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GÁBOR HALMAI
AUTHORITARIAN NEO(IL)LIBERALISM
Paradoxically, politically illiberal leaders, like Viktor Orban of Hungary use (neo)
liberal economic policy to support their autocratic (constitutional) agenda.* As
many argue referring to Karl Polanyi’s influential book, The Great Transformation
the resistance to social democracy through authoritarianism in the name of
economic liberalism prepared the ground for Fascism, and can lead to autocracy
again.’ Some also claim that the Covid-19 crisis has clearly precipitated a dramatic
confrontation between Polanyi’s opposing principles of the reality of society and
the putative freedom of radical individualism, because the contagion became a
host of the illusory utopianism neoliberalism that defies the inevitable need of
solidarity in the time of such a pandemic”
While others, mostly left-wing populists react to the unfulfilled promise
of social-rights constitutionalism, based on T.H. Marshall’s theory of social
rights being continuous with civil and political rights, which turned out to be
a misconception in most of East Central European countries’ constitutional
practice. As Samuel Moyn argues, a commitment to material equality disappeared,
in its place market fundamentalism has emerged as the dominant force of national
and global economics."' Regarding the US, the recently published book of Jacob
Hacker and Paul Pierson argues that the right-wing economic policies pursued
by the Republican party diverge from the centre-left economic preferences of a
majority of voters, but that a majority of US voters have preferences on social and
cultural issues which also diverge from those advocated by the Democratic party.”
This analysis is also true for European voters, a majority of whom are to the right
of social-democratic and other left parties on social and cultural issues, and this
makes the ‘supply’ of a plutocratic, ever-more right-wing parties all over the world
more and more dangerous for democracy.”
8 This phenomenon is called by Michael Wilkinson ‘authoritarian liberalism’. See Michael A.
Wilkinson, Authoritarian Liberalism as Authoritarian Constitutionalism, in Helena Alviar —
Giinter Frankenberg (eds), Authoritarian Constitutionalism, Cheltenham, Edward Elgar, 2019.
Ibid., and also Bojan Bugari¢, The Two Faces of Populism: Between Authoritarian and
Democratic Populism, German Law Journal 20 (2019), 390-400.
10 Cf. Margaret Somers — Fred Block, Polanyi’s Prescience, COVID-19, Market Utopianism, and
the reality of Society, Economic Sociology & Political Economy (16 October 2020), https://
economicsociology.org/2020/10/16/polanyis-prescience-covid-19-market-utopianism¬
and-the-reality-of-society/?fbclid=IwA ROoRy2z0RGgDNLWx9xFjL1Y 7cs8xsKe5160ENm
7XGI_qwneYnxhfl0PXwg.
Samuel Moyn, Not Enough: Human Rights in an Unequal World, Cambridge, MA, Harvard
University Press, 2018.
Jacob Hacker — Paul Pierson, Let Them Eat Tweets: How the Right Rules in an Age of Extreme
Inequality, New York, NY, Liveright, 2020.
See Sheri Berman, Where did Trumpism come from?, Social Europe (31 August 2020),
+ 374 +