Varieties of Dependency, Varieties of Populism: Neoliberalism and the Populist Countermovements in the Visegrád Four

Scheiring, Gábor

doi:10.1080/09668136.2021.1973376

Cited by 17 publications

(14 citation statements)

References 83 publications

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“…Second, the historicization of the Czech politics of debtfare state strategy-making (Hoření Samec, 2021;Šitera, 2021) nuances both scholarships' views on the repolitization of household financialization and the overall neoliberal state in this postsocialist semiperiphery. Rather than being led solely by emancipatory (Montgomerie and Tepe-Belfrage, 2019;Roberts and Soederberg, 2014) or non-emancipatory (Mikuš, 2019;Scheiring, 2021) forces, I find this repolitization to be led by their contradictory coalitions and unacknowledged consensuses beyond populism.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 80%

“…Foregrounding Czechia, I further cross-fertilize two Critical Political Economy scholarships. The state-theoretical scholarship (Drahokoupil, 2009;Jessop, 2007;Shields, 2015) follows the neoliberal state formation and its strategy-making to discuss the "populist" (Scheiring, 2021) origins and practices of their " [re]politization" (Bohle and Greskovits, 2019;Gagyi, 2021) in ECE. Using the debtfare-state scholarship (Soederberg, 2014), I foreground the role of household financialization (Mikuš and Rodik, 2021;Streeck, 2017) in this state formation and repolitization.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Politics of the Debtfare State: Repoliticizing the Czech Debt Enforcement Order and Its Limits

Šitera

2022

Critical Sociology

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In Czechia, one of the statistically most equal and least indebted states, almost one-tenth of its (mostly low-income) population is entrapped in debt enforcement proceedings. I foreground such a contradiction to investigate the politics of the debtfare state in East-Central Europe (ECE). This nuances the scholarship on the repolitization of the ECE neoliberal state by populist forces and their instrumentalization of its middle-class welfare state strategies in the 2010s. Identifying the Czech debt enforcement industry as a leading poverty industry in ECE, I explore its depoliticizing origins in the Debt Enforcement Order (DEO), a flagship legal framework regulating the creditor–debtor–bailiff relations. Interpreting the political struggle over the DEO-centered debtfare state strategy, I then trace its limited repolitization since the mid-2010s, which redirects its reforms from their original pro-creditor and -bailiff prioritization to a prioritization of low-income debtors. This politics complements the repolitization of the neoliberal state beyond populism.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 80%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Politics of the Debtfare State: Repoliticizing the Czech Debt Enforcement Order and Its Limits

Šitera

2022

Critical Sociology

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“…A Széll Kámán-terv e "belátás" biztos lenyomata. Nem véletlen, hogy akkor még többen is egyfajta neoliberális ihletettségű populizmusként aposztrofálták Orbán Viktor politikai rendszerét (Fábry, 2019, Scheiring, 2021. A miniszterelnök mindenesetre lenyűgöző sebességgel váltott, és bizonyította: az, amit korábban fiskális alkoholizmusnak hívtak Magyarországon, igenis gyógyítható.…”

Section: Benczes István a Budapesti Corvinus Egyetem Világgazdasági T...unclassified

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Benczés¹

2022

Külgazdaság

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“…Fidesz, in contrast, pursued exclusionary policies and sharpened the divide between 'insiders' in stable employment and lower-class 'outsiders'. Fidesz thus broadly followed the 'populist welfare paradigm' (Chueri, 2022) espoused by populist right-wing parties in Western Europe, with the refinment that its harsh policies related to the unemployed rather resemble 'exclusionary neoliberal populism' (Scheiring, 2021). In Turkey, government and opposition alike discursively endorsed the concept of the welfare state while Fidesz built up an alternative: the 'work-based society'.…”

Section: Declaration Of Conflicting Interestsmentioning

confidence: 99%

An illiberal welfare state emerging? Welfare efforts and trajectories under democratic backsliding in Hungary and Turkey

Szikra

Öktem

2022

Journal of European Social Policy

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Mainstream western-centric welfare state research has mostly confined itself to studying social policy in consolidated democracies and tends to assume a synergy between democracy and the welfare state. This article shifts the focus to welfare states in countries with declining democratic institutions and rising right-wing populist rule to explore a complex relationship between (de)democratization and welfare state reforms. We conduct a comparative case study of two extreme cases of democratic decline, Turkey and Hungary. We employ a sequential mixed method approach. First, we assess welfare efforts in the two countries to understand which policy areas were prioritized and whether autocratizing governments retrenched or expanded their welfare states. In the second stage, we explore the trajectory of welfare reforms in Hungary and Turkey, focusing on three analytically distinguishable dimensions of social policy change: policy content, policy procedures (including timing, parliamentary procedures, veto players); and the discourses accompanying reforms. We find that democratic decline facilitates rapid welfare state change but it does not necessarily mean retrenchment. Instead we observe ambivalent processes of welfare state restructuring. Common themes emerging in both countries are the rise of flagship programmes that ensure electoral support, a transition towards top-down decision-making and the salient role of discourse in welfare governance. Overall, similarities are stronger in procedures and discourse than in the direction of reforms. Differences in spending levels and policy content do not suggest that the two cases constitute a coherent illiberal welfare state regime. Instead, we see the emergence of authoritarian features that modify their original welfare models.

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Varieties of Dependency, Varieties of Populism: Neoliberalism and the Populist Countermovements in the Visegrád Four

Cited by 17 publications

References 83 publications

Politics of the Debtfare State: Repoliticizing the Czech Debt Enforcement Order and Its Limits

Politics of the Debtfare State: Repoliticizing the Czech Debt Enforcement Order and Its Limits

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An illiberal welfare state emerging? Welfare efforts and trajectories under democratic backsliding in Hungary and Turkey

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