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Neoliberalism has been allegedly challenged in East Central Europe. The neoliberal rollback by both nationalist forces and their economic nationalism in Hungary and Poland is commonly used to confirm this regional generalisation. In this generalisation, economic nationalism promotes anti-neoliberal state strategies because it challenges the economi...
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Context 1
... the paradigm of two rival-globalist and nationalist-forces, I stress the history of their 'uneasy coalition'-making (Eyal 2000;Eyal et al. 2001a: 4) to understand the neoliberal leadership in Czechia and the rivalry between conservative nationalists and neoliberal globalists in Hungary and Poland. Categorising the NERV biographical data from the 1980s up to 2020, Table 2 enables this historicisation. It shows how the (trans)national fields remain entrenched in the domestic class configurations (Eyal and Bockman 2002;Hanley et al. 2002). ...Context 2
... shows how the (trans)national fields remain entrenched in the domestic class configurations (Eyal and Bockman 2002;Hanley et al. 2002). The configurations of economic expert networks are then recognised in the historical interactions among four biographical types of nuclear forces which shaped Table 1 Fields of state-civil society relations according to the NERV collective biography Source Own preparation based on the biographical data of the NERV included in Table 2 Field ...Context 3
... 2013 Czech pension privatisation presents, however, a fusion of neoliberal nationalism and globalism in the self-imposed austerity management of the GEC ( Myant et al. 2013). In 2015, the flagship reform was partially reversed to follow the Czech legacy of neoliberalisation 'by decay' (Saxonberg and Tables 1 and 2) and discourse (see Footnote 1). The power bloc and common sense analyses are operationalised in a historicised and interpretative manner. ...Context 4
... now proceed with the power bloc and common sense analyses of the NERV. Using Table 2, I firstly investigate the coalition between the neoliberal globalists and the neoliberal nationalists in the NERV, while unmasking the links between its neutral expertise and the interests of national and foreign capital. Second, using the governmental news database (see Footnote 1), I identify the NERV's austerity discourse as a moral legitimisation for translating these economic interests into the governmental crisis management. ...Context 5
... the paradigm of two rival-globalist and nationalist-forces, I stress the history of their 'uneasy coalition'-making (Eyal 2000;Eyal et al. 2001a: 4) to understand the neoliberal leadership in Czechia and the rivalry between conservative nationalists and neoliberal globalists in Hungary and Poland. Categorising the NERV biographical data from the 1980s up to 2020, Table 2 enables this historicisation. It shows how the (trans)national fields remain entrenched in the domestic class configurations (Eyal and Bockman 2002;Hanley et al. 2002). ...Context 6
... shows how the (trans)national fields remain entrenched in the domestic class configurations (Eyal and Bockman 2002;Hanley et al. 2002). The configurations of economic expert networks are then recognised in the historical interactions among four biographical types of nuclear forces which shaped Table 1 Fields of state-civil society relations according to the NERV collective biography Source Own preparation based on the biographical data of the NERV included in Table 2 Field ...Context 7
... 2013 Czech pension privatisation presents, however, a fusion of neoliberal nationalism and globalism in the self-imposed austerity management of the GEC ( Myant et al. 2013). In 2015, the flagship reform was partially reversed to follow the Czech legacy of neoliberalisation 'by decay' (Saxonberg and Tables 1 and 2) and discourse (see Footnote 1). The power bloc and common sense analyses are operationalised in a historicised and interpretative manner. ...Context 8
... now proceed with the power bloc and common sense analyses of the NERV. Using Table 2, I firstly investigate the coalition between the neoliberal globalists and the neoliberal nationalists in the NERV, while unmasking the links between its neutral expertise and the interests of national and foreign capital. Second, using the governmental news database (see Footnote 1), I identify the NERV's austerity discourse as a moral legitimisation for translating these economic interests into the governmental crisis management. ...Citations
... While such a welfare state strategy complements the dominant manufacturing-led industrial strategy (Bohle and Greskovits, 2019), I explore a distinct credit-led debtfare state as another state strategy in ECE. Second, the historicization of the Czech politics of debtfare state strategy-making (Hoření Samec, 2021;Šitera, 2021) nuances both scholarships' views on the repolitization of household financialization and the overall neoliberal state in this postsocialist semiperiphery. Rather than being led solely by emancipatory (Montgomerie and Tepe-Belfrage, 2019;Roberts and Soederberg, 2014) or non-emancipatory (Mikuš, 2019;Scheiring, 2021) forces, I find this repolitization to be led by their contradictory coalitions and unacknowledged consensuses beyond populism. ...
