The Swedish Institute of International Affairs

The liberation from communism in East and Central Europe was an historic event which also raised fundamental questions on how to form functioning democracies where dictatorship had long reined. Hans Bergstrom analyzed this issue in depth in this essay from 1990. He discusses the natural territory, scale and other conditions for a functioning democracy. A serious question in 1990 concerned the territory for new nations. What forms a people, a demos, able to legitimately govern itself? (The essay was published in "Internationella Studier" no 3-4 1990, by the Swedish Institute of International Affairs.)