After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the newly gained dominance of liberal democracy as a political regime was accompanied by a new dominance of liberal democracy as a descriptive language. Concepts of political science, sociology, and economics that had been developed for the analysis of Western-type polities were applied to the various phenomena in the newly liberated countries. But the language of liberal democracies blurs the understanding of the current state of post-communism as it leads to conceptual stretching and brings in a host of hidden presumptions.

Discussant: Eli Gateva (Oxford)