This Open Access book explains a new type of political order that emerged in Hungary in 2010: a form of authoritarian capitalism with an anti-liberal political and social agenda. Eva Fodor analyzes an important part of this agenda that directly targets gender relations through a set of policies, political practice and discourse—what she calls “carefare.” The book reveals how this is the anti-liberal response to the crisis-of-care problem and establishes how a state carefare regime disciplines women into doing an increasing amount of paid and unpaid work without fair remuneration. Fodor analyzes elements of this regime in depth and contrasts it to other social policy ideal-types, demonstrating how carefare is not only a set of policies targeting women, but an integral element of anti-liberal rule that can be seen emerging globally.
This book is a systematic consideration of the link between the extreme right and the discourse about developments in regard to gender issues within different national states. The contributors analyze right-wing extremist tendencies in Europe under the specific perspective on gender. The volume brings together the few existing findings concerning the quantitative dimension of activities carried out by men and women in different countries, and illuminates and juxtaposes gender ratios along with the role of women in right-wing extremism. Along with the gender-specific access to right-wing groups, the chapters look at networks, organizational forms, specific strategies of female right-wing extremists, their ideologies (especially regarding femininity and masculinity), hetero normativity, discourses on sexuality, and preventive and counter-strategies. The book will be of use to students and scholars interested in gender and politics, European politics, and political extremism.
The essays in this volume explore the moral foundations and the political prospects of the welfare state in the United States. Among the questions addressed are the following: Has public support for the welfare state faded? Can a democratic state provide welfare without producing dependency on welfare? Is a capitalist (or socialist) economy consistent with the preservation of equal liberty and equal opportunity for all citizens? Why and in what ways does the welfare state discriminate against women? Can we justify limiting immigration for the sake of safeguarding the welfare of Americans? How can elementary and secondary education be distributed consistently with democratic values? The volume confronts powerful criticisms that have been leveled against the welfare state by conservatives, liberals, and radicals and suggests reforms in welfare state programs that might meet these criticisms. The contributors are Joseph H. Carens, Jon Elster, Robert K. Fullinwider, Amy Gutmann, Jennifer L. Hochschild, Stanley Kelley, Jr., Richard Krouse, Michael McPherson, J. Donald Moon, Carole Pateman, Dennis Thompson, and Michael Walzer.
Having won a two-third majority in Parliament at the 2010 elections, the Hungarian political party Fidesz removed many of the institutional obstacles of exerting power. Just like the party, the state itself was placed under the control of a single individual, who since then has applied the techniques used within his party to enforce submission and obedience onto society as a whole. In a new approach the author characterizes the system as the ?organized over-world?, the ?state employing mafia methods? and the ?adopted political family', applying these categories not as metaphors but elements of a coherent conceptual framework. The actions of the post-communist mafia state model are closely aligned with the interests of power and wealth concentrated in the hands of a small group of insiders. While the traditional mafia channeled wealth and economic players into its spheres of influence by means of direct coercion, the mafia state does the same by means of parliamentary legislation, legal prosecution, tax authority, police forces and secret service. The innovative conceptual framework of the book is important and timely not only for Hungary, but also for other post-communist countries subjected to autocratic rules. ÿ
The fifty years or so preceding the watershed of 1848–49 witnessed the emergence of liberal nationalism in Hungary, along with a transmutation of conservatism which appeared then as a party and an ideological system in the political arena. The specific features of the conservatism, combining the protection of the status quo with some reform measures, its strategic vision, conceptual system, argumentation, assessment criteria and values require an in depth exploration and analysis. Different conservative groups were in the background or in opposition from 1848 to 1918, while in the period between the two World Wars, they constituted the overwhelming majority of ruling parties. During the one-party system, from 1949 to 1989, the liberals and conservatives—like all other political groups—were illegal, a status from which they could later emerge upon the change of the political system. The inheritance of the autocratic system frozen up and undigested by the one-party state was thawed after the peaceful regime change, the constitutional revolution and its discrete components began to be reactivated, including the enemy images of earlier discourses. "Liberal" and "conservative" had become state-party stigmas in line with fascist, reactionary, rightist, and bourgeois. In reaction to that, at first conservative then liberal, intellectual fashions and renascences unfolded in the 1980s. The attempts by liberal and conservative advocates to find predecessors did not favor an objective approach.The first step toward objectivity is establishing distance from the different kinds of enemy images and their political idioms. This is a pressing need because, although several pioneering works have appeared on different variants of the Hungarian liberalisms and conservatisms, there are no serious unbiased syntheses. This work is urgent because the political poles of the constitutional revolution and the ensuing period have up till now been described in terms of different conspiracy theories.
