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Lessons from the Political Economy of Authoritarian Capitalism in Hungary

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Peer-reviewed

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Report

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Abstract

The future of capitalism is not necessarily democratic. Authoritarian capitalism is gaining foothold not only in non-democratic states, such as China but even in countries with strong liberal institutions. From Greece to the US, an increasing number of countries show their symptoms. We need to look beyond the façade of the most visible political manoeuvres to understand how economic and political disciplining of citizens to create decent capitalist subjects can be combined into a political-economic model that ensures accelerated capital accumulation through increased political repression. Hungary is one of the most unusual cases. Hungarian elites followed the good governance blueprints of international institutions, implementing liberal political and economic reforms between 1990 and 2010. For long, the country was considered to be a frontrunner of the third wave of democratisation1, yet now is considered to be a frontrunner of democratic backsliding. Orbán’s political-economic model has been stable for eight years now - Fidesz gained the same amount of seats at the parliamentary election on 8 April 2018 as four years before, and thus Viktor Orbán’s party remains the dominant political force in the country. There are apparent direct political reasons for this, such as the heavily gerrymandered electoral map, the biased media landscape as well as the divisions paralysing the fractured opposition, among others. To understand the emergence of authoritarian capitalism in Hungary, we have

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Keywords

political economy, democracy, illiberalism, Hungary

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Publisher

Transnational Institute

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Sponsorship
Independent Social Research Foundation (ISRF) (unknown)