Conclusion

Abstract

We have stated it before, but the point is worth repeating in the conclusion: Central Eastern European countries have successfully adopted the parliamentary-cabinet system of government in the early 1990s and have maintained a high standard of achievement ever since. The odds were against it — as they have been elsewhere, for instance in the countries of the CIS. They were against it because the success of the cabinet system entailed simultaneously the building from scratch of a working pluralistic party system, the emergence of a wholly new political ‘class’ able to operate within the context of an ‘open’ political system and the establishment of administrative structures around the cabinet which could steer and process the amount of policy change which had to take place in the legal, economic and social fields. The results are impressive. The countries of Central Eastern Europe have a governmental system which compares well with the governmental systems of Western Europe — thus wholly justifying the European Union membership of these countries.