rT ansitional Justice and Democratic Consolidation in post-communist aE stern uE rope: Romania and Albania. shapes the prospects for full democratic consolidation. Then, subsequent sections more specifically focus on how transitional justice has affected democratic consolidation in postcommunist CEE countries. I construct a typology that helps us understand where different countries in the region fit, before focusing particularly on Romania and Albania. Much has been written on transitions to democracy and why they are relevant for the health of a functioning society. Democracy and democratization studies go back at least to Schumpeter (1942) and especially with Dahl (1971) where he essentially noted “eight requirements for a Democracy among a Large Number of People.” 1 Recently, other authors have added to this ‘bucket list’ a couple of other essential ingredients, such as political accountability and the rule of law (Brown 1999). Both of these last two are important for my argument of how transitional justice mechanisms help to strengthen them respectively. As a branch of Comparative Politics, early transitology studies focused on immediate and unconditional transitions from dictatorships to consolidated democracies (Huntington 1993; O’Donnell et. al. 1986). This was done through ruptures of the former regime or through an initial pact, as the cases of Southern Europe in the late 1970s and 1980s demonstrated (Stepan & Linz 1996). Also, they focused on regime transformation following authoritarian rule and how the new emerging regime was unabashedly pro-democracy. As a matter of fact, these early expectations did not correspond to transitions from authoritarian rule in Latin America where pacts were difficult to achieve and often transition did not go smoothly (Stepan & Linz 1996). The significance of mode of transitions translated into the shape of democratic consolidation or lack thereof. In some cases, there was a return to authoritarian rule. These early transition hypotheses were revisited after the kaleidoscope of events in postcommunist CEE, where transitions took various shapes and democratization trajectories varied from case to case. While the importance of economic performance for democratization was noted as early as the 1950s (Lipset 1959), the strong causal relationship between economic well-being and the chances of success of democratization took on new relevance in post-communist Eastern Europe. While some were cases of rapid economic overturn achieved through ‘shock therapy’, others had a more gradual economic transformation such as Slovenia. Nonetheless, they were equally successful when it came to completing an early political transition and transformation toward complete democratic rule and the establishment of the rule of law. This was no doubt helped to a large degree by a firm rupture from communist regimes made possible through the quick implementation of transitional justice mechanisms such as trials and lustration processes in Czech Republic and East Germany. In other cases, including Albania and Serbia, countries got caught in a difficult and prolonged transition, although for different reasons. In Albania, the chief problem was a highly fractured elite and prolonged political warfare, while in Serbia the irredentist ethnic wars led by Milosević’s regime in his attempt to carve a “Greater Serbia” out of a rump Yugoslavia. Yet, in other cases, like Ukraine and Belarus, the transition went backward, with Belarus returning quickly to authoritarian rule (Kuzio 2002). Thus, former Communist Eastern Europe offers various trajectories to democratic consolidation and have opened up new avenues of research. As one observer has duly noted: Postcommunist Europe and Eurasia are fertile ground for testing theories that were developed in other geographical contexts- theories of democratization, institutional design, interest-group interaction, and identity politics. The reinvigorated study of the region has also produced new work that promises to enrich the general study of the political economy of reform, federalism, transitional justice, and nationalism and interethnic relations. The 1. They are: 1. Freedom to form and join organizations; 2. Freedom of expression; 3. Right to vote; 4. Eligibility for public office; 5. Right of political leaders to compete for support; 6. Alternative sources of information; 7. Free and fair elections; 8. Institutions for making government policies depend on votes and other expressions of preference. 57