Riding the Covid waves: authoritarian socio-economic responses of east central Europe’s anti-liberal governments

ABSTRACT The extraordinary context of the COVID-19 crisis gave governments around the world a freer hand to reshape their socio-economic orders. Political economists studying East Central Europe have started a debate in how far democratic backsliding in the region has ushered in a more authoritarian form of capitalism. Our paper examines responses to COVID-19 of four anti-liberal governments in the region: Hungary, Poland, Serbia, and Slovenia. Incorporating multiple case studies, it assesses the degree to which growing centralisation of political power has entrenched different mechanisms of authoritarian capitalism, as well as the limits to their use in different national contexts.