Dolun, Deniz

The process of democratization still remains an ongoing process in the majority of the Eastern Bloc nations. A quarter century after the dissolution of the USSR and her satellite states, only eight of twenty-eight transitioning states have been able to fully democratize. Several of these anocratic states are today characterized by routine human rights violations, state repressions of civil society, and incarcerations of political opposition. There is limited cohesive research on how the Post-Communist formation of oligarchs across Eurasia and increases in democratic transitioning period have influenced democratization. In this study, I research, test, and explain the effects of Post-Communist oligarchies and the periods of democratic transitions on current levels of democratic consolidation in twenty-eight former socialist states through publicly available statistics and primary sources. I find that while oligarchical influence on democratization is limited, shorter democratic transitions produce significantly higher levels of democratic consolidation than their prolonged counterparts.