External and internal factors of democratiziation in the Western Balkans

Ten years after the democratization wave in the South Eastern Europe the region still represents a crucial challenge for the geopolitical stability and development of the European Union. If in 1990, with the fall of the communist regimes, we witnessed the “explosion of democratic transitions” (Mungiu Pippidi 2006) also in this region, at the national level, the reforms of political systems and state apparatus developed with significant differences in respect to Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries. In fact, during the 1990s, some of the South Eastern European countries, featured ethno-authoritarian hybrid regimes that hold back the transition processes. What explains the difference between Central and Eastern European and South Eastern European political transitions?