Umut Korkut

Liberalization Challenges in Hungary

Why Hungary? What Causes Liberalization Troubles? Historical Features of Liberal Thought and Liberalism in Hungary Liberalization after 1989 The Conservative Reaction

Political Religion and Politicized Women in Turkey: Hegemonic Republicanism Revisited

Abstract Since its establishment in 1923, the Republic of Turkey has assumed a sacred character, owing primarily to the influence of republicanism, the country’s dominant political religion. Processes of modernization, inherent in republicanism, became the main instigators for the improvement of women’s rights in Turkey from the 1920s and 1930s onwards. However, thanks to the subsequent Europeanization process in Turkey, coinciding with the new millennium, modernization has acquired new meanings. The new interpretations of modernization, do not necessarily support the dominant political religion in Turkey. Gender policy is a crucial area to gauge how modernization and republicanism clash and/or converge with each other. This article comprehensively examines how, very recently, the demands of gender rights activists have accentuated differences between republicanism and modernization. We argue that the schism among womens’ groups in the public sphere regarding rights has been important for triggering debate and questioning the ongoing salience of republicanism. The article contributes to literature on political religions by suggesting that the sacralization of the republic, driven by Turkish nation‐building processes in our case, may be hampered by the process of modernization once this process becomes autonomous from sacralization and generates its own momentum.

Administrative Reform and Regional Development Discourses in Hungary. Europeanisation Going NUTS

Starting from the empirical observation of high levels of absorption of EU cohesion funds but strikingly low levels of substantive change in regional cohesion, this essay offers a contextual analysis of regional development policies in Hungary. Based on theoretical frameworks dealing with Europeanisation, new regionalism and participative development, it explores the reasons for this observation by analysing the role of administrative and planning structures and of development discourses. The essay shows that the Europeanisation of regional development policy triggered several changes in the planning process and led to the partial inclusion of new actors. However, the main effect of this was a growing centralisation of development policy making. The essay explains this by pointing to the domestic political context and the historical foundations of regional development discourses of the conservative and leftist liberal parties. While there are overlaps between the discourses on both sides of the ideological divide, they are perceived as incompatible by political actors. Thus, it is argued that considerations of political power, rather than ideological nature, shape Hungarian regional and development policy and explain the incremental reform process.

Geographical Metanarratives in East-Central Europe: Neo-Turanism in Hungary

Two EU-based social scientists investigate the geographical metanarrative of Neo-Turanism as articulated by the recently ascendant far-right party Jobbik (Movement for a Better Hungary), which differs from most European far-right movements but shares some elements of the anti-Western orientation with Eurasianism and Pan-Slavism. The authors trace Neo-Turanisms origin to a historical ideology (Turanism) that aspires to terminate Hungarys alliance with the Euro-Atlantic community and instead form a cultural, political, and economic alliance with the Uralo-Altaic peoples (i.e., Turks of Turkey, the Turkic peoples of Central Asia, Tatars, the aboriginal tribes of Siberia, and even Mongols, Manchus, Koreans, and Japanese). After examining the development of Turanism during the 18th to 20th centuries, they draw on concentrated fieldwork and interviews in 2012 to focus on its revival (Neo-Turanism) in post-communist Hungary. Due attention is paid to the revival within the political platform articulated by Jobbik as well as in the everyday political activities of many of the countrys inhabitants and social groupings in the context of Europeanization and globalization.

Vulnerability and Economic Re-orientation Rhetoric and in Reality in Hungary’s “Chinese Opening”

To what extent do Euroskeptic parties in Eastern and Central Europe have viable alternatives to the European Union and the broad basket of liberal policies promoted by the EU? In recent years, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has used his overwhelming parliamentary majorities to chart a partially new course, and this article inventories one aspect of this new course. The article asks whether Hungary can gain any potential benefits from closer links to China as a partial replacement for resources that might not be available (or that might be lost) from its more conventional European partners to the west. Orbán has often justified both radical constitutional change and economic nationalism as powerful medicines to push back against Hungary’s vulnerability at the hands of its foreign and domestic enemies. In this context, China emerged as both a potential source of new revenue and rhetorical trope that seemed to fit in a broader Fidesz discourse of an “Eastern opening.” This article makes a first attempt to separate rhetoric and reality. It first explores how the ongoing consolidation of illiberalism in Hungary has now also sparked a geopolitical repositioning through the “Eastern opening” during Fidesz’s second term. Second, it seeks to understand the theoretical proposition that new sources of external funding—including FDI and government bond purchases—can help enable a state to execute such a broad geopolitical shift. To do so, it develops empirical material from the fascinating Hungarian efforts to position themselves as a major beneficiary of Chinese engagement with Europe. The article concludes that Orbán’s policies have indeed been broadly consistent with his party’s new rhetoric, but it also concludes that the amount of Chinese investment is, in aggregate, still modest to date.

