Liberalization after 1989

pp. 117-160

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

Abstract

How did liberalization, alienation, and elitism interrelate in Hungarian politics after 1989? The form that the liberal ideology gained in relation to economic and political transformation in the aftermath of the transition occupies the basis of this interrelationship. And, in effect, disempowerment of the public has been a major outcome of this interrelationship amid the monetarists' reinterpreting of liberalism as budgetary restrictionism and former dissidents' reinterpreting the idea of civil society as civic education (Eyal et al. 1998, 87). In this chapter, I am going to explore the course of this interrelationship and how it led to disempowerment, under various angles. As the chapter will delineate there were two mechanisms of disempowerment: first, through liberal policies and second, through liberal discourse. I will examine these mechanisms under four parts: first, the emergence of an all-encompassing liberal transformation discourse; second, the left-liberal encampment around liberal reform policies; third, encampment and the cultivation of liberal reform discourse; and fourth, welfare state reform debate in support of Eurozone accession. Looking into the role of liberal policies and discourse to substantiate these segments, I am going to illustrate how disempowerment of the general public set the tone of liberal politics in post-1989 Hungary. Thereby, I am going to portray the conditions for the process that led to the emergence of liberal discourse, its political means, and finally, theoretical procedures.