Upscaling Illiberalism: Class, Contradiction, and the Rise and Rise of the Populist Right in Post-socialist Central Europe

Kalb, Don

doi:10.1007/s40647-018-0221-3

Cited by 29 publications

(25 citation statements)

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“…Shields (2014) also showed that neoliberal policies in Poland contributed to working-class populism and the rise of the illiberal right. These processes allowed for the upscaling of illiberalism and a shared East-Central European project against the liberal status quo (Kalb, 2018). A new strand of qualitative research in the wake of the Trump and Brexit shocks also showed that working-class populism in the USA and UK is connected to rising social and regional polarisation, the sense of being left behind as new regional economic centres emerge (Hochschild, 2018; McQuarrie, 2017).…”

Section: Concluding Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Despite the existence of a nativist undercurrent harking back to the dissolution of the Hungarian Kingdom and the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the majority of workers did not embrace it until the second half on the 2000s. However, in 2010, following eight years of Socialists–Liberal coalition, Orbán conquered the parliament with a sweeping electoral success, building a regime that he infamously labelled the ‘illiberal state’, elevating neo-nationalism to the centre stage of politics as a crucial component of the new right hegemony (Fabry, 2019; Kalb, 2018; Szombati, 2018).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Left Behind in the Hungarian Rustbelt: The Cultural Political Economy of Working-Class Neo-Nationalism

Scheiring

2020

Sociology

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Nationalism is back with a renewed force. Hungary is a virulent example of the new nationalist ascendancy. As the country was a former liberal star pupil, Hungary’s neo-nationalist turn has been puzzling researchers for years. This study goes beyond the entrenched polarisations in the literature by highlighting the dynamic interplay between culture, structure and identity. It proposes to conceptualise Hungary’s neo-nationalist turn as a Polanyian countermovement against commodification, globalisation and deindustrialisation. The article presents the results of a thematic analysis of 82 interviews with workers in four towns in Hungary’s rustbelt and highlights how the multiscalar lived experience of commodifying reforms violated an implicit social contract and changed workers’ narrative identities. In the absence of a class-based shared narrative and lacking a viable political tool to control their fate, working-class neo-nationalism emerged as a new narrative identity to express workers’ anger and outrage.

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Section: Concluding Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Left Behind in the Hungarian Rustbelt: The Cultural Political Economy of Working-Class Neo-Nationalism

Scheiring

2020

Sociology

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“…A second version of communitarian populism emphasises an alleged ethnopopular oppression through an allegedly privileged and 'do-gooder' elite which seeks to please international markets and financially support migrants and foreigners, denying the 'common man' its fair economic share of societal resources (Shields 2012). The construction of the 'elite' takes a more capitalist turn in this variety, demonising financial market links and 'global capital' (Kalb 2018). 4 In turn, the construction of 'the people' is more class-based in this kind of populism, while retaining the focus on an ethnoculturally demarcated subset of economically lower classes (Gidron and Hall 2017).…”

Section: Communitarianism Populismmentioning

confidence: 99%

Varieties of populism and the challenges to Global Constitutionalism: Dangers, promises and implications

Koch

2020

Glob. Con.

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This article analyses the rise of populism and its discursive challenge to global constitutionalism (GC). It shows that populist contestation is more ambivalent than often suggested: its challenge depends on the populist variety and can both undermine or support liberal principles of GC. Building on the ideational approach to populism and a framework of transnational politicisation, a proposed typology identifies both communitarian types of populism and cosmopolitan types of populism. Illustrative case studies of the Alternative for Germany, the Polish Law and Justice Party, the Democracy in Europe Movement and Peru’s Alberto Fujimori substantiate these empirically. While all cases contest a perceived lack of popular sovereignty in a largely non-majoritarian global constitutional order, varieties of populism present contrasting responses: communitarian types push for global de-constitutionalisation in line with illiberal nationalist majoritarianism, while cosmopolitan types support global constitutionalisation according to liberal and democratic principles. Further, neo-socialist populists campaign against neoliberal principles in GC, but remain divided about supporting political principles beyond the state. These findings suggest an emerging politicisation of the process of global constitutionalisation at the societal level according to principles of democratic legitimacy; and global constitutional differentiation depending on outcomes of these normatively ambivalent and empirically contingent political contests.

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“…National-socialist (stricto sensu) mobilizations-first in Poland in the early 2000s, then in Hungary after 2006, and again around the elections in Poland in 2015 and in Slovakia in 2016-transformed this bloc into a boisterous illiberal affront against a cosmopolitan European Union. 32 Neoliberal cosmopolitanism was meeting its "other" in neo-nationalist electoral mobilizations driven by the politics of class without class, endorsed by the "white working classes" of the provinces.…”

Section: Ab or Pol Anyian C Ountermovement S And The Making Of Tmentioning

confidence: 99%

12. Post-Socialist Contradictions: The Social Question in Central and Eastern Europe and the Making of the Illiberal Right

Kalb¹

2019

The Social Question in the Twenty-First Century

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The Social Question in Central and Eastern Europe and the Making of the Illiberal Right Don Kalb Jan Breman and Marcel van der Linden have provocatively claimed that the Global South is coming to the North, rather than the other way around. 1 Not "development" toward Northern modernity, but the informalization and flexibilization of the North, as in the South. They see the global economic agenda as hijacked by capitalist interests that seek the precariatization and stepped-up exploitation of the world's laboring populations. Global agencies duplicitously present this agenda as one of employment generation and poverty reduction-and therefore representing the "general interest. " "Rigidities" stemming from the old language of labor cannot be allowed to derail this. The language of labor is a particularist trick on behalf of "rent seekers, " "insiders, " and "oligopolies of labor. " The rhetoric of global institutions has perhaps been changing slightly since the financial crises of 2008-2014. Global economic technocrats consider social inequality now evidently as a negative. But the demand for "structural adjustment" and all that it entails in terms of precariatization and the flexibility of labor remains pervasive, from the IMF to the OECD to the ECB. And then there are "the markets" with their imperious judgments and their rejection of inflation. There is no reason to believe that a new era has arrived. But as they are making this claim, Breman and van der Linden are sharply aware of differences and differentiations worldwide. There is no implication of global homogenization around a zero point of social dumping. But the overall direction they picture is globally shared, and it is useful that they state it without further ado. Until the recent revolt of "angry white labor" in the provinces-a symbol and figure of speech, of course, not a simple reality-social democrats and center-liberals of the "varieties of capitalism" school would certainly have responded to such a

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Upscaling Illiberalism: Class, Contradiction, and the Rise and Rise of the Populist Right in Post-socialist Central Europe

Cited by 29 publications

References 12 publications

Left Behind in the Hungarian Rustbelt: The Cultural Political Economy of Working-Class Neo-Nationalism

Left Behind in the Hungarian Rustbelt: The Cultural Political Economy of Working-Class Neo-Nationalism

Varieties of populism and the challenges to Global Constitutionalism: Dangers, promises and implications

12. Post-Socialist Contradictions: The Social Question in Central and Eastern Europe and the Making of the Illiberal Right

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