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WHEN AUTHORITARIAN CAPITALISM FAILS AT DEVELOPMENT: WHAT HUNGARY’S ACCUMULATIVE STATE AND THE EXHAUSTION OF ORBÁNISM TEACH US
Why do some authoritarian capitalist regimes fail at development despite wielding robust state power? Existing explanations rooted in liberal institutionalism reduce this failure to rent-seeking, while developmental authoritarianism expects that centralised power enables long-horizon transformation. This article draws on the concept of the accumulative state to offer a new interpretation of why authoritarian capitalism fails to promote development. The accumulative state is a
Aug 31 min read
UNRAVELING LIBERALISMS: HUNGARIAN INSIGHTS FOR AMERICA AND ELSEWHERE
Abstract: Why have liberal democracies yielded to illiberal populism? Comparing Hungary and the United States, we argue that the interaction between socioeconomic shocks and the strategic failures of center-left parties drives this transformation. We combine fine-grained Hungarian settlement-level data on industrial employment, mortality, and electoral outcomes from 1990 to 2010 with a content analysis of party manifestos, linking demand-side material dislocations to supply-s
May 111 min read
CIRS NEWSWATCH: EXPERT INSIGHTS: EUROPE’S EMBARRASSING RECKONING
Two months into the war on Iran, the skeptics have been vindicated, and Europe’s center is slowly rediscovering the international law it abandoned in February. Liberal globalism has collapsed; violent, lawless illiberalism epitomized by Trumpism fills the void. The European center, with Merz as its figurehead, was meant to be the counterweight. Instead, when the US and Israel struck Iran on February 28, German chancellor Merz refused to “lecture” allies, declared internationa
May 92 min read
SOCIAL EUROPE: SPAIN AND NORWAY EXPOSE THE BANKRUPTCY OF EUROPE’S IRAN RESPONSE
Europe's response to the US-Israeli strikes on Iran exposes a continent locked in dependency and struggling to find its voice. Liberal globalism has collapsed, and the vacuum is being filled by an increasingly violent, lawless illiberalism that trades principle for hierarchy and force. The centre right — and its European figurehead, Friedrich Merz — is often framed as the main counterweight to illiberal disruption. Yet when the United States and Israel launched strikes on I
Mar 101 min read
GÁBOR SCHEIRING
Tracing the path of the polycrisis of liberal globalism, while mapping the responses
that foster economic and political revival.
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