This article introduces three major approaches in the analysis of contemporary democracies and relates them to the government capacity to implement policy reforms. This newly developed framework for analysis is then applied to 10 countries in Central Eastern Europe ... We find empirical evidence that all 10 countries have reached a stage of democratic consolidation among the major political institutions. Yet the capacity of each country to implement policy reforms varies considerably. While Hungary, the Czech Republic, and Lithuania performed the best "framework conditions" for introducing policy reform, we find hardly any indicators for a strong implementation of policy reforms in Latvia, Romania, and Slovakia ...