process of European integration.

Indeed each of the four chapters demonstrates in its different way just how interdependent is the quality of democracy in the national and European arenas (Lord and Harris 2006). Given that the quality of representation any one national public receives at the European level depends in the first instance on the quality of electoral and party systems in its own member state, as well as the qualities of its own national elites, the domestic political system of each member state contributes to the micro-foundations of the European Union's own system of representation. Even allowing for ways in which Union institutions operate according to norms, alignments and constraints of their own, there is still something to the argument that the Union is partly reinvented as a somewhat different polity every time it admits new member states. This is especially so when member states are in some way qualitatively different to the existing membership in the ways in which they organise and practise democracy.

Almost two decades after the fall of communism, the political landscape of Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) is marked by vivid contrasts. The good news is that ten former Soviet-bloc countries are now firmly anchored within the European Union, the democratic club established by West European democracies half a century ago. Moreover, a recent wave of democratic change from Ukraine to the Balkans suggests that even those countries which initially failed to achieve a democratic transition may get a second chance. The bad news is that several CEE countries in which democracy is allegedly consolidated have recently displayed signs of backsliding (even if these are not captured in their still very good Freedom House ratings). Meanwhile, the complexions of the Rose and Orange revolutions are looking less rosy, and the new dispensations in Ukraine and Georgia sometimes seem not so different from the old ones.

To be sure, such generalisations need to be qualified. Eastern Europe in the old sense is no more, and we see a variety of different trajectories of democratisation in post-communist countries. Still, it is possible to identify certain common patterns and issues. The real question is not “Is democracy facing an imminent threat?” Instead, we should ask “What kinds of democracies are emerging after the transitions in East Central Europe, and what are their vulnerabilities?” and “What is the significance of their troubles from a Europe-wide perspective?”

Just twenty years ago still members of the Warsaw Pact, having been locked against the popular will within the Eastern Bloc, with restrictively limited sovereignty to act in international relations, the countries from Central and Eastern Europe had a long way to go before membership in NATO and the EU. Nowadays active players in the European foreign policy (EFP) and strong promoters of developing common European defence structures, the countries are a fascinating object of analysis. In terms of both international systemic reality and the domestic political setting for formulating foreign policy the CEE countries are in a different world today.

As Chris Brown has observed, foreign policy connects two worlds: the world of domestic bureaucracy and administration and that of international relations (2001). These worlds are of a different nature, but in Central and Eastern Europe both have undergone significant changes. One of the major tasks of the newly independent CEE states was to secure their existence via a redefined and reformulated new foreign policy. A predominantly existential foreign policy was drafted by the CEE states, with the main goal of securing the survival and later wellbeing of each nation in an environment which is ever changing and extremely difficult to predict. The major decisions on the fundamental orientation of foreign policy were, for the first time after the long communist period, based on the national interest.