ABSTRACT
This aim of this chapter is to provide the conceptual groundwork for moving beyond the analysis of law and authoritarianism in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) in terms of “populist” politics. In doing so, it offers an intellectual roadmap with a view of escaping both the ideological mires and theoretical limitations that the debates on populism have fuelled in the field of constitutional theory during the last decade. In this way, it approaches “populism” as a failed epistemic device within the field of comparative constitutional law and uncovers its entanglement in a specific arrangement of power and knowledge that operates as a positive stopgap for grasping the social and political phenomena structurally supporting authoritarian politics in relation to law.
