Illiberal statecraft in Hungary

Hall's insistence on 'authoritarian populism' as a vehicle for generating electoral support for right-wing political projects is particularly important for understanding the consolidation of neo-liberal hegemony in Eastern Europe where politicians have idealized the principle of 'work' as the cornerstone of the new moral economy. In this paper I draw on Hall's conceptualization and my previous research on the rise of political anti-Gypsyism in Hungary to reflect on the ascendance of a new brand of politics to positions of governmental power. I begin by elucidating the political and economic underpinnings of the electorate's radicalization in a rightist direction and then show how the main right-wing party modified its ideological platform and political strategy to harness this energy and take the wind out of the sails of the extremist-racist Jobbik party, which by espousing anti-Gypsyism had successfully established itself as the voice of the abandoned countryside. While Hall interpreted the success of the conservative party in terms of hegemonic ideas of freedom from the state, I show that the electoral success of conservatives turned national-populists in Hungary partially hinged on their offer to transform the neo-liberal state in an anti-egalitarian direction with a view to rewarding 'worthy' citizens. Once in government, national-populists centralized state power to reinforce the positions of the bourgeoisie whose representative felt squeezed 'from above' by cosmopolitan elites and 'from below' by the dangerous classes. I show that contrary to expectations, 'authoritarian statist' politics is difficult to consolidate and begins to threaten liberal rule within the core of 'homogeneous society'. I nevertheless argue that this re-emergent 'extremism of the center' should not (yet) be seen as leading to Fascism, mainly because it does not seek to transcend the class conflict but to reinforce class privileges and safeguard bourgeois class rule. I close my analysis by suggesting that authoritarian statism appear to offer a workable model for advancing rightist hegemony on the EU's semi-periphery.

Most analysts describe Orbanomics as anti-liberal anti-business policies only serving the interests of the political elite and loyal oligarchs. However, this is a misunderstanding. A wide segment of domestic and transnational elites benefit. Orban’s regime has a socio-economic logic that can only be understood in the context of economic globalisation. Orbanomics is a faulty and polarising answer to the crisis of Hungary’s post-1990 liberal dependent economic model. The long-term viability of Orbanomics and his regime requires authoritarian fixes. This analysis explains the political-economic logic of Orbanomics.

A short conjunctural analysis focusing on the last wave of anti-governmental mobilizaton in Hungary: the movement born out of resistance to the government's latest re-writing of the labor code.

In this article we seek to shed light on the decline of labour politics in Hungary,, which has been laid bare in a particularly stark manner by the failure of the ‘slave law’ protests and the Left’s dismal electoral performance at the last European parliamentary elections. We focus on political-economic processes that played out over a longer period of time: the generation of working-class discontents under the auspices of a neoliberal Left, the gradual fragmentation of labour in a dualised dependent economy, the rearticulation of working-class solidarities in the idiom of the nation and the subsequent incorporation of some popular demands into ‘illiberal’ politics. Our endeavour to theorise the demise of labour – and more broadly: class politics – we rely on the work of Karl Polanyi and more particularly his conceptualisation of the ‘double movement’ through which he sought to grasp the process whereby society reacts to the vicissitudes of marketisation. Elsewhere, we have demonstrated that Polanyi’s theory can be adapted to the context of contemporary financialised capitalism on Europe’s Eastern periphery and its usefulness for highlighting the tensions of postsocialist capitalist democracies. We combine Polanyi’s framework with neo-Gramscian political economy and power structure theory to describe the power blocs that compete to take control of the state and their strategies vis-à-vis capital and labour. To substantiate our theoretical narrative, we rely on empirical research we carried out over the last five years, as well as the existing literature. First, we outline the process whereby labour relations became disembedded during Hungary’s re-integration into the global capitalist economy under neoliberal governments. We then describe Fidesz’s strategy of authoritarian re-embedding, which combines pre-emptive repression with authoritarian populism, allowing the hegemonic ruling party to incorporate workers while neutralising discontents. We end by arguing that these processes have created a structural trap for labour politics.