Authoritarian Neoliberalism, Radical Conservatism and Social Policy within the European Union: Croatia, Hungary and Poland

Abstract

Exploring political and social policy developments in Croatia, Hungary and Poland, three EU member states, this article addresses the hegemonic position of authoritarianism, populism, conservatism and neoliberalism, albeit articulated differently in each state. All three countries are marked by modes of governmentality that combine heteronormative familialism, repatriarchialization, nationalism, ethnicized demographic renewal and anti‐immigrant sentiments. In each, a kind of layered social divestment is occurring, delivering a radical new vision of social reproduction and fundamental differentiations in terms of access to social citizenship between those seen as ‘deserving’ of support and those who are not, who are increasingly subjected to disciplinary measures. Although the degree of welfare retrenchment varies across the cases, the radical nature of restructuring, breaking down traditional notions of left and right on welfare, is suggestive of longer‐term restructurings not reliant on individual politicians or parties.

The Dialectic of Neoliberal Exploitation and Cultural‐Sexual Exclusion: From Special Economic Zones to LGBT‐Free Zones in Poland

“…In this sense, their political attitude which they adopted in Poland was a mixture of cultural and economic factors: for them, “nationalism is not just identity with a swagger, but a concrete economic appeal: We will build industry at home, we will renovate the places liberalism bypassed, and we will not allow Poles to be treated as neocolonial subjects” (Ost 2018:122). Having gained power, the PiS government did not introduce any significant changes to socio‐economic policy, showed neoliberal ignorance for the public sector (neglected the health service, education and science sectors) (Stubbs and Lendvai‐Bainton 2020), and was strongly involved in transforming the ideological sphere (the nationalist vision of history, control of school programmes [Żuk 2018], fetishisation of the nation, traditionalist family, overt dislike for any minorities and the dominance of national Catholicism in the public sphere). In this way, PiS politicians evoked emotions around identity and historical issues and diverted attention from real socio‐economic problems.…”

The Temporalities of Policy Translation in the Semi-Periphery: Revisiting the Europeanisation of Welfare Reforms in Central and South East Europe

“…al, 2014, Szikra, 2014. Gender mainstreaming has been banned as a term and, in its place, deeply paternalistic family mainstreaming initiatives have emerged (Juhasz, 2012;Lendvai-Bainton, 2017, Stubbs andLendvai-Bainton, 2020). The OMC assumes a deeply apolitical character to policy learning, at a time when a reactionary and authoritarian backlash in many Member States has problematised the 'unity' of supposed 'core European values'.…”

“…The fiction of EU integration is an extensive list of activities in Hungary: setting and failing debt targets, faking implementation reports on Structural Fund projects, redefining key concepts and allowing funding for political activities linked to the new authoritarianism as, for example, the funding of an anti-abortion campaign in Hungary by the EU Progress Fund under the heading of gender mainstreaming (Juhasz, 2012). Fictions arise both as a response to the practical impossibilities of imposed time for implementation, 'saving time', as well as a form of political defiance and mockery against the 'core' and 'European unity', precisely reworking in a reactionary way the contradictions of the deeply colonial roots of EU integration (Stubbs and Lendvai-Bainton, 2020). The proactive use of strategies such as the 'copying and pasting' of policy texts, the production of incomprehensible texts and the fictional narratives of progress all work here towards deconstructing both the political framing and values of 'European social policy' as well as the technical elements of policy compliance.…”

Inequality, Poverty and Education in the Post-Yugoslav Space: from immobility to inclusion?

“…The other, associated with what the Croatian sociologist Josip Županov (2002) referred to as desecularization (occurring alongside descientisation, retraditionalisation and repatriarchalisation), sees education as inculcating and ensuring the reproduction of national, cultural, religious, values, with schools as a place for prayer but not for sex education, apparently, and for a singular, and distorted, reading of national history. Although not the topic at hand here, I am particularly worried by the rise of a kind of authoritarian neoliberalism across the region and beyond that manages to combine the two frames perfectly well (Stubbs and Lendvai, 2019).…”