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-side party strategies in a single comparative design. The town-level evidence shows that 1990s deindustrialization and rising mortality eroded the Hungarian Socialist Party's base and fueled the far-right Jobbik, clearing the path for Fidesz's hegemony. The Democratic Party's neoliberal pivot produced a parallel American realignment, with Trump consolidating a multiracial working-class coalition in regions scarred by deaths of despair. Saving democracy demands more than defending its principles; it requires addressing material suffering.

In: Backlash: The Global Rise of the Radical Right, edited by Don Kalb and Walden Bello (pp.82-106) Publisher: Pluto Books,  Editors: Don Kalb, Walden Bello