基本信息出版社：Cambridge University Press
页码：324 页
出版日期：2007年03月
ISBN：0521851696
International Standard Book Number：0521851696
条形码：9780521851695
EAN：9780521851695
装帧：精装
正文语种：英语

内容简介 Before democracy becomes an institutionalized form of political authority, the rupture with authoritarian forms of power causes deep uncertainty about power and outcomes. This book connects the study of democratization in eastern Europe and Russia to the emergence and crisis of communism. Wydra argues that the communist past is not simply a legacy but needs to be seen as a social organism in gestation, where critical events produce new expectations, memories, and symbols that influence meanings of democracy. By examining a series of pivotal historical events, he shows that democratization is not just a matter of institutional design, but rather a matter of consciousness and leadership under conditions of extreme and traumatic incivility. Rather than adopting the opposition between non-democratic and democratic, Wydra argues that the communist experience must be central to the study of the emergence and nature of democracy in (post-) communist countries.
作者简介 Harald Wydra is University Lecturer in the Department of Politics at the University of Cambridge and a Fellow of St Catharine's College. He is the author of Continuities in Poland's Permanent Transition (2001).
媒体推荐 "This book is a compelling meditation on democracy set concretely in the history of European communism and its transformation. Placing culture, people and action at center stage, Harald Wydra's analysis is interpretive, scholarly and intelligent."
Michael Urban, Professor of Politics, University of Kansas

"Throughout Communism and the Emergence of Democracy, Wydra demonstrates an impressive command of social theory in several disciplines: political anthropology, communist and post-communist studies and political theory...[This is] a welcome addition to the literatures on democratic transitions and post-communist studies."
Jose A. Aleman, Journal of Politics
目录
1. Communism and democracy - a problematisation; Part I. The Experiential Basis of Communism and Democracy: 2. Revolutions, transitions, and uncertainty; 3. The political symbolism of communism; 4. Experiencing democratic transformations; Part II. Critical Events and their Symbolisations: 5. The rise of Bolshevik power; 6. The emergence of the Cold War; 7. The articulation of dissidence; 8. The collapse of communism; Part III. Democracy as a Process of Meaning-Formation: 9. The power of memory; 10. The future that failed; 11. Democracy as a civilising process.
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