"By the dawn of the twentieth century Budapest was on its way to becoming a cosmopolitan metropolis. The 'Pearl of the Danube' boasted some of Europe's most beguiling architectural achievements, and its growing middle class was committed to advancing the city's liberal politics, fostering its centrality as an intellectual and commercial crossroads between East and West. As historian Anita Kurimay reveals, fin-de-siècle Budapest was also famous for its boisterous public sexual culture-including a robust homosexual subculture. Queer Budapest, 1873-1961 is her riveting story of non-normative sexualities in Hungary as they were understood, experienced, and policed between the birth of the its capital as a unified metropolis in 1873 and the decriminalization of male homosexual acts in 1961. A stunning reappraisal of sexuality between East and West, Queer Budapest, 1873-1961 demolishes myths identifying queer life with the failures of late-twentieth-century liberalism and instead recuperates queer sociality as an integral part of Budapest's-and Hungary's-modern incarnation"--
Sixteen essays “apply the intersectional theory in an inspiring way in the analysis of gender issues in the past and in contemporary Czech society” (Aspasia). In this wide-ranging study of women’s and gender issues in the pre- and post-1989 Czech Republic, contributors engage with current feminist debates and theories of nation and identity to examine the historical and cultural transformations of Czech feminism. This collection of essays by leading scholars, artists, and activists, explores such topics as reproductive rights, state socialist welfare provisions, Czech women’s NGOs, anarchofeminism, human trafficking, LGBT politics, masculinity, feminist art, among others. Foregrounding experiences of women and sexual and ethnic minorities in the Czech Republic, the contributors raise important questions about the transfer of feminist concepts across languages and cultures. As the economic orthodoxy of the European Union threatens to occlude relevant stories of the different national communities comprising the Eurozone, this book contributes to the understanding of the diverse origins from which something like a European community arises. “While the collection demands that we understand Czech uniqueness, at the same time it is at its best when this uniqueness comes into focus through comparative study.” —Feminist Review “A colorful bouquet offering an overview of directions taken by Czech feminist scholarship since the 1990s.” —Slavic Review
This book is the first concentrated effort to explore the most recent chapter of East Central European past from the perspective of intellectual history. Post-socialism can be understood both as a period of scarcity and preponderance of ideas, the dramatic eclipsing of the dissident legacy?as well as the older political traditions?and the rise of technocratic and post-political governance. This book, grounded in empirical research sensitive to local contexts, proposes instead a history of adaptations, entanglements, and unintended consequences. In order to enable and invite comparison, the volume is structured around major domains of political thought, some of them generic (liberalism, conservatism, the Left), others (populism and politics of history) deemed typical for post-socialism. However, as shown by the authors, the generic often turns out to be heavily dependent on its immediate setting, and the typical resonates with processes that are anything but vernacular.
This book shows the rise and morphology of a self-identified `illiberal democracy’, the first 21st century illiberal political regime arising in the European Union. Since 2010, Viktor Orbán’s governments in Hungary have convincingly offered an anti-modernist and anti-cosmopolitan/anti-European Unionist rhetoric, discourse and constitutional identity to challenge neo-liberal democracy. The Hungarian case provides unique observation points for students of transitology, especially those who are interested in states which are to abandon pathways of liberal democracy. The author demonstrates how illiberalism is present both in `how’ and `what’ is being done: the style, format and procedure of legislation; as well as the substance: the dismantling of institutional rule of law guarantees and the weakening of checks and balances. The book also discusses the ideological commitments and constitutionally framed and cemented value preferences, and a reconstituted and re-conceptualized relationship between the state and its citizens, which is not evidently supported by Hungarians’ value system and life-style choices.
Investigates the role of women and gender in fascist and non-fascist movements of the extreme right. The text re-examines the nature of the extreme right in the light of research in the field of women's and gender studies, offering an accessible overview of developments in Europe.
