IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/rripxx/v22y2015i3p535-569.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Financial nationalism and its international enablers: The Hungarian experience

Author

Listed:
  • Juliet Johnson
  • Andrew Barnes

Abstract

Viktor Orb�n and his centre-right Fidesz party won Hungary's April 2010 parliamentary elections in a landslide, running on a nationalist-populist platform of economic self-rule. This paper explores Hungary's financial nationalist turn and its surprisingly successful resistance to IMF and EU pressures to change course. We open by theorizing financial nationalism, and then trace its ideational roots and contemporary character in Hungary. We subsequently argue that two international factors ironically enabled Orb�n to take his financial nationalist ideas from theory to practice: 1) IMF and EU policies that first contributed to Fidesz's electoral victory and then made it difficult to counter Orb�n once in power; and 2) the tolerant behavior of international bond markets. In particular, Orb�n's willingness and ability to use unorthodox, financial nationalist policies to control government deficits and debt both reduced EU and IMF leverage over Hungary and encouraged bond markets to overlook the unsavory politics that produced those numbers.

Suggested Citation

  • Juliet Johnson & Andrew Barnes, 2015. "Financial nationalism and its international enablers: The Hungarian experience," Review of International Political Economy, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 22(3), pages 535-569, June.
    • Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:22:y:2015:i:3:p:535-569
    DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2014.919336
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2014.919336
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/09692290.2014.919336?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Blyth, Mark, 2013. "Austerity: The History of a Dangerous Idea," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780199828302, Decembrie.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Massoc, Elsa Clara, 2022. "Fifty shades of hatred and discontent: Varieties of anti-finance discourses on the European Twitter (France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the UK)," LawFin Working Paper Series 30, Goethe University, Center for Advanced Studies on the Foundations of Law and Finance (LawFin).
    2. Sharafutdinova,Gulnaz & Lokshin,Michael M., 2020. "Hide and Protect : A Role of Global Financial Secrecy in Shaping Domestic Institutions," Policy Research Working Paper Series 9348, The World Bank.
    3. Rau-Goehring, Matthias & Reinsberg, Bernhard & Kern, Andreas, 2020. "The role of IMF conditionality for central bank independence," Working Paper Series 2464, European Central Bank.
    4. Aaron Z. Pitluck & Fabio Mattioli & Daniel Souleles, 2018. "Finance beyond function: Three causal explanations for financialization," Economic Anthropology, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 5(2), pages 157-171, June.
    5. Juliet Johnson & Seçkin Köstem, 2016. "Frustrated Leadership: Russia's Economic Alternative to the West," Global Policy, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 7(2), pages 207-216, May.
    6. Mitchell Orenstein & Bojan Bugaric, 2020. "Populism Amidst Prosperity: Work, Family, Fatherland: The Political Economy of Populism in Central and Eastern Europe," LEQS – LSE 'Europe in Question' Discussion Paper Series 163, European Institute, LSE.
    7. Massoc, Elsa Clara, 2022. "Fifty shades of hatred and discontent: Varieties of anti-finance discourses on the European Twitter (France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the UK)," SAFE Working Paper Series 338, Leibniz Institute for Financial Research SAFE.
    8. Schelkle, Waltraud & Bohle, Dorothee, 2020. "European political economy of finance and financialization," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 105859, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    9. Sallai, Dorottya & Schnyder, Gerhard & Kinderman, Daniel & Nölke, Andreas, 2023. "The antecedents of MNC political risk and uncertainty under right-wing populist governments," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 118668, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    10. Kern, Andreas & Reinsberg, Bernhard & Rau-Göhring, Matthias, 2019. "IMF conditionality and central bank independence," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 59(C), pages 212-229.
    11. Kenneth W. Abbott & Philipp Genschel & Duncan Snidal & Bernhard Zangl, 2020. "Competence versus control: The governor's dilemma," Regulation & Governance, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 14(4), pages 619-636, October.
    12. Mérő, Katalin, 2019. "Érdemes-e csatlakozniuk az európai bankunióhoz az euróövezeten kívüli tagállamoknak? [Is it worth non-euro member-states joining the European Banking Union?]," Közgazdasági Szemle (Economic Review - monthly of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences), Közgazdasági Szemle Alapítvány (Economic Review Foundation), vol. 0(5), pages 497-520.
    13. Abbott, Kenneth W. & Genschel, Philipp & Snidal, Duncan & Zangl, Bernhard, 2018. "The governor's dilemma: Competence versus control in indirect governance," Discussion Papers, Research Unit: Global Governance SP IV 2018-101, WZB Berlin Social Science Center.
    14. Zachary Kramer, 2019. "Fiscal Sovereignty under EU Crisis Management: A Comparison of Greece and Hungary," Acta Oeconomica, Akadémiai Kiadó, Hungary, vol. 69(4), pages 595-624, December.
