The first puzzle this work addresses is to what extent the Eastern European democracies, after ten years of transition manage to have functioning democracies as the Western European ones?

The second puzzle that this book addresses is how, despite the volatility, low turnout, instability, extremism manifested through political parties all indicators of inchoate consolidation managed to create functioning democracies?

The functioning of democracy is assessed through one of the most important tenets of a democratic system the citizens being able to have their preferences represented (Huber and Powell, 1994). Thus this book focuses on the quality of democracy manifested through the programmatic linkages between citizens and political parties. Political parties are essential in ensuring the quality of the democratic process (Kitschelt et al. 1999). They are organizations that intermediate interests in all democratic systems. Hence it is important to emphasize whether parties are able to build programmatic linkage with citizens. Programmatic linkages are in indicator of democratic quality in countries where these do not necessarily predominate (Kitschelt et al., 1999).The assertion of this book is that focusing on the quality the democratic process or whether citizens “get what they want” (Huber and Powell, 1994) or on the output of the democratic system reveals a less worrisome picture than that displayed by focusing on the stability of the institutional stability.