You are cordially invited to a hybrid discussion organized by the Authlib consortium.
If you would like to participate in-person or online, please register here.
Social policy is the area affecting most the well-being and thriving of people, and it thus plays an important role in the campaigns and governance of all political parties. For illiberal actors economic and social policies are of particular importance because, as opposed to outright autocracies, illiberalism exists under democratic or quasi-democratic circumstances. Illiberal actors have to build popular legitimacy, and they do so primarily through economic and social promises and welfare policies. Despite the central importance of social policies to illiberal actors, this area is still under-researched; to date, there is no concise comparative account that includes various welfare state regimes.
To fill this gap, this discussion, presenting Dorottya Szikra’s working paper titled “Illiberalism and Social Policy: A four-country comparison”, looks at four countries that are members of the EU and experienced illiberal rule for a shorter or longer period in the past decades. Austria, Hungary, Italy, and Poland belong to three different welfare regime types, which allows for a cross-regime comparison.
The paper addresses the following research questions: What kind of social policies do illiberal actors pursue? Are their social policy reforms popular? Is there an illiberal style of policy-making? The research employed qualitative text analysis of party manifestos and policy documents between 2008 and 2023. The findings indicate a gradual “leftist” turn of illiberal parties in economic and social policies that is, however, focused on performance. Somewhat paradoxically, illiberal actors fight gender wars alongside with an increased attention to female constituencies.
Paper presented by:
Dorottya Szikra, Research Fellow, CEU Democracy Institute; Head of Department, Centre for Social Sciences
Discussant:
Éva Fodor, Professor, Central European University; Research Fellow, CEU Democracy Institute
Chair:
Dean Schafer, Post-doctoral Research Fellow, CEU Democracy Institute
This event takes place in the framework of the “AUTHLIB – Neo-authoritarianisms in Europe and the Liberal Democratic Response” project funded by the European Union and the UK Research and Innovation. Views and opinions expressed are however do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or UK Research and Innovation. Neither the European Union nor the UK Research and Innovation can be held responsible for them.
To learn more about the project, visit the website.
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