drseanhanley.bsky.social
Assoc Professor in Comparative Central and East European Politics, UCL School of Slavonic and East European Studies. Personal take on politics, Eastern Europe and suburbia.
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I would reach back for a different regime change analogy tbh - no rule of law in communist Eastern Europe obviously in 1989, it was far and no real contestation: consensus even among much of no-ideology nomenklatura that old system had had it and they were happy to dismantle…
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10. But I do think the work of Magyar and Madlovics is something that we political scientists should very much take notice of.
#democracy #autocracy #ECPR #ECPRJ
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9. We’ll have to wait for The forthcoming new book by Petr and his co-authors, of course - (Dismantling Democracy.)
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8. Which I think is a flaw I’d rather abstract notions of “autocracy” in political science.
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7. For M&M state is privatised by a single-pyramid patronal network led by a central “godfather” figure (e.g. Orbán) and “patronalism” is a distinct regime type, not just a degraded/ cancelled version of democracy
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They see patronalism as least cross-cutting democracy/autocracy dimension possibly - depending how you read them - as more important way to think about regimes.
See intro and conclusion of their doorstopper book Anatomy of Post-Communist Regimes (downloadable ebook).
www.postcommunistregimes.com
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5. But leaning into sociology, political economy and area studies, M&M have an absolutely swinging critique of democratisation/autocratisation approach and associated palette of regime categories from comparative political science.
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4. The lecture is a tour de force of comparative political science, with careful attention to general mechanisms and (my impression, not a criticism per se) rooted in liberal understanding of institutions: problems mitigable with better structures, norms, and incentives.
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3. Kopecký and collaborators map how autocrats erode democracy: capture courts, politicise the civil service, divert state funds. A step-by-step script of institutional degradation.
It’s superficially similar to patronage in democracies but greater breadth, depth & different intent.
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2. Some important shared insights and emphases
Despite diff tones & frameworks, Kopecký and M&M agree on key points:
🔹Autocratisation deliberate, strategy not accidental
🔹Patronage/ patronalism is central, not incidental
🔹Hungary paradigmatic case
🔹Entrenchment slowly makes resistance much harder
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Any way of projecting seats from this – presumably only the broadest and loosest of estimates.
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💰Orbán’s family is amassing luxury hotels and prime real estate in Budapest like collecting trophies—including the iconic Hotel Gellért, linked to Hungary’s famed Turkish bath.
Here’s an excerpt from
@direkt36.bsky.social's “The Dynasty” on what Orbán’s son-in-law owns across the capital.