Discursive Governance in Politics, Policy, and the Public Sphere

Discursive governance refers to implicit mechanisms of governance such as narratives, leitmotifs, and strategic metaphors in political language. It examines how the framing of policies affects political and social representations in accordance with the wishes of political authorities. Ad hoc discourses generate a space where politicians configure, transmit, and initiate politics ideationally, rather than vouchsafing substantial policy change with respect to governance. This book studies the dynamics of political discourse in governance processes. It demonstrates the process in which political discourses become normative mechanisms, first marking socially constructed realities in politics, second playing a role in delineating the subsequent policy frames, and third influencing the public sphere. The key contribution of this volume is tracing the discursive relationships among actors, namely governments and political parties, policy participants and societal actors, and the public in European nation states, intergovernmental organizations, subnational or regional entities, and geographies beyond Europe where European norms trigger ideational processes of change. The book extends earlier work in the field by exploring how policy and politics create social knowledge, make some ideas publicly salient, and bring together coalitions of actors that find certain policy alternatives attractive and eventually generate political and policy change.

Domestic Work, Gender, and Migration in Turkey: Legal Framework Enabling Social Reality

This chapter demonstrates that the composition of the labor market in a host country, the labor demands of the economy, and the related official indifference to migration can foster a gendered composition of migrants. Moreover, the gender and labor dynamics in a host country can illegalize immigration even if the legal infrastructure as well as political discourse does not condone such illegality. In this context, there arises an inevitable conflict across the legal framework, political discourse, and social reality as immigrants find work in the gendered and informal labor market despite the restrictive legal procedures regulating migration. In order to determine the validity of our assumption, we debate the immigration regime in Turkey, bearing in mind its politico-legal environment, the prevalent social preconceptions about the role of women in the job market, and the eventual rights and position of women migrants in the Turkish labor market mostly as caretakers of children, the elderly, or the sick. Our argument is that despite the strict legal system that sets harsh rules handling migration and the anti-immigration political discourse and public sentiment, there remain loopholes for clandestine migrants to enter the Turkish labor market through informal channels. Dominant ideas regarding women and employment enhance the pervasiveness of such channels.

Immigration and Integration Policies: Assumptions and Explanations

Migration is one of the key issues in contemporary European politics and society, placing high on the political agenda in local, national, and transnational political contexts, and widely debated in the media. All European states must grapple with the challenges posed when people move across borders. However, little is known about the relationship between the construction and elaboration of political discourse and its impact on institutions and actors associated with immigration, as well as the lives and everyday realities of frequently vulnerable migrant populations. This book engages with politics and political discourse that relate to and qualify immigration in Europe. It brings together empirical analysis of immigration both topically and contextually, and interprets such empirical evidence with the use of policy and discursive analyses as methodological tools. Thematically, this volume focuses on how discourse and politics operate in issue areas as varied as immigrant integration and multilevel governance, Roma immigration and their respective securitization, the uses of language in determination of asylum applications, gendered immigrants in informal economy, perceptions of integration by the migrants, economic interests and economic nationalism stimulating immigration choices, ideology and entry policies, and asylum processes and the institutional evolution of immigration systems.

Eager, Pragmatic or Reluctant: Can Common Finno-Ugric Ethnic and Linguistic Links Substantiate Intra-EU CFSP Co-operation?

The paper discusses the salience of the Finno-Ugric links in substantiating intra-EU cooperation among Finland, Estonia and Hungary. The focus is on investigating evidence of such cooperation in the EUs human rights and minority rights related policies towards the Russian Federation and other eastern neighbourhood states. The paper gives an account of institutionalised forms of cultural and political co-operation among the three countries under study. It discusses whether small EU states can coalesce under constructive policy alliances or not. The paper presents the current foreign policy narratives in Finland, Hungary and Estonia and locates the Finno-Ugric narrative in this general framework.

Participatory Policy-Making, Participatory Civil Society: A Key for Dissolving Elite Rule in New Democracies in the Era of Globalization

The author argues that in democracies a strong state and strong civil society are not mutually exclusive. Only a democratic, legitimate, and strong state can provide the environment for civil society activities to flourish; in return, only a strong and a participatory civil society can outline the reach of state strength vis-à-vis the society. The author discusses the need for civil society organizations to collaborate with policy-making institutions, in which they can negotiate policy concerns with ministers and officials while retaining an independent distance from the state and the political parties. Further, the author argues that an environment as such would provide for the transformative capacity of human agency to manifest itself in full in a globalizing world. The author discusses how participatory state and civil society structures will enhance the role of the human agency in order to dissolve elite rule, especially in new democracies.