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11. Point of No Return: Viktor Orbán’s Divorce from the EPP

Author:
Milan Nič and András Rácz
Publication Date:
05-2019
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
German Council on Foreign Relations (DGAP)
Abstract:
A few weeks after the European People’s Party (EPP) suspended the membership of Hungary’s ruling populist party, Fidesz, it looks unlikely that their relationship could be repaired. Seeing his leverage decreasing, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has been paving the way for divorce. The EPP leaders seem to have made up their minds as well. A re-arrangement of the European party system is already taking shape ahead of the upcoming European elections (23–26 May 2019), not only afterwards.
Topic:
Government, Regional Cooperation, Elections, European Union, and Political Parties
Political Geography:
Europe and Hungary

12. Slovak-Hungarian reconciliation and lessons for the Western Balkans

Author:
Nikolett Garai and Tomás Strázay
Publication Date:
11-2019
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Europeum Institute for European Policy
Abstract:
Slovak-Hungarian relations have constantly been the most sensitive in the V4. The relationship between Slovakia and Hungary was problematic already in the 1990s even though the fall of communist regimes in Central Europe and the prospects of integration in Euro-Atlantic structures promised the possibility of a new era of reconciliation. It became evident that membership on multi-lateral platforms - like the EU or V4 - alone could not be the panacea solving all problematic issues between Slovakia and Hungary as tensions continued to be exacerbated after the EU accession while V4 cooperation deliberately avoided sensitive bilateral issues.
Topic:
Bilateral Relations, European Union, History, and Reconciliation
Political Geography:
Europe, Hungary, and Slovakia

13. The Ethics of Kin State Activism: A Cosmopolitan Defense

Author:
George Vasilev
Publication Date:
12-2019
Content Type:
Journal Article
Institution:
Carnegie Council
Abstract:
A notable feature of nationalism’s contemporary resurgence is the increasing eagerness that governments have shown to support and shape the political causes of populations living abroad whom they conceive of as ethnic kindred. Governments engaged in such “kin state activism” assume a natural entitlement to speak for and assert authority over minorities and diasporas in other states, invoking a belief in common territorial, cultural, and even biological origins as a moral basis for that entitlement. A striking example of the trend is the Russian government’s declaration that it will defend the interests of ethnic Russians wherever they may be and regardless of their citizenship.1 The government has made good on this intention since 2014 through the invasion of Crimea and through support for pro-Russia secessionist fighters in eastern Ukraine. Russian officials have also made thinly veiled threats to apply the doctrine in Estonia, Lithuania, and Latvia, where large Russian-speaking minorities reside and maintain strained relations with authorities.2 Kin state activism has also become increasingly apparent in other contexts, even though it has not involved the military coercion and flagrant disregard for international law characterizing Russia’s interventions. Examples that have made headlines recently include Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and his Fidesz (Federation of Young Democrats) party’s cross-border political collaborations with Romania’s Hungarians,3 Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s appeal to Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras to take action against the discrimination of Greece’s predominantly ethnic Turkish Muslims,4 and Croatian President Kolinda Grabar-Kitarović’s lobbying for electoral reform in Bosnia so that ethnic Croats there can gain increased representation.5 These and other examples typify a trend in which governments are more stridently assuming a right to protect, counsel, represent, politically organize, indoctrinate, naturalize, financially support, advocate for, and even govern populations beyond state jurisdictions on the basis of an ethnic conception of shared identity.
Topic:
Nationalism, Minorities, Citizenship, and Ethnicity
Political Geography:
Russia, Europe, Turkey, Greece, Hungary, and Croatia