... As in the case of any form of state or state strategy (Drahokoupil, 2009;Jessop, 2007;Offe and Keane, 1984), the politics of the DEO (re)inscribes a structural selectivity in this debtfare state strategy-making, which then institutionally prioritizes the interests, rights, powers, or well-being of one social group over those of others in regulating the creditor-debtor-bailiff relations. I delineate two rival types of rhetorics-the depoliticizing and repoliticizing types-which consist of either market-oriented or socially protective morals and rationalities (Mikuš, 2020;Scheiring, 2020;Šitera, 2021). This is done by tracing whether and how these types (re)inscribe either a debtfarist pro-creditor and -bailiff selectivity or challenge it in favor of a pro-debtor selectivity. ...
... Making them regulatable, it reintegrates their deprioritized households and the emerging debt enforcement-led chain of poverty industries (Burton, 2017;Hoření Samec, 2021;Kupka et al., 2021;Stenning et al., 2010). The austerity and workfarist practices, which retrench and re-enact the welfare state as an active labor market policy (Sirovátka, 2018;Šitera, 2021;Trlifajová and Hurrle, 2019), are found particularly orthodox and key in this reintegration of the low-income labor through formal work and debt relations. I thus identify the debtfarism as co-constituted by them during the enacting of a pro-creditor debt enforcement which obliges low-income debtors to pay their debts through formal work. ...
In Czechia, one of the statistically most equal and least indebted states, almost one-tenth of its (mostly low-income) population is entrapped in debt enforcement proceedings. I foreground such a contradiction to investigate the politics of the debtfare state in East-Central Europe (ECE). This nuances the scholarship on the repolitization of the ECE neoliberal state by populist forces and their instrumentalization of its middle-class welfare state strategies in the 2010s. Identifying the Czech debt enforcement industry as a leading poverty industry in ECE, I explore its depoliticizing origins in the Debt Enforcement Order (DEO), a flagship legal framework regulating the creditor–debtor–bailiff relations. Interpreting the political struggle over the DEO-centered debtfare state strategy, I then trace its limited repolitization since the mid-2010s, which redirects its reforms from their original pro-creditor and -bailiff prioritization to a prioritization of low-income debtors. This politics complements the repolitization of the neoliberal state beyond populism.
... The alleged criminal nature of communism was underlined, to discredit not only the past regime but a much broader group of actors-often the whole Left, or even centrist liberals. The reintroduction of the market could in this context not only repair defects of the Communist past, but could also work as moral rehabilitation, re-educating a spoiled society, and introducing sound and normal relations and values (Eyal, 2000;Kolářová, 2014;Roubal, 2015;Šitera, 2021). Both arguments led to a perception of the moral and practical inferiority of state ownership and the public commons. ...
The concluding chapter discusses five nodes of postsocialist ideological struggles that the book’s authors addressed: anticommunism, Westernism, nationalism, irrationalism and antipolitics (through its three aspects of anti-corruption, civil society and technocratism). Slačálek characterizes these as discourses that are applied to obscure real social conflicts, but which at the same time rely on elements of real experience which can be critically reconstructed, and which can contribute to left-wing analyses and programs. He addresses anticommunism’s paralyzing effect on the local left together with the traps Ostalgia presents for new left politics; speaks of nationalist ideology as a means of autocratic and xenophobic politics, yet also a prism through which essential global power relationships become visible in popular politics; and investigates irrationalism as a powerful tool of neoliberal and neonationalist politics, yet also a ground of conflict that makes visible the political usages of reason and the need for the Left to develop a dialectical and self-critical rationality as a basis for its politics.
... The alleged criminal nature of communism was underlined, to discredit not only the past regime but a much broader group of actors-often the whole Left, or even centrist liberals. The reintroduction of the market could in this context not only repair defects of the Communist past, but could also work as moral rehabilitation, re-educating a spoiled society, and introducing sound and normal relations and values (Eyal, 2000;Kolářová, 2014;Roubal, 2015;Šitera, 2021). Both arguments led to a perception of the moral and practical inferiority of state ownership and the public commons. ...
