The collapse of communism in Eastern Europe unleashed a wave of optimism across scholarly and policy communities. For many, the transition to liberal democracy appeared not only possible but historically inevitable. The spread of elections, the drafting of new constitutions, and the alignment with Euro-Atlantic institutions seemed to confirm that post-communist states were moving toward a stable democratic order. Influential accounts such as Fukuyama’s The End of History and Huntington’s The Third Wave encapsulated this belief that the liberal-democratic model would become the dominant and perhaps final form of governance in the modern world (Fukuyama, 1989; Huntington, 1991). Within this optimistic climate, parliamentary democracy was often treated as both a normative preference and a structural safeguard against authoritarian relapse.