Policy Forum 

# Liberalism, Authoritarianism, and Good and Bad Transitions 

##### Watch the Event 

Download:

[ 

Video 

](https://fastly-unsigned-us-east-1-prod.brightcovecdn.com/media/v1/pmp4/static/clear/6039378657001/e97b3b67-3a12-40d8-9263-2f38e09cc687/f200b2be-b972-4e78-88c2-896508fac3e6/main.mp4) 

[ 

Audio 

](https://cdn.cato.org/archive-2019/Liberalism+Authoritarianism+and+Good+and+Bad+Transitions.mp3) 

Join the conversation on X using [\#CatoEvents](https://x.com/hashtag/CatoEvents). Follow [@CatoInstitute](https://x.com/catoinstitute) on X to get future event updates, live streams, and videos from the Cato Institute.

Date and Time 

November 15, 2019 12 - 1:30 PM EST 

Location 

F.A. Hayek Auditorium, Cato Institute 

Share This Event 

##### Featuring 

Featuring **Leszek Balcerowicz**, Former Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister, Poland; moderated by **Ian Vasquez**, Director, Center for Global Liberty and Prosperity, Cato Institute. 

Thirty years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the transition experience of ex-socialist countries toward the market has been varied, with cases of successful economic and political reforms and cases of reform failure. Leszek Balcerowicz will explain how free-market economies based on the rule of law perform incomparably better than centrally planned economies, but, as he will also point out, that they can be undermined by constant pressure from illiberal interest groups, as is the case in many overregulated or fiscally fragile Western countries. Drawing from these experiences, he will discuss how various institutional regimes produce good and bad transitions, including more-recent ones toward authoritarianism.

[![Creative Commons License](/build/cato_2020/images/creative-commons.svg)](http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/) 
This work is licensed under a [Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/).