14. Poisoned heritage for the new Commission: The rule of law question

Author:
György Fóris
Publication Date:
12-2019
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
European Policy Centre
Abstract:
The rule of law issue is not going anywhere anytime soon. The Polish and Hungarian governments will likely remain in power for years. Czech, Croat and some Romanian leaders seem impressed and ready to follow the paths Kaczyński and Orbán have paved. And Italy might not have seen the last of Matteo Salvini. Member states that increasingly question, ignore, or even attack previously agreed-upon policies, political priorities or common principles are becoming a regular occurrence within the Union, one that the new Commission will have to deal with. In this Discussion Paper, György Fóris finds that in an increasingly politicised Union, the design of the current rule of law mechanism is lacking. He argues it cannot function effectively on legal grounds alone as long as the existing Treaty foundations remain ambiguous and the final decision is taken at the political level, where it is the Council and not the Commission that is the decisive player. So the von der Leyen Commission will face a difficult choice: either try to live with all of the formal members of the Union, listening to and mediating between them, while continuing to defend the rules and values that were entrusted to it as the Guardian of the Treaty and thus preserve the EU’s unity. Or, take sides and lead an open political fight against those who seem to weaken the previously agreed interpretation of fundamental European rules and principles. Fóris, however, offers a third option: While not giving up on unity, likeminded and willing EU countries could intensify their level of cooperation, while formally retaining all parties within the framework of a larger (and looser) Community.
Topic:
Treaties and Agreements, European Union, and Rule of Law
Political Geography:
Europe, Poland, Romania, Hungary, Croatia, and Czech Republic

15. Counterterrorism Measures and Civil Society Changing the Will, Finding the Way

Author:
Lana Baydas and Shannon Green
Publication Date:
03-2018
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center for Strategic and International Studies
Abstract:
To combat the global threat of terrorism, countries have passed and implemented numerous laws that inadvertently or intentionally diminished the space for civil society. States conflate terrorism with broader issues of national security, which is then used as a convenient justification to stifle dissent, including civil society actors that aim to hold governments accountable. As the global terror landscape becomes more complex and dire, attacks on the rights to the freedom of expression, association, and peaceful assembly only increase. This report analyzes the impact of counterterrorism efforts on civic space, examines its manifestations in various socioeconomic and political contexts, and explores various approaches to disentangle and reconcile security and civil society. It features case studies on Australia, Bahrain, Burkina Faso, Hungary, and India. This report was published under the sponsorship of the International Consortium on Closing Civic Space (iCon), a coalition of scholars and experts from around the world that is developing concrete, evidence-based recommendations on how best to address and push back on closing space around civil society.
Topic:
Security, Civil Society, Terrorism, and Counter-terrorism
Political Geography:
India, Hungary, Australia, Bahrain, and Burkina Faso

16. Prospects for Settling the Dispute over the Rights of the Hungarian Minority in Ukraine

Author:
Daniel Szeligowski and Veronika Jóźwiak
Publication Date:
10-2018
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
The Polish Institute of International Affairs
Abstract:
The dispute over the rights of the Hungarian minority in Transcarpathia is based on a fundamental difference of interests. While Ukraine aims to strengthen its citizens’ sense of belonging to the country, Hungary strives to extend the rights of the minority, which means there are no prospects for easing the tensions in the short term. What is more, further escalation is likely, since both parties use the dispute in domestic politics. The difference in Hungary’s and Poland’s approach to Ukraine will weigh on Polish-Hungarian relations.
Topic:
Education, Bilateral Relations, Territorial Disputes, Minorities, and Domestic politics
Political Geography:
Europe, Ukraine, and Hungary

17. Explaining Eastern Europe: Orbán’s Laboratory of Illiberalism

Author:
Peter Kreko and Zsolt Enyedi
Publication Date:
07-2018
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Journal of Democracy
Institution:
National Endowment for Democracy
Abstract:
The reelection of Fidesz leader Viktor Orbán’s government in Hungary in April 2018 has entrenched a hybrid regime within the European Union. This article discusses some of the most crucial factors that have led to Hungary’s democratic backsliding and supplied the institutional and cultural bases of Fidesz’s rule. The authors particularly focus on phenomena that contributed to the party’s third landslide electoral victory, including the rhetoric of identity politics, conspiracy theories, and the fake news industry. While an idiosyncratic sequence of particular events led to the ascendance of illiberal rule in Hungary, the causal factors involved are virtually omnipresent and could therefore lead to similar outcomes elsewhere.
Topic:
Authoritarianism, Elections, Democracy, and Illiberal Democracy
Political Geography:
Europe, Eastern Europe, Hungary, and Central Europe

