Interest Politics in Central and Eastern Europe

This special issue is the outcome of a workshop on ‘Interest Group in Central and Eastern Europe’ organised by Groupe d’analyse socio-politique des pays d’Europe centrale et orientale (GASPPECO) at the Universite´ Libre de Bruxelles in November 2004. We hope that this special issue will be the first of many contributions aimed at enlightening our understanding of the interaction between politics and society in Central and Eastern Europe and to incorporating the study of post-Communist interest politics into the mainstream literature of interest representation in contemporary democracies. We would like to thank all the participants in the 2004 workshop for their contributions to the existing research on interest politics in the region, and the enriching and lively debates on the current agenda and the challenges ahead. We are very grateful to the contributors to this special issue for welcoming our editorial suggestions and for being flexible in accommodating them. Our special thanks go to the editorial board of Perspectives on European Politics and Society for accepting the publication of this special issue and most particularly to Cameron Ross for his invaluable support and patience during the editing process