Acknowledgments; Introduction Democracy and Party Competition; Part I. Theory, Party Systems and the Procedural Quality of Post-Communist Democracy: 1. Historical legacies and strategies of democratization: pathways toward post-communist polities; 2. The quality of post-communist democracy: patterns of party competition, interest representation and governance; Part II. Setting and Research Strategy: 3. From communist rule to democracy: four central and East European countries; 4. Empirical research strategy; Part III. The Structuring of Party Competition: 5. Programmatic citizen-elite linkage strategies across post-communist polities; 6. Linkage strategies within party systems: diversity among parties; Part IV. Political Alignments and Dimensions of Competition: 7. Political divides and alignments: the politicians; 8. Electoral constituency alignments: emerging political cleavages?; Part V. Political Representation and the Quality of Democratic Governance: 9. Political representation; 10. The governability of post-communist democracies: collation politics between passions and policy interests; Part VI. Conclusion: 11. The diversity of post-communist democratic governance; Appendices; Bibliography.