Abstract
'Europeanization' has not made the trick as the countries of Central Eastern Europe tend to slide away from democracy toward populist or even semi-authoritarian regimes. Throughout the last two decades, a discourse of 'varieties of capitalism' has achieved prominence in assessing the current unstable state and changes of long, steadily developing postwar welfare capitalism (Hall and Soskice 2001; Elsner and Hanappi 2008; Hancké 2009).
As suggested by Lane and Myant (2007) or Norkus (2012), alternatively, Frane, Primož and Matevž (2009) the answer to the analytical dilemma may lie in identifying particular practices of CEE capitalism within this frame. Can we recognize the current shape of capitalism in the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland as having a distinctive and, at the same time, shared populist semi-authoritarian pattern? Have we got in 'historical' circle, after 30 years, beck to the semi-totalitarian populism?