Friday, April 15, 2016
Rhapsody (DoubleTree by Hilton Philadelphia Center City)
While Hungary’s self-professed illiberal turn has been widely documented, the effects of and variation in these policies have yet to be fully examined at the subnational level. This study examines the effects of the Hungarian illiberal turn on major Hungarian megyeszékhelyek (regional centers).[1] Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s establishment of illiberal democracy has increased autonomy for cities to implement policies that violate existing EU funding arrangements and aspects of European law. Subsequently, dependent on the characteristics of constituencies, municipalities have differentially leveraged this autonomy to implement policies in opposition to European norms and requirements. Notably, these policies are implemented at a level of government insufficiently monitored by the European Union’s weak enforcement mechanisms. In shifting the analytical focus to subnational entities, this line of research sets out to examine variation in how municipal administrations capitalize on this increased autonomy, calling into question the local resilience of the EU agenda in less-compliant member states. In this way, our research contends that the increased relative autonomy of subnational actors from European monitoring has undermined the resilience of Europeanization and exacerbated anti-European tendencies.
