The processes of democratization in East Central Europe after World War I are closely linked to the ascent of national movements. The new states were intended as nation-states, however, virtually all of them had a multi-ethnic character. Along with democratization, there was extensive societal discussion on the concepts of democracy, as well as an extremely difficult attempt at consolidating the new-born democratic statehood against nationality problems.

The panel focuses on the so far underexposed problem of the “double” transformation from both a branch of a multi-ethnic empire to an independent nation-state as well as from an autocracy to a democracy. In contemporary historical and political research, the problems of democratizing and nationalizing states in East Central Europe are being addressed under a variety of premises. Older concepts such as the Triadic Nexus (Brubaker 1996) are picked up and scrutinized. Inter alia, security problems resulting from uncertain border demarcations are being analyzed in terms of their importance for the new-born state. Also, questions of dynamization between nationalization and democratization have come to the foreground, especially in the context of national minorities. The panel wishes to focus on factors and structural developments having both a fundamental importance for the democratic penetration of society as well as for the relationship between different national groups. In this way, the panel wishes to contribute to a new understanding of nationalization and democratization processes in the East Central European states in a comparative perspective.