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The Political Economy of Middle Class Politics and the Global Crisis in Eastern Europe : The case of Hungary and Romania 1st Edition Agnes Gagyi full chapter instant download
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The Political Economy of
Middle Class Politics and
the Global Crisis in
Eastern Europe
The case of Hungary and Romania
Agnes Gagyi
International Political Economy Series
Series Editor
Timothy M. Shaw , University of Massachusetts Boston, Boston, USA;
Emeritus Professor, University of London, London, UK
The global political economy is in flux as a series of cumulative crises
impacts its organization and governance. The IPE series has tracked its
development in both analysis and structure over the last three decades.
It has always had a concentration on the global South. Now the South
increasingly challenges the North as the centre of development, also
reflected in a growing number of submissions and publications on
indebted Eurozone economies in Southern Europe. An indispensable
resource for scholars and researchers, the series examines a variety of capi-
talisms and connections by focusing on emerging economies, companies
and sectors, debates and policies. It informs diverse policy communities as
the established trans-Atlantic North declines and ‘the rest’, especially the
BRICS, rise. NOW INDEXED ON SCOPUS!
The Political
Economy of Middle
Class Politics
and the Global Crisis
in Eastern Europe
The case of Hungary and Romania
Agnes Gagyi
University of Gothenburg
Gothenburg, Sweden
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer
Nature Switzerland AG 2021
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Preface
1 To ease reading, the book follows the practice of contemporary political and public
debates to refer to ex-socialist countries of the former Soviet bloc as Eastern Europe. In
terms of more exact academic traditions that differentiate between different sub-regions
according to various criteria, the book looks at what has been defined as East Central
Europe: the ethnically diverse region that has historically been a borderland between
competing Hapsburg, Russian and Ottoman powers. Where necessary, I use East Central
Europe to make this reference clear.
v
vi PREFACE
modern East European middle class politics, this gesture fits into a long-
term pattern, where disillusionment with failed promises of catching up
with Western standards generates new developmental projects, formulated
along new socio-political alliances. Commentators have interpreted this
pattern as a historical tendency of East European middle classes to use
political tools to maintain and expand their positions, in the lack of an
economic base for middle class development similar to Western coun-
tries. Instead of a specificity of East European “backwardness”, I propose
to take this angle as a starting point for a comparative perspective on
contemporary middle classprotests.
In post-2008 commentaries, the progressive nature of anti-austerity
pro-democracy protests has been associated with middle class indignation
over a fast polarization of wealth (the 1% vs. the 99%), which closes oppor-
tunities for middle classdevelopment. In Western contexts, this has also
been described as the “crisis of democratic capitalism”—an end to postwar
development’s promise for capitalist growth associated with the expansion
of middle class positions, and the resulting annihilation of class tensions
locally and (with time) globally. In this framework, previous promises and
current indignation over their failure seem to point in the same direction:
a resuscitation of a more equal, more democratic growth, favorable to
middle classdevelopment. However, looking at the structural conditions
of Western middle class growth—held up as a model for other global
regions—, instead of a harmonious picture of global development, we
see an increasingly polarizing system, where the formation of Western
welfare societies is based on the extraction potential of Western capital,
and the multiplication of white collar jobs is tied to the monopoliza-
tion and formalization of knowledge capacities in the service of managing
those extraction flows. This book proposes to consider the politics of
contemporary middle classprotests in terms of how these contradictions,
ingrained in middle class ambitions and associated developmental ideolo-
gies, relate to current transformations of structural conditions in different
global positions.
In order to place East European cases within that context, in Chapter 1
I propose a framework based on a world-systems approach, which
considers social movements as part of local dynamics of global integra-
tion. In Chapter 2, I describe East European middle class politics within
that framework, as a specific driver of semi-peripheral developmentalist
illusions. Comparing the cases of Hungary and Romania, in Chapter 3 I
follow how this factor played out throughout respective transformations
PREFACE vii
ix
x CONTENTS
Conclusion 123
References 125
3 Crisis, Regime Change, Movement: Comparing
Mobilization Cycles in Hungarian and Romanian
Constellations of Global Integration After 1973
and 2008 135
Socialism, Postsocialism, European Integration: Situated
Notions of Systemic Integration 137
Late Socialist Regimes of Global Integration—Hungary
and Romania After 1973 148
Conclusion 204
References 209
4 Long-Term Middle Class Politics and Contemporary
New Left Initiatives in Hungary and Romania 225
A New Moment of Intellectual–Political Thought 226
New Left Positions in Post-2008 Mobilization Waves 233
Left Politics as the Experience of the Self 244
Building Substance 261
Conclusion 273
References 274
Conclusion 281
Index 289
CHAPTER 1
MOLIÈRE.
A képzelt beteg.
(Vígjáték 3 felvonásban, írta Molière, fordította Berczik Árpád. A Nemzeti
Színházban először adták 1894 május 11.-én.)
LESSING.
Bölcs Náthán.
(Drámai költemény 5 felvonásban, fordította Zichy Antal. Először adták a
Nemzeti Színházban 1888 december 28.-án.)
Egy jólelkű, kövér szívű öreg zsidó, aki csak azért bölcs, mert
nem olvas, magához veszi egy keresztény barátjának elárvult kis
leányát. És fölneveli, mintha a tulajdon lánya, mintha zsidó leány
volna. Bizonyára megtehette volna, hogy másokra, keresztényekre
bízza a leány nevelését, de akkor nem szerette volna meg a
szegény kis porontyot.
HUGO VIKTOR.
Borgia Lukrécia.
(Dráma 3 felvonásban, fordította Szász Károly. Új betanulással először
adták a Nemzeti Színházban 1882 március 16.-án.)
HUGO VIKTOR.
Angelo.
(Dráma 3 felvonásban, fordította Endrődi Sándor. Új betanulással először
1892 január 4.-én.)