An Illiberal Thought Collective? “National-Conservative” Policy Networks in Hungary and Poland

What is at the core of the ‘illiberal’ counter-wave to democratization, marketization and Europeanization we are witnessing in several countries of Central and Eastern Europe (CEE)? Where do the illiberal socio-economic ideas, propagated by FIDESZ in Hungary or PiS in Poland, come from? In this paper we present the policy networks of incumbent national-conservatives in Poland and Hungary and discuss their ideas as well as the reasons that have led to their emergence. Building on the literature on the diffusion of neoliberalism throughout the world, we elaborate on the conditions that have favored the emergence of ‘pockets’ of illiberal and anti-neoliberal socio-economic thinking in what were once the success cases of liberalism, Poland and Hungary. Starting from the emergence of ideas that aliment the illiberal turn and the knowledge networks involved in producing a counter-narrative to the liberal and neoliberal ideational consensus during the 1990s and 2000s, we identify the return to an organicist perspective of economy and society to be at the core of these networks’ programmatic visions.