Elected Affinities: Democracy and Party Competition in Slovakia and the Czech Republic and Crucibles of Political Loyalty: Church Institutions and Electoral Continuity in Hungary

Extract

Elected Affinities: Democracy and Party Competition in Slovakia and the Czech Republic. By Kevin Deegan-Krause. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2006. 352p. $65.00.

Crucibles of Political Loyalty: Church Institutions and Electoral Continuity in Hungary. By Jason Wittenberg. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006. 314p. $80.00.

The addition of Central and Eastern Europe to the laboratory of subjects for comparative politics is a welcome consequence of postcommunist transformation. Scholars of the region now draw more firmly on a repertoire of theory and methods from the discipline as a whole, as well as their historical insight and detailed understanding of particular countries within the region. These studies are exemplary in that regard. They pose clear questions arising from broad theoretical concerns, they answer them by mobilizing an array of qualitative approaches and sophisticated quantitative methods, and they structure their arguments by a series of building blocks with an explanatory focus.