In social sciences the notion of civil society has gained much attention. The growing and diversifying of a civil sector is evident in Western states. As a value in itself, it can be interpreted as an important prerequisite for modern societies to optimise the more and more complex task of problem solving. But the question arises if the definition and outlook of civil society is challenged as vision as well as reality in non Western-states confronted with different problems and possessing different structural and cultural-historical roots. Therefore the central issue of the book is the development, the importance and the functioning of the civil sector in the post-socialist countries of Eastern Europe. The second directly connected issue is the question about the character of the post-socialist transformations and the diversity of development paths. The last issue is the question about the role of regions, the struggle between decentralising and centralising forces, and the problem of the social identity in new states. This book aims to illustrate the diversity of developments looking at special cases and by comparative analysis.