politics. As such it covers the incredibly complex patchwork of national
identities, linguistic and religious areas, and interwoven political histories of
a large swathe of Europe which has never had any lengthy settled period of
established nation states.
The borders of the member states of Central Europe are roughly the ones
constructed after the Versailles Peace Treaty of 1919. This treaty was dedicated
to the idea of giving national independence to areas nearly always ruled by
others, primarily the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the Tsarist Russian
Empire. For about 20 years after that settlement these countries existed;
however, they rapidly fell a long way from the Versailles ideal of liberal
democracies. In fact, the intermingling of nationalities and ethnicities rendered
the Versailles dream impossible, as did the lack of social and historical under-
pinnings for democracy in the region. When the Second World War, which
destroyed their independence, ended they were incorporated anew into an
empire—the Soviet Empire, from which they escaped, more or less simulta-
neously, in 1989.
Less so than theBalkans, but still importantly, the question for this area is
whether it can sustain ademocratic transition. To a large extent, the hope
for such transition depends on the vacuity of the label; that is, it depends on the
old traditions of Mitteleuropa declining, and the predominantly ethnic and
nationalistic bases for the societies evaporating so that the states rely for
legitimacy on technical efficiency and procedural democratic competence—
as with Western democracies. The aim of the governments of Central Europe
is certainly to lose this special identity. Membership of any Western interna-
tional organization, but especiallyNATO(which some have already achieved)
and theEuropean Union, is the ideal, and little effort is being made to create
a cohesive regional political voice.
Centralization
Centralization describes the concentration of government and political author-
ity in the capital city and at the national level, as opposed to the sharing of
powers and responsibilities between national, regional and local authorities.
There has often been a strong correlation between centralization and size, so
that power tends to be more narrowly held in smaller polities. More recently,
where opposition to the establishment focused in a capital city has led to the
development of successful regionally-based political parties, thedevolutionof
power to regional assemblies has sometimes occurred. There is a limit to how
genuinedecentralizationcan be unless the constitution is overtly federal (see
federalism), because ultimately the national government is responsible for
policy and accountable to the electorate for whatever goes wrong. Thus, while
Centralization