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The paper explores the long-term trajectory and the recent acceleration of the conflict over the rule of law in the EU. It focusses on the motivation of the two governments in Hungary and Poland to challenge European core values increasingly aggressively even directly at EU level despite the threat of significant material costs to both countries. Putting forward a Gramscian understanding, we argue that this radicalization is the result of a counter-hegemonic strategy that aims at replacing the liberal order with a new, nationalist, ultraconservative, Christian order on domestic and European levels. The paper traces core elements of this strategy which are either disputed or underestimated in existing literature, most importantly the pursuit of a core ideology and the massive and long-term investment into winning moral and cultural leadership through the penetration of civil society which precedes and complements electoral strategies and autocratic institution building. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Great Financial Crisis ushered unorthodox financial policies that would have been unfathomable before 2008. Perhaps unexpectedly, some of the boldest measures on this unorthodox spectrum were adopted in semi-peripheral and therefore theoretically vulnerable countries such as some of the European Union's new member states from East-Central Europe. Why did policy makers in some of these countries (Hungary, Romania) embark on rolling back financialization and resort to financial repression in ways that targeted foreign banks in contexts in which this seemed a very risky strategy? Why did such bold moves generally re-established state-finance relations in some countries (Hungary) while comparably milder ones left them generally unaltered in others (Romania)? Finally, why have some countries refrained altogether from such forms of financial unorthodoxy (Latvia)? The paper explains the varieties of policy responses in these countries, with three factors: the role of finance in the national growth model, the capacity of the state to protect itself against adverse bond market reactions and international constraints and opportunities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper contributes to the debate on the social impact of globalization. It focuses on the mediating role of the sectoral pattern of transnational production relocation to the postcommunist economies of Eastern Europe. We argue that the collapse of the socialist heavy industries and the eastward relocation of traditional light industries initially forced the social conditions of the East European countries to converge at the bottom and deepened the gap between the West and the East. Later, the eastward migration of high-skilled labor and capital-intensive industries and jobs led to decreasing social disparity between the West and some of the former socialist countries. However, convergence appears uncertain, costly, and uneven, and coincides with increasing social disparity within the group of East European new members and candidates of the European Union. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Informed by a neo-Gramscian framework of analysis, this paper investigates the nature of neoliberal hegemony in the EU, and its consequences for the terms of enlargement. It will argue that both the deepening and enlargement of the EU are promoted by a historical bloc that seeks to establish the hegemony of transnational capital. In western Europe, social-democratic political forces, organised labour and the political forces of the peripheral countries have been incorporated into the historical bloc, albeit in a subordinated position. As a result, a precarious hegemonic constellation of 'embedded neoliberalism' has emerged. In contrast, the EU has exported a more 'market-radical' variant of neoliberalism to its new member states. This best serves the interests of transnational capital, and helps to preserve the order of'embedded neoliberalism' within the old EU. Eastern European societies have not been in a position to question the unequal terms of enlargement. This can be explained by their specific legacies, which have led to their incorporation into the transnational historical bloc through passive revolution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]