    15. Kühnast, Julia, 2022. "Growth regimes of populist governments: A comparative study on Hungary and Poland," IPE Working Papers 199/2022, Berlin School of Economics and Law, Institute for International Political Economy (IPE).
    16. Dorothee Bohle, 2017. "Mortgaging Europe’s periphery," LEQS – LSE 'Europe in Question' Discussion Paper Series 124, European Institute, LSE.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Steininger, Lea & Hesse, Casimir, 2024. "Buying into new ideas: The ECB’s evolving justification of unlimited liquidity," Department of Economics Working Paper Series 357, WU Vienna University of Economics and Business.
    2. Achim Truger, 2015. "Implementing the golden rule for public investment in Europe," Working Paper Reihe der AK Wien - Materialien zu Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft 138, Kammer für Arbeiter und Angestellte für Wien, Abteilung Wirtschaftswissenschaft und Statistik.
    3. Jörg Bibow, 2018. "How Germany’s anti-Keynesianism has brought Europe to its knees," International Review of Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 32(5), pages 569-588, September.
    4. Reto Bürgisser & Donato Di Carlo, 2023. "Blessing or Curse? The Rise of Tourism‐Led Growth in Europe's Southern Periphery," Journal of Common Market Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 61(1), pages 236-258, January.
    5. Karsten Kohler & Engelbert Stockhammer, 2022. "Growing differently? Financial cycles, austerity, and competitiveness in growth models since the Global Financial Crisis," Review of International Political Economy, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 29(4), pages 1314-1341, July.
    6. Mark Setterfield, 2024. "Managing the Discontent of the Losers Redux: A Future of Authoritarian Neoliberalism or Social Capitalism?," Working Papers 2401, New School for Social Research, Department of Economics.
    7. Fraccaroli, Nicolò & Giovannini, Alessandro & Jamet, Jean-François & Persson, Eric, 2022. "Ideology and monetary policy. The role of political parties’ stances in the European Central Bank’s parliamentary hearings," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 74(C).
    8. Ivo Arnold, 2021. "An Interest Stabilisation Mechanism to Unburden the ECB," Intereconomics: Review of European Economic Policy, Springer;ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics;Centre for European Policy Studies (CEPS), vol. 56(5), pages 274-277, September.
    9. Costa Cabral, Nazare, 2022. "The European Monetary Integration Trap: incomplete sovereignty and the State-mimicking method," MPRA Paper 115245, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    10. Clément Fontan & François Claveau & Peter Dietsch, 2016. "Central banking and inequalities," Politics, Philosophy & Economics, , vol. 15(4), pages 319-357, November.
    11. Samuel Brazys & Aidan Regan, 2016. "These Little PIIGS Went to Market: Enterprise Policy and Divergent Recovery in European Periphery," Working Papers 201517, Geary Institute, University College Dublin.
    12. Sparke, Matthew, 2017. "Austerity and the embodiment of neoliberalism as ill-health: Towards a theory of biological sub-citizenship," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 187(C), pages 287-295.
    13. Lars P. Feld & Ekkehard A. Köhler, 2023. "Standing on the shoulders of giants or science? Lessons from ordoliberalism," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 195(3), pages 197-211, June.
    14. Kovács, Olivér, 2023. "Az intézmények fejlődése és a fejlődés intézményesülése. Benczes István: Gazdasági növekedés és versenyképesség intézményi perspektívában. Ludovika Kiadó, Budapest, 2022, 264 o [The evolution of in," Közgazdasági Szemle (Economic Review - monthly of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences), Közgazdasági Szemle Alapítvány (Economic Review Foundation), vol. 0(9), pages 1043-1051.
    15. Arunas Juska & Charles Woolfson, 2015. "Austerity, labour market segmentation and emigration: the case of Lithuania," Industrial Relations Journal, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 46(3), pages 236-253, May.
    16. Moritz Rehm, 2021. "Tug of War over Financial Assistance: Which Way Forward for Eurozone Stability Mechanisms?," Politics and Governance, Cogitatio Press, vol. 9(2), pages 173-184.
    17. Philipp Heimberger & Jakob Kapeller, 2017. "The performativity of potential output: pro-cyclicality and path dependency in coordinating European fiscal policies," Review of International Political Economy, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 24(5), pages 904-928, September.
    18. Josef Hien, 2020. "Cultural Political Economy: An Alternative Approach to Understanding the Divergences between Italian and German Positions during the Euro Crisis," Journal of Common Market Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 58(4), pages 1056-1073, July.
    19. Manuel B Aalbers & Ewald Engelen, 2015. "Guest editorial," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 47(8), pages 1597-1605, August.
    20. Giovanni Dosi & Marcello Minenna & Andrea Roventini & Roberto Violi, 2021. "Making the Eurozone work: a risk-sharing reform of the European Stability Mechanism," Annals of Operations Research, Springer, vol. 299(1), pages 617-657, April.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:22:y:2015:i:3:p:535-569. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/rrip20 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.