The images of the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and of the Silent Revolution in Eastern Europe have become symbols of political transformation. Over the last decades, attempts have also been made in other regions of the world to transform authoritarian regimes and planned economies into market-based democracies. Managing this change is one of the greatest political challenges of our time. The experiences of the last twenty years, however, constitute a vast body of knowledge for leaders who will confront similar challenges in the future. The Bertelsmann Foundation, in cooperation with prominent scholars, has developed criteria for evaluating development and transformation processes, aiming to offer strategic guidance for future change. The book presents criteria for the evaluation of the transformation processes toward democracy and a market economy, with comparative country surveys of the transformation processes in Poland, Hungary, Slovenia, South Korea, Taiwan, and Uruguay. The authors also provide criteria for evaluating development processes such as overcoming structural underdevelopment, strengthening the rule of law, and creating a civil society; with related surveys of Bolivia, Mali, and Mauritius.
