In this powerful contribution to the literature on the democratisation of post-communist Europe, Milenko Petrovic's path-breaking study shows that the slower movement towards parliamentary democracy and a market economy in the Balkan states was not in fact the result of some innate political or social inferiority but rather of the significant differences in the nature of communist power in those states. Richard Crampton, St Edmund Hall, University of Oxford, UK This impressive account of the different trajectories of the countries in East Central Europe and the Balkans from the pre-communist period through to their highly differentiated EU integration experiences has the hallmarks of a benchmark study. The intricate inter-weaving of economic and political historical threads is unerringly unpicked and exposed to critical analysis by an author with a deep personal and academic knowledge of these countries. Allan Williams, Faculty of Business Economics and Law, University of Surrey, UK It is now almost a quarter of a century since the collapse of communist power in Central and Eastern Europe, and the time is ripe for a new, deep analysis of the reasons for the very diverse trajectories in the region. Milenko Petrovic has provided just such an analysis. This is a book that will force scholars to revisit and recast many of the dominant interpretations of post-communist Europe. Leslie Holmes, Professor of Political Science, University of Melbourne, Australia.