One of the challenges presented to democratization theory by the collapse of communist regimes is the need to take into account the impact of ethnonational diversity on the processes of transition. This article explores that question in a comparative analysis of the dissolutions of the multinational federations of Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, and the Soviet Union. It revisits what has been a core—although usually unarticulated—premise of the democratization literature: that the decisions and negotiations that critically shape regime transition occur in a single, central political arena, a political space common to all actors. In contrast to that perspective, the strategic political context for transition in multinational states differs both from that in homogeneous states and from that in unitary multinational states, in offering multiple arenas of political contestation. The implication for democratization in multinational states is that, depending on the institutional structure of the state, regime change may occur at different rates in different substate political arenas—the republics—in such a way as to trigger the erosion of central control over the transition. Where democratization theory has emphasized strategic choice conditioned by the balance of power between regime and opposition actors, an accounting of the politics of transition in ethnofederal states must emphasize (1) strategic choices by actors in multiple political arenas and (2) the shifting balance of power between center and republics.

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The federal firearms legislation proposed and enacted between the two world wars, although a breakthrough in federal activism on the issue, left a neutral legacy for future regulatory efforts. The 1927 statute barred handguns from the U.S. postal system without closing off alternative shipping routes. The National Firearms Act of 1934 ultimately limited its registration provisions to "gangster" weapons, like machine guns. The more inclusive Federal Firearms Act of 1938 proved impossible to effectively enforce. In view of the New Deal Justice Department's ambitious regulatory pro posals, which would be considered far-reaching even by later standards, this lackluster record proved decidedly anti- climactic. The minimal impact of federal law was partially rooted in the low enforcement priorities of the Treasury De partment and was in part attributable to the influence of a traditional individualist ethos hostile to the "civilizing" pre tensions of federal intervention. But just as important as the administrative and cultural barriers to gun control effective ness was the character of the policymaking process. Anti- regulation forces out-organized Justice Department regu lators, with their vaguer public anticrime constituency, and parlayed their intensive commitment into a formidable in fluence on the legislative outcome. This capacity to circum scribe federal initiatives helped to neutralize the impact of the first federal gun control legislation.