This seminar will discuss the connection between IMF conditionality and political developments towards illiberalism by looking at certain countries in South East Europe and beyond. Merih Angin will discuss how the AK Party (AKP) managed to overcome its weaknesses within Turkish politics, during its early years, with the help of IMF conditionality as an external commitment. She will speak about the state transformation with a particular focus on the privatisations of large-scale state-economic enterprises completed during the successive AKP governments in power from 2002 to 2008. Saliha Metinsoy will discuss what causes political unrest under IMF programmes. She will put Greece in comparative perspective with the Irish, Latvian, and Portuguese cases and will speak about the impact of labour mobility and IMF labour conditionality in generating unrest. Alexander Kentikelenis’ talk will focus on structural adjustment and the social dynamics of liberal backslide. He will examine how policy reforms introduced after the onset of the economic crisis in Greece have affected the population, and present evidence of how these dynamics feed into broader social processes that challenge existing institutional arrangements.