What is the role and influence of European integration in affecting and confirming post-Communist democratization in applicant states of Central & Eastern Europe? Drawing on theories of regime change and of European integration, Geoffrey Pridham focuses on the development and application of the EU's strategy of democratic conditionality and the patterns and dynamics of domestic politics in these new democracies and how these affect motivation towards accession. Making intensive use of elite interviews, the study proceeds by examining three levels of these countries: governance, intermediary actors and the socio-economic arena.

The volume contains the most systematic documentation available in English of the Nazi programmes of racial and eugenic extermination, including a case study of the occupation of Poland. There is a general account of the Nazi empire and of the development of German occupation policies, and the book also covers German foreign policy 1933-1945. Following the opening up of the archives in Eastern Europe, the past decade has seen the publication of important research on the Nazi extermination of the Jews, and three chapters have been substantially revised in the light of this research.

Designing Democracy is the first systematic and in-depth study of the effects of the EU's democratic conditionality, originally set out in the Copenhagen conditions of 1993, on the new political systems of Central and Eastern Europe. Using new material drawn from extensive elite interviews in several of these countries as well as in Brussels, the book throws much light on how far the EU enlargement process has really strengthened these new post-Communist democracies following their transitions in the 1990s.