After 1989 the countries of Eastern Europe embarked upon new directions away from central economies and one-party systems towards market economies and democratic systems. The courses of these political and economic transformations largely depended upon the ability of the emerging regimes to create legitimacy. In particular, those regimes which suffered from greater political divisiveness and significant economic problems were more likely to be confronted with a crisis of legitimacy. In this paper, the legitimation crisis theory is examined for post-communist Czechoslovakia and Hungary. It is found that the developments in Czechoslovakia and Hungary during this early transition period support the hypothesis, and, in addition, they hold implications for the survival of other transitional regimes as well as those in the West which have increasingly been confronted with questions of legitimacy.
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