The liberalization trouble

pp. 1-21

in: Umut Korkut, Liberalization challenges in Hungary, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2012

Abstract

Liberalization is troubled in the new Europe of the twenty-first century. At the onset of political and economic transition in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE), many believed that liberalism has always found its strength in its ability to act as the enemy of tradition and the speaker for modernity. The unfolding of events in the region in the early 1990s demonstrated that liberalism participated in socialism's final defeat by exposing its economic irrationality, its political despotism, and its immense social and intellectual conservatism. Thereafter, in countries with no prior history of political democracy and market economy, liberalism became the harbinger of a new modern state and society to be built without any delay. This seemingly final victory provided liberalism with a unique historical opportunity wherein it finally possessed all the rights and duties to influence the course of transformation in the new polities and economies of CEE. However, as this book aims to demonstrate, there have been mounting challenges for liberalism in its quest. It is true that the liberal way of thinking has achieved universal acceptance to a degree hitherto unknown in the history of the region, but liberalism could not maintain consensus on its virtues.