CNN: CHINA IN EUROPE
“Orban and Vucic are both the kind of illiberal leaders who are positioning their countries between the rivaling geo-political blocs, hoping to avoid too strong dependence on any one of them,”
May 11, 20241 min read
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Gabor Scheiring, PhD
Political Economist, Public Sociologist
The common narrative running through all of these themes is the examination of why and how the crisis of liberal globalism causes social disintegration, individual suffering, the rupture of the micro-fabric of life in the peripheral parts of economies, why this polycrisis often leads to illiberalism and authoritarianism - and what needs to happen to make democratic revival possible.
How economic crises become personal
How do economic crises become a personal crisis, in our health, relationships, and everyday lives. When economies fracture, the damage doesn't stay in the spreadsheets. It travels into bodies, relationships, and daily life: rising mortality, eroding mental health, communities coming apart at the seams. My work traces this arc from the macroeconomic shock to lived human suffering, asking a question mainstream economics rarely asks: what happens to people when the basic conditions for reproducing their lives are destroyed? Living in a world facing a polycrisis (environmental crises, mental health issues, pandemics, anxiety caused by automation, geopolitical conflict, economic instability, etc.) we must connect the macro level (economic policy) and the micro level (lived experience) in order to gain a genuine understanding of how our world is shaped.
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POLITICO
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The Political Economy of Development
Some areas stay poor and underdeveloped not by accident, but by design. Communities find themselves on the economic periphery not just in the Global South but in Europe and the US too. These peripheries- from Eastern Europe's rustbelts, through Latin American middle-income countries, all the way to the American Midwest - are structurally positioned to absorb the costs of globalization, while others capture its gains. My work is both historical-comparative and solution-oriented. By looking at the comparative political economy of global economic hierarchies, dependency capitalism, and development models I am trying to understand the dynamics of the periphery as a global phenomena. I study these dynamics comparatively, tracing how dependency shapes politics, health, and the prospects for development - and what genuine alternatives might look like.
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The Decline and Revival of Democracy
Why is democracy declining worldwide and what are the paths to renewal. Illiberalism didn't come from nowhere. It was built on and from the wreckage of broken promises - economic insecurity, cultural dismissal, and political voicelessness - and the failure of centrist political forces to address these issues. Liberal democracy loses legitimacy when it fails to put people at the center.
My comparative analysis focuses on the spread of illiberalism, national populism and authoritarian capitalism. Drawing on frontline political experience (as a former Hungarian MP), rigorous comparative research and non-Western-centric analysis, I examine how democracies erode, why authoritarians win, and what it would actually take to reverse the tide.
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Contact
GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY IN QATAR EDUCATION CITY
Qatar Foundation
P.O. Box 23689
Doha Qatar
Room Number 0D11
Contact: +974 4457 8375
Email: gabor [at] gaborscheiring.com
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