Hilary Appel1; 1 Claremont McKenna College, United States
Discussion
Eastern Europe provided some of the most encouraging, early cases of political and economic liberalization. However, their illiberal backtracking and rise of populist leaders in the last decade raise the question of whether after the Cold War their specific paths to joining the liberal order—which included strict membership conditionality in key institutions, the loss of policymaking autonomy in the 1990s, and the creation of dependent market economies—may later have contributed to the subsequent rise of illiberal regimes. This paper examines whether recent illiberal trends reflect a broader global phenomenon of populist resurgence and democratic decline or was there something distinctive about their paths from communism and into multilateral institutions that accounts for their trajectory
