To understand why the imitation of western-style liberal democracy failed post-communist Central Europe, one has to consider the agency of the lead partner, the West. Mimicry is a strategy of colonial power, that stems from the logic of the dominant: it is encouraged on the condition that it fails. The excitement when the barriers came crashing down – the actual wall in Berlin and the imagined Iron Curtain across Europe – soon cooled. The westerners were disappointed with the easterners, and the easterners were disappointed with their disappointment. There was the usual scorn with which the privileged view those who are less rich and powerful, and who, as the more fortunate see it, have only themselves to blame. But, more