Romania's mixed success in the transition to a market economy, together with its legacy of ethnic conflict, poverty, and corruption, makes it easy to understand why its public is so pessimistic. Estonia and Slovakia have had a much more successful transition – especially to a market economy run under the rule of law, democracy, and relatively low levels of corruption. Estonia's capital, Tallinn, is a “boomtown,” the surging economy called the “the Baltic tiger, the sequel to the Celtic tiger [Ireland] as Europe's success story,” fueled by so many high-tech companies such as the Internet phone service Skype that outsiders call the country “E-stonia” (Tierney, 2006). Slovakia is a less prominent success, yet it has largely escaped the high levels of economic inequality that have been a hallmark of most transition countries and fares better than most former Communist states on corruption.