The Birth of Nations: Understanding Variation in Political Development Across Post-Communist States

Abstract

Since the collapse of communism in the early 1990s, researchers have sought to understand the variations in political development across post-communist Europe and Central Asia. However, much of the existing research focuses only on the outcomes of specific countries within the postcommunist space or specific regions, such as former Soviet Union states. There are many compelling findings from these works; however, the existing research designs, which utilize small-N structures over narrow temporal ranges are ill suited to identify generalizable features of political outcomes and patterns across the entire post-communist region. In this project, I employ a large-N cross-sectional time series data structure to explore the relationship between the postcommunist states and democracy. This research design allows for deriving more generalizable conclusions across the post-communist space. Future research should move in the direction of a wider temporal range and empirically testing for a broader set of factors influencing the political development of post-communist states.