Orbán’s Hungary: Image and Reality – Whose Democracy? Which Liberalism? Cover Image

Orbán’s Hungary: Image and Reality – Whose Democracy? Which Liberalism?
Orbán’s Hungary: Image and Reality – Whose Democracy? Which Liberalism?

Author(s): John O’Sullivan
Subject(s): Politics / Political Sciences
Published by: BL Nonprofit Kft

Summary/Abstract: Hungary faces an epistemological problem that all medium-size and small countries face in international politics. Most people – including most journalists and most opinion-formers – know very little about them. Among open societies only a very few are known and understood abroad to any degree of depth and complication. The United States enjoys such informed scrutiny because of Hollywood’s film and television industries; the size and reach of its media organisations such as Time, the AP and CNN; the world-wide internet from which America gained influence from the fact of being its pioneer; and, finally, because of official United States international broadcasting agencies such as Voice of America. Indeed, the United States – from its white picket fences to its towering skyscrapers – is a place we think we know almost as well as we know our own country. Britain, whose imperial power has been transmuted into spectacular cultural influence, is another such ubiquitously visible power. France is a third such country, but perhaps decreasingly so as admiration for French culture fades before the advance of a vapid multiculturalism. At least in Central Europe Germany still exercises cultural “pull”. And during the Cold War Hungarians probably felt that they knew the Soviet Union very well, indeed far better than they would have wished – and that feeling may now be returning.

  • Issue Year: V/2014
  • Issue No: 05
  • Page Range: 7-18
  • Page Count: 12
  • Language: English