Stephen Padgett is highly regarded for his scholarship on parties and other aspects of politics in the Federal Republic of Germany. In the present work he focuses on the "hesitant" emergence of associational activity in the postcommunist societies of eastern and central Europe, with particular emphasis on economic interest groups in eastern Germany. His tightly written book seeks to document and, above all, explain this state of affairs. The retarded growth of interest groups in the region is an important and relatively neglected topic, at both the theoretical and empirical levels aimed for here. It is also a development that has run counter to the once widely expected emergence of a vigorous pluralist civil society that would accompany the region's transition to market economics and democratic politics.