It is important to understand the concept of democratization to examine newly developing democracies more critically and to have a better understanding of contemporary politics around the world. Since many countries consider themselves democracies, a scale representing the shared value and aspiration of democracy is needed to evaluate these countries critically and objectively to determine the democratic performance of these governments. The region this essay will focus on is Central and Eastern Europe. The accession of Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic to NATO in 1999 (BC Biega 2004), had a great impact on many Central and Eastern European countries as they began to adopt the concept of democracy to rebuild their countries after overthrowing the authoritarian regime. regimes in power for many years. However, the legitimacy of these democracies can be questionable; It is essential to be able to evaluate democracies that lack certain characteristics to understand democratization more critically. The purpose of this essay is to examine four countries in the Central and Eastern European region with democratic criteria and determine the legitimacy of these countries. The first section of this essay will examine the two criteria of principles of democratic governance chosen to evaluate each of the four Central and Eastern European countries and the scale that will be used in the evaluation phase. The second section will briefly explain the history of the four chosen countries and the decisions behind the selection of those four countries. The third section of the essay will examine the political and civil aspects of each country and then make the comparison...... half of the essay...... W. 2004. Dimensions of Law: Canadian and International Law in the 21st century. Toronto: Emond Montgomery Publications.BC Biega. 2002. “19th and 20th Centuries: Struggles for Freedom.” BC Biega. April, 2004. http://biega.com/history20.html Freedom House. 2013 “Albania”. Last modified 2013. http://www.freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-world/2013/albania#.UvqccfldVBl Freedom House. 2013 “Croatia”. Last modified 2013. http://www.freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-world/2013/croatia-0#.Uvn-BPldVBk Freedom House. 2013 “Latvia”. Last edited 2013. http://www.freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-world/2013/latvia#.Uvn9-PldVBk Freedom House. 2013 “Ukraine”. Last modified 2013. http://www.freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-world/2013/ukraine#.Uvn-DPldVBk O'Donnell, Guillermo. 1998. “Horizontal Accountability in New Democracies” Journal ofDemocracy 9:3: 112-126.