This chapter analyses the causes of the crisis of democracy in the Czech Republic and the possibilities of a chronological analysis of the transformation decades. The crisis of democracy is manifested in the Czech Republic above all by mass disillusionment with democratic politics, and by the open access of oligarchs to political power. Unlike approaches that see this turn as a discontinuity, the chapter describes it as one of the possible and logical results of the whole transformation process. This process is reconstructed as a competition between two capitalist factions and respective political projects: neoliberal nationalism and liberal globalism. The chapter presents a chronological analysis of the three post-communist decades based on the three periods of rule of various factions (1992–1998 neoliberal nationalist rule, 2002–2010 globalist rule, 2013–? oligarchic rule), and three interregna (1990–1992, 1997–2002, 2008–2013). The chapter describes the interests and composition of the factions which competed for power in the transformation decades, analyses the main problems they dealt with during the interregna (economic transformation, democracy, economic dependence) and then looks at the characteristics of the main competing discourses (the naturalness and morality of the market, civil society, democratic majoritarianism, discourse of colony, discourse of corruption).
... The alleged criminal nature of communism was underlined, to discredit not only the past regime but a much broader group of actors-often the whole Left, or even centrist liberals. The reintroduction of the market could in this context not only repair defects of the Communist past, but could also work as moral rehabilitation, re-educating a spoiled society, and introducing sound and normal relations and values (Eyal, 2000;Kolářová, 2014;Roubal, 2015;Šitera, 2021). Both arguments led to a perception of the moral and practical inferiority of state ownership and the public commons. ...
By the 30th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, in most parts of Eastern Europe, high expectations associated with postsocialist transition have been substituted by disillusionment. After 1990, Eastern Europe has been internationally treated with a low-interest acknowledgement of what was understood as a slow and erratic, but unquestionable process of integration in a Western-dominated world order. In the context of today’s geopolitical reorganization, East European examples of authoritarian politics once again become discussed as significant reference points for Western and global politics. This book represents a contribution to this debate from a distinctive East European perspective: that of new left scholars and activists from the region, whose lifetime largely corresponds to the transformations of the postsocialist period, and who came to develop an understanding of their environment in terms of its relations to global capitalist processes. A both theoretical and empirical contribution, the book provides essential insights on topics conventionally associated with East European transition from privatization to the politicized slogans of corruption or civil society, and analyzes their connection to the newest reconfigurations of postsocialist capitalist regimes. As a contribution to contemporary debates on the present global socio-political transformation, this collection does not only seek to debate analytical statements, but also to change the field where analytical stakes are set, by adding perspectives that think Eastern Europe’s global relations from within the regional context and its political stakes.
Agnes Gagyi works on East European politics and social movements from the perspective of the region’s long-term global integration. She is researcher on East European social movements at the University of Gothenburg, and member of the Working Group for Public Sociology “Helyzet” in Budapest.
Ondřej Slačálek is a political scientist and journalist, he focuses on East European politics, nationalism and social movements. He works at Charles University, Prague. He is a regular collaborator of Czech new left journal A2/A2larm.
Although economic nationalist governments in East Central Europe (ECE) have strongly challenged FDI-dependence, FDI-led growth has remained stable across the region. The political economy literature explains this puzzle with enduring business-state elite interactions and the disciplining role of the EU. Instead, we show that the EU's regional investment aid rules, which provide central governments in relatively backward member states with considerable policy space, serve as the main policy tool for reinforcing FDI-dependence. Using a unique dataset on regional investment aid granted between 2004 and 2022 in the Visegrád countries (V4), we show that each government, regardless of its ideological background, granted the vast majority of this type of aid to foreign firms. In addition, contrary to their political rhetoric, economic nationalist governments in Hungary and Poland outperformed their non-nationalist counterparts in granting aid to foreign firms. This suggests an instrumental use of this transnationally rooted policy opportunity: as their European political isolation grew, economic nationalists increasingly resorted to the promotion of foreign firms because the continued inflow of foreign capital has a legitimising effect both at home and abroad.
Cette thèse étudie la montée en puissance de la professionnalisation à l’université durant les années 2000. Elle définit la professionnalisation comme une politique publique qui vise à adapter les études universitaires au marché de l’emploi mais aussi comme une « exigence » qu’il faut situer socialement et historiquement. Pour cela, une enquête multi-située interroge d’abord l’essor de la professionnalisation dans la politique universitaire française, tchèque et européenne. Elle explore ensuite un secteur économique émergent centré sur les services du conseil d’orientation professionnelle. Les réceptions et effets de la professionnalisation sont analysés par une enquête ethnographique auprès d’étudiants et enseignants dans quatre facultés de philosophie. La philosophie est envisagée comme un cas « limite », une discipline réputée pour sa conception du savoir désintéressé, a priori éloignée de l’exigence de professionnalisation.
