Illiberal thought collectives and policy networks in Hungary and Poland

ABSTRACT

Focusing on the emergence of ideas and the knowledge networks involved in producing a counter-narrative to the liberal and neoliberal ideational consensus of the 1990s and 2000s, this contribution traces the intellectual trajectory of the illiberal turn in Poland and Hungary. We make use of the ideational scholarship differentiating between public philosophies, problem definitions and policy solutions to discuss how illiberal state transformation and heterodox socio-economic policies became the new paradigm that the two ruling parties PiS and Fidesz have promoted during the last decade. We suggest that the viability of PiS and Fidesz’s policies was largely conditioned by the increasing influence of conservative networks in the public sphere which prepared the grounds for these reforms. The contribution discusses the main intellectual actors, structures, and ideas paving the way and legitimizing illiberalism in the two countries.

KEYWORDS:

• Illiberalism
• ideas
• Central and Eastern Europe
• Hungary
• Poland
• thought collectives
• think tanks

Acknowledgements

Earlier versions of this paper were presented at the conferences ‘The Rule of law at Risk? From Ideational Consensus to Increased Dissensus’ on November 21st 2018 at the Institute for European Studies of the Université libre de Bruxelles and ‘The Illiberal Thought Collective: Central Europe and Beyond’ on March 6th 2019 at Johns Hopkins University SAIS. We thank Paul Blokker, Valentin Behr, Ramona Coman, Mitchell Orenstein and Laure Neuymayer for their helpful comments on earlier drafts. Aron Buzogány acknowledges support through the Austrian Marshall Plan Foundation Visiting Fellowship at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) of the Johns Hopkins University, Washington, DC.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).