The triple crisis in Hungary: The “Backsliding” of Hungarian Democracy after Twenty Years
The triple crisis in Hungary: The “Backsliding” of Hungarian Democracy after Twenty Years

Summary/Abstract: This paper tries to point out that the three consecutive crises (the triple crisis) in the New Member States (NMS) have claimed the heavy social price that has been responsible for the drastic “backsliding of the new democracies”. These countries underwent a transformation recession in the early nineties and, once members of the EU, they fell into the post-accession crisis, followed immediately by the global crisis. Originally, their populations reacted to the collapse of the authoritarian rule with a “revolution of high expectations”, so under the label of democracy they expected a Western welfare state “overnight”, thus after Twenty Years the disappointment has been tragic. This paper approaches the crisis of democracy in NMS from the side of the triple crisis in general and from that of Hungary in particular. Although it would be very tempting to generalize on the NMS backsliding, the focus of this paper is on “the country I know best”, i.e. on Hungary with its idiosyncrasies.

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