This study considers the multidimensional nature of the construction of the active civil society in the post-totalitarian reality of Central and Eastern Europe, covering the period of systemic transformations in the region in 1989 to the EU accession of 2004. The analysis was carried out using a multidisciplinary research perspective which incorporates historical, sociological, and legal insights, as well as those from political science. The volume illustrates the dynamic character of the process of constructing an active civil society process in a broader comparative perspective against the background of post-totalitarian societies, Germany and Italy, which underwent the process of democratic transformation in 1945 and went on to actively forge the European Community in the 1950s.

El¿bieta M. Mach is Assistant Professor at the Jagiellonian University in Kraków. Her research focuses on the development of educational systems.
Grzegorz Pöarlik is Senior Lecturer and at the Jagiellonian University¿s Institute of European Studies. His research focuses on the sociology of power, international security in the Post-Cold War era, and the civil society.
Joanna Sondel-Cedarmas is Associate Professor of Political Science at the Jagiellonian University in Kraków, Poland. Her research interests include Nationalism, Fascism, and the Far Right, as well as the memory of totalitarianism and authoritarianism.

Post-totalitarian Societies in Western Europe

Models of Systemic-Economic Transformation in Central and Eastern Europe

Reconstruction of the Rule of Law

Politics of Memory

Shaping Active European Citizenship in Post-totalitarian Societies