Who holds the line? Liberalism beyond its adversaries in post-socialist Eastern Europe

Liberalism in post-socialist Eastern Europe remains understudied. Existing comparative scholarship portrays regional liberalism primarily in the negative, through its authoritarian, populist, and illiberal adversaries, both internal and external, leaving a critical gap in understanding liberalism itself: its meaning, practices, and persistence. Drawing on research in comparative politics and conceptual history, this state-of-the-art review highlights how the backsliding paradigm has narrowed attention to democratic instability and erosion and to tensions between liberal principles and local political traditions. By implication, this literature has sidelined the ideological strategies through which liberal democratic order has been built and sustained. To close this gap, the review shifts attention from liberalism’s foes to its advocates: moderate democratic parties. It underscores the need of examining the microfoundations and reactivations of various liberal scripts and their encasement in party political ideologies, bringing to light the often-overlooked role of party ideologues. The review concludes by outlining a three-pronged heuristic that provides analytical tools that can guide future research on the “really existing liberalism” and to explain not only how liberalism recedes and the language of the center dies, but also how it persists.