The end of "buying time"? Capitalism and democracy in East Central Europe before and after the financial crisis^**This paper is based on a presentation I gave at the conference of Young Economists, October 12-13, 2017 in Vienna; the Central European University’s "Rethinking Open Societies" Lecture Series in January 2017; and the "Understanding the New Europe" Seminar Series at the Johns Hopkin’s School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) Bologna, April 27, 2017. A short earlier version of the presentation has been published in: Ignatieff, Michael; Roch, Stefan (eds.), Rethinking Open Society (Budapest 2018). I thank all participants and especially Stefan Roch for helpful comments.

​​1. Introduction

Two decades after the quest of East Central European societies¹¹For the purpose of this paper, East Central Europe refers to the eight East European countries that joined the EU in 2004: the four Visegrád countries Hungary, Poland, the Czech and Slovak Republics, the three Baltic States Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, and Slovenia. to establish capitalism and democracy on the ruins of communism, democracy has come under attack. In Hungary, a country long considered one of the East European success stories; an increasingly authoritarian regime is taking roots. Other countries have seen their democracies becoming hollow. While these trends towards backsliding and hollowing of democracies in East Central Europe are not new, they have intensified since the outbreak of the Great Recession.²²Greskovits (2015).