I see four areas where the study of postsocialism has madesignificant contributions to our understanding of politics, One isin providing an ideal laboratory for comparison. Here, I refer tothree aspects of the region. First, it contains a large number ofcases—28 in all and a good deal more, once we take into account“patch-work” politics and economics of the Russian Federation, forexample. Second, the “great transformation,” to borrow from Polanyiand to refer in this instance to an even “greater” process involvingthe construction of economic and political regimes, nations, andstates, deals with virtually all the fundamentalissues of politics. Finally, the region exhibits enormous variationin political and economic outcomes, whether we focus on economic andpolitical regime types and the institutional details of theseregimes; economic performance, levels of economic development, typesof economic reforms, and the role of foreign capital; the age andsize of the state and its capacity to define and defend borders,command compliance and extract resources; and the nationalcomposition of the population. At the same time, causes are limited,largely because of the homogenizing effects of state socialism andthe temporal similarities in when these great transformationscommenced. This combination of variable outcomes and constrainedcauses is, of course, precisely what comparativists value.