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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 paper seeks to understand the factors that shape populist radical right parties’ economic policies. While there is a good understanding of how these parties’ core ideology of nativism and authoritarianism shapes social policies, we know less about economic policies. With few exceptions, the insights of this literature have also not travelled to East-Central Europe, despite the strength of the populist right in this region. Instead, authors writing on the region focus on the social coalitions forged by populist parties as an explanation for policies. These authors however do not focus on the role of populism in policymaking. Our paper therefore asks whether the ideological literature can travel to economic policies as well, and specifically to the cases of Hungary and Poland. Drawing on the evidence of financial market reforms under the Fidesz and PiS rule in Hungary and Poland, and a congruence analysis testing the predictive power of existing approaches, we show that a combination of ideological and material factors is needed to explain observed economic policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The three types of transnational capitalism emerging in Central-Eastern Europe are neoliberal, embedded neoliberal and neocorporatist.

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., Introduction As of May 2004 ten new countries have entered the European Union (EU), eight of them from eastern Europe. (1) Thus, after more than a decade, the period of [...]

This special issue leverages the variation across Europe to expand on the conceptualisation of and the empirical knowledge about finance and financialization. As we will show, focussing on Europe can offer a richer understanding of the reach of financialization than the prevalent focus on the Anglo-American world, with surprising insights that may be of more general relevance to other world regions. More specifically, a focus on Europe allows new insights on the reach of financialization, central actors that brought it about, and the choices and trade-offs that have shaped the process. [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]