Edinburgh Napier University

  Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) is a region that includes the European countries that were under Soviet economic and political influence before 1990 and often referred to as the ‘Eastern Bloc’. Since the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union, the economies of the CEE region have frequently been referred to as in ‘transition’ and more recently as ‘transformed’ or ‘post-transition’. The ‘transition’ from state socialism has been viewed as one of the most significant economic, political, and social processes in recent history (McCann and Schwartz, 2006). The CEE region has provided an engine of growth, dynamism, and mobility often lagging in the EU-15 (Ederer, Schuler, & Willms, 2007).