The Routledge Dictionary of Politics, Third Edition
Central Europe, sometimes called East-Central Europe, is more of a concept than a geographical term. Consensually, whatever it is called, it includes primarily the ‘big three’ former communist European countries—Poland, Hungary and what was Czechoslovakia, and is now the Czech Republic and Slovakia. Indeed, ‘Central Europe’ was more recently known as Eastern Europe when that connoted the European part of the Soviet bloc. Conceptually the idea that these and some other smaller nations had something in common other than geographical proximity comes from an earlier designation, now somewhat politically incorrect. Central Europe belongs to the old ‘Middle Europe’, or the ‘Mitteleuropa’ of late 19th- and early 20th-century politics. As such it covers the incredibly complex patchwork of national identities, linguistic and religious areas, and interwoven political histories of a large swathe of Europe which has never had any lengthy settled period of established nation states.
The borders of the member states of Central Europe are roughly the ones constructed after the Versailles Peace Treaty of 1919.
This treaty was dedicated to the idea of giving national independence to areas nearly always ruled by others, primarily the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the Tsarist Russian Empire. For about 20 years after that settlement these countries existed; however, they rapidly fell a long way from the Versailles ideal of liberal democracies. In fact, the intermingling of nationalities and ethnicities rendered the Versailles dream impossible, as did the lack of social and historical under-pinnings for democracy in the region. When the Second World War, which destroyed their independence, ended they were incorporated anew into an empire—the Soviet Empire, from which they escaped, more or less simultaneously, in 1989.
Less so than the Balkans, but still importantly, the question for this area is whether it can sustain a democratic transition. To a large extent, the hope for such transition depends on the vacuity of the label; that is, it depends on the old traditions of Mitteleuropa declining, and the predominantly ethnic and nationalistic bases for the societies evaporating so that the states rely for legitimacy on technical efficiency and procedural democratic competence—as with Western democracies. The aim of the governments of Central Europe is certainly to lose this special identity. Membership of any Western international organization, but especially NATO (which some have already achieved) and the European Union, is the ideal, and little effort is being made to create a cohesive regional political voice.
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