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![handle is hein.journals/jnlodmcy27 and id is 33 raw text is:
What's Wrong with East-Central Europe?
LIBERALISM'S
FAILURE TO DELIVER
Ivan Krastev
Ivan Krastev is chairman of the Centre for Liberal Strategies in Sofia
and permanent fellow at the Institute for Human Sciences in Vienna. A
founding board member of the European Council on Foreign Relations
and associate editor of Europe's World, he is also a frequent contribu-
tor to the New York Times, the Financial Times, Foreign Affairs, and
numerous other publications. His latest book is Democracy Disrupted:
The Politics of Global Protest (2014).
James Dawson and Sein Hanley's thoughtful essay is a major contribu-
tion to the study of backsliding. According to Wikipedia, backslid-
ing is a term used within Christianity to describe a process by which
an individual who has converted to Christianity reverts to pre-conver-
sion habits and/or lapses or falls into sin. Falling into illiberalism is
the common sin of many newly emerged democracies in East-Central
Europe (ECE).
Arguing with my October 2007 essay in these pages Is East-Cen-
tral Europe Backsliding? The Strange Death of the Liberal Consensus,
Dawson and Hanley insist that the illiberal turn in the region is a side-
effect of the elite-focused, incentive-driven reform processes overseen
by the EU, which have left citizens unexposed to the philosophical
rationale for liberal-democratic institutions. In the authors' view, it
was an illusion to think that the region had achieved democratic con-
solidation, and the current process of backsliding is deeply rooted in the
absence of a more value-based democratic politics. For them, it is the
opportunism of the liberal elites rather than the radicalism of the popu-
lists that bears most of the blame for the erosion of liberal democracy in
the region. What makes their analysis particularly valuable is that they
focus not just on Viktor Orbin's Hungary, but on the region as a whole.
The most recent developments in East-Central Europe support some
of the major arguments of Dawson and Hanley's essay. Poland, the great
success story of East-Central Europe and the best economic-growth per-
Journal of Democracy Volume 27, Number ] January 2016
© 2016 National Endowment for Democracy and Johns Hopkins University Press](ViewImageLocal?handle=hein.journals/jnlodmcy27&div=6&collection=&method=preview&ext=.png&size=3)