18. Authoritarianism in the heart of Europe

Author:
Dalibor Rohac
Publication Date:
08-2018
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research
Abstract:
What distinguishes the governments of Hungary and Poland are not their views on immigration nor their defense of national sovereignty or Europe’s Judeo-Christian heritage. Rather, it is their distinctly authoritarian and anti-market features. With a new Fundamental Law, electoral reform, and other far-reaching changes adopted in Hungary on strictly partisan lines, as well as a politicization of the judiciary and attacks on free media and civil society in both countries, the Law and Justice Party (PiS) and Fidesz governments have sought to entrench themselves and prevent meaningful democratic contestation of their power. In both countries, key achievements of the post-1989 transition to the free enterprise system are being reversed. In Poland, for example, 40 percent of all banking-sector assets are now held by the government. Hungarian and Polish authoritarianism, as well as the rise of political kleptocracy in Hungary, pose a direct threat to the values on which the transatlantic alliance was built and America’s interest in the region. The United States cannot afford to become a cheerleader for either Fidesz or PiS, no matter how convincing their conservative bona fides might seem.
Topic:
Foreign Policy, Government, Politics, and Authoritarianism
Political Geography:
Europe, Eurasia, Poland, and Hungary

19. Looking into Eurasia - A review of 2017: the year in politics

Author:
Anne De Tinguy, Bayram Balci, David Cadier, Isabelle Facon, Clémentine Fauconnier, Marie-Hélène Mandrillon, Anaïs Marin, Dominique Menu, and Ioulia Shukan
Publication Date:
02-2018
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Centre d'Etudes et de Recherches Internationales
Abstract:
Looking into Eurasia : the year in politics provides some keys to understand the events and phenomena that have left their imprint on a region that has undergone major mutation since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991: the post-soviet space. With a cross-cutting approach that is no way claims to be exhaustive, this study seeks to identify the key drivers, the regional dynamics and the underlying issues at stake
Topic:
Conflict Resolution, Corruption, Crime, Economics, Globalization, Human Rights, Nationalism, Political Economy, Natural Resources, Territorial Disputes, Global Markets, Finance, Europeanization, Memory, and Borders
Political Geography:
Russia, Caucasus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan, Hungary, Turkmenistan, Georgia, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Belarus, and European Union

20. Insidious Threats to Academic Freedom in the US and Abroad

Author:
Michael Ignatieff and Craig Calhoun
Publication Date:
03-2018
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Centerpiece
Institution:
Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, Harvard University
Abstract:
n the division of labor that Craig Calhoun and I agreed upon, he's going to deal with the insidious threats, the subtler ones, the ones that are perhaps characteristic of American or North Atlantic academic life, and I'm going to deal with the straight on, in your face, “boom boom” threats that have arisen where I am in Hungary. I'm going to tell you a little narrative about what's happened to Central European University (CEU), and then I'd like to talk about a characterization of these kinds of societies. The relationship between a place like Hungary and a place like here is complex. There is a collusive relationship, a disturbingly collusive relationship between liberal democratic societies, which enjoy full academic freedom, and societies which do not. And it's that collusive relationship that I think we need to think about. That will be my headline. Most of you will know that CEU is a graduate institution offering masters and PhDs, accredited in New York state and by Middle States. We offer degrees that are accredited also by the Hungarian administration. So we're a kind of European-American institution. We're one of almost thirty institutions of higher learning around the world that have no domestic US campus. But note, this is the geostrategic implication: these institutions are now implanted all over the world in authoritarian societies where their capacity to operate freely is very much in question. So my story about Hungary is not just a story about Hungary. It's potentially a story about Egypt, about Russia, about Abu Dhabi—about all the places where American norms of academic freedom are suddenly under challenge because of the emergence of these kinds of regimes.
Topic:
Authoritarianism, Populism, Academia, and Atlantic World
Political Geography:
United States, Europe, Hungary, North America, and Central Europe