The Alternative Economic Model of Europe’s Nationalist Right
Right-wing nationalist governments in Hungary and Poland only made a selective break with neoliberal economics after the 2008 crash. Their goal was to strengthen domestic capital against foreign competitors without doing anything to empower workers.
After the global financial crisis of 2008, Hungary’s Fidesz government was one of the first to adopt a partially heterodox, national-conservative set of economic policies. (Laszlo Balogh / Getty Images)
After the global financial crisis of 2008, Hungary’s Fidesz government was one of the first to adopt a partially heterodox, national-conservative set of economic policies. It was to become a role model for many nationalist right-wing parties. By 2015, the Law and Justice party (PiS) administration in Poland was seeking to emulate it.
This made Hungary and Poland forerunners of novel forms of right-wing nationalism that blended concepts of nationalist neoliberalism in selective ways with neoconservative ideas. What can the experience of these two countries tell us about the viability of this approach to managing capitalist economies, as the nationalist right continues to advance across Europe and North America?
National Conservatism
From the 1980s up to the 2008 crash, neoliberal economic policy concepts dominated on the nationalist right, including Fidesz and PiS. Those concepts aim to shield economic policymaking from popular pressures.
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