MACMILLAN The Retreat of Liberal Democracy: Authoritarian Capitalism and the Accumulative State in Hungary (Challenges to Democracy in the 21st Century)

This book is the product of three years of empirical research, four years in politics, and a lifetime in a country experiencing three different regimes. Transcending disciplinary boundaries, it provides a fresh answer to a simple yet profound question: why has liberal democracy retreated? Scheiring argues that Hungary’s new hybrid authoritarian regime emerged as a political response to the tensions of globalisation. He demonstrates how Viktor Orbán’s Fidesz exploited the rising nationalism among the working-class casualties of deindustrialisation and the national bourgeoisie to consolidate illiberal hegemony. As the world faces a new wave of autocratisation, Hungary’s lessons become relevant across the globe, and this book represents a significant contribution to understanding challenges to democracy. This work will be useful to students and researchers across political sociology, political science, economics and social anthropology, as well democracy advocates. Review “A carefully crafted narrative that expertly highlights the interplay between domestic politics and the dynamics of dependent development in the context of the contemporary global economy. Although this book focuses specifically on the case of Hungary, Scheiring’s account will be of general interest to scholars studying topics related to the recent surge in right-wing politics across the globe.” (Adam Slez, Social Forces, August 9, 2021) Review “Scheiring’s political economy of Orbán’s illiberal democracy is monumental, exhaustive and compelling. His case might not be irrefutable, but it marks a quantum raising of the bar in the contemporary analysis of “illiberal democracy” in Europe.ˮ (Nigel Swain) “Gábor Scheiring’s book is gift to all of us trying to understand a key puzzle of the 21st century political-economy: how are regressive authoritarian regimes successfully constructed within formal democratic facades?  Scheiring’s complex but compelling narrative illuminates Hungary’s embrace of hybrid authoritarian capitalism and skillfully embeds it in the interplay of national politics and global capitalism. Conceptually bold, theoretically nuanced, built on firm empirical foundations, the book is a model of how to research and theorize the new rise of authoritarianism.” (Peter B. Evans, Professor Emeritus, Department of Sociology, University of California, Berkeley, USA)  “In this book Scheiring provides a path-breaking analysis of one of the most unexpected turns toward right-wing populism -- the transformation of Hungary from the leading liberal democracy of post-communism to a self-declared ‘illiberal democracy.’ This book provides the first explanation for right-wing populism rooted in intra-dominant class conflict and collaboration, highlighting the role of the national-based bourgeoisie that had been marginalized by previous governments. This book will set the agenda for the study of right-wing populism and is essential reading for those wishing to understand this phenomenon in Central Europe and indeed the world.” (Lawrence P. King, Professor of Economics, University of Massachusetts Amherst, USA)  “If Hungary is the avant-garde case of illiberal breakthrough in Europe, this book is the ultimate analysis of it. The message: it's not immigrants, it's class! Not in any simple or deductive way, though. The book is brilliant in bringing all the threads of that complex narrative together. A model of the new cultural political economy.” (Don Kalb, Professor of Social Anthropology, University of Bergen)  “This book is a tour de force. Combining theoretical sophistication with empirical precision, Gábor Scheiring digs deep into the structural causes of illiberalism in Hungary, of which Viktor Orbán is the increasingly disturbing symptom. Scheiring deploys relational class analysis to specify the post-2010 ‘accumulative state’ that has successfully harnessed two different ‘countermovements,’ that of  the nation