The Political Economy of Hungarian Authoritarian Populism: Capitalists without the Right Kind of Capital

This book highlights the importance of state-business relations and external capital for structuring and strengthening populism in Hungary, arguing these factors are crucial to understanding the authoritarian populism that has developed in the country since 2010. The book shows how a politically loyal national capital owning class developed and reorganised and this class’s loyalty to the government has been cemented through the latter’s measures to subsume national capital and through the facilitation of transnational capital inflows – especially from China and Russia – to finance large-scale infrastructure projects, which have typically benefitted the former. In turn the success of these measures has strengthened the hegemonic nature of the Hungarian government, helping to foster continued electoral success emanating from nationwide support, and this is seen as an attractive approach for similar ideological entities in the region and beyond who look for an example to emulate