Book Talk • The Anatomy of Post-Communist Regimes

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 which had been developed for the analysis of Western-type regimes were applied to the various phenomena in the newly liberated countries. In The Anatomy of Post-Communist Regimes (CEU Press, 2020), Bálint Magyar and Bálint Madlovics propose a systematic renewal of this descriptive vocabulary, shifting from Western-centered perspectives to authentic, context-rich conceptualizations. Focusing on Central Europe, the post-Soviet countries, and China, this study provides concepts and theories to analyze the actors, institutions, and dynamics of post-communist democracies, autocracies, and dictatorships. The book is open access and can be downloaded for free from the authors’ website, postcommunistregimes.com.

BÁLINT MADLOVICS (1993) is a junior research fellow at the CEU Democracy Institute. He holds an MA in political science (2018) from Central European University and has published peer-reviewed articles, book chapters, and a book on post-communist regimes. Formerly, he was a research fellow at the Financial Research Institute in Budapest (2018–2019), and visiting professor at Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest (2021–2022).