ARTIKEL /ARTICLES Plausible Theory, Unexpected Results: The Rapid Democratic Consolidation in Central and Eastern Europe WOLFGANG MERKEL I n 1990, when the system in Eastern Europe had only just begun to change, an essay appeared entitled»The Necessity and Impossibility of Simultaneous Economic and Political Reform.« Its author was none other than Jon Elster(1990); this brilliant theoretician needed only to glance at the unfolding events to reach the simple conclusion: impossible! The need to achieve effective economic and political reforms simultaneously made successful»holistic reforms«(Wiesenthal 1993) preposterous. Im­possibility, necessity, and simultaneity – their interdependence became embodied in a theorem that rapidly gained currency in the social sciences as»the dilemma of simultaneity«(Offe 1991). Few authors analyzing re­gime changes in Eastern Europe have failed to refer to the»dilemma,« discussing it affirmatively 1 and seeking its confirmation in the empirical facts. Its theoretical elegance was captivating; its suggestiveness difficult to overlook. What, then, was the essence of the theorem? According to the theorem’s preamble, the transformation of commu­nist regimes in Eastern Europe and in the successor states of Central Asia differed categorically from all regime changes in the first and second waves of democratization; the main difference lay in the fact that two, perhaps three transformation processes were occurring simultaneously: political (from dictatorship to democracy), economic(from a command economy to a market economy), and, in some instances, governmental(founding or refounding of nation-states). The postcommunist regime changes were transformation processes that in Western Europe had, as a rule, taken place in evolutionary and consecutive fashion over centuries. In Eastern Europe they were now fusing into a political project to be deliberately conceived and quickly carried out by politicians. There were neither his­torical precedents nor a benevolent victorious occupation power that could»externally« impose a solution to basic territorial, constitutional, and economic issues, as had been the case with Germany and Japan in the second wave of democratization. 1. The author of these lines is certainly included in this(Merkel 1994, 1996). ipg 2/2008 Merkel, Democratic Consolidation 11