This chapter advances an alternative approach to the widely diffused paradigm in the analysis of institutional change in CEE as a process of Westernization. Instead of looking only Westward, the paper invites to rethink and reinterpret the optimistic democratization paradigm (which mainly rests on media performance assessments compared to normative democratic ideals and expected functions), and calls to acknowledge the existence of multiple post-communisms. The paper achieves this aim by (re)introducing an Eastwards post-communist comparative perspective in which Central and Eastern Europe, former Soviet states and China represent three different historical trajectories and social, political, and economic systems of post-communism.