Post-Communist Mafia State

The Case of Hungary

Bálint Magyar

• Publisher: Central European University Press
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN:
  9786155513541
• eBook ISBN:
  9786155513558
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: 21st Century History
• Index: Politics & International Relations

In an article in 2001 the author analyzed the way Fidesz, the party on government for the first time then, was eliminating the institutional system of the rule of law. At that time, many readers doubted the legitimacy of the new approach, whose key categories were the 'organized over-world', the 'state employing mafia methods' and the 'adopted political family'. Critics considered these categories metaphors rather than elements of a coherent conceptual framework. Ten years later Fidesz won a two-third majority in Parliament at the 2010 elections: the institutional obstacles of exerting power were thus largely removed. Just like the party, the state itself was placed under the control of a single individual, who since then has applied the techniques used within his party to enforce submission and obedience onto society as a whole. While in many post-communist systems a segment of the party and secret service became the elite in possession of not only political power but also of wealth, Fidesz, as a late-coming new political predator, was able to occupy this position through an aggressive change of elite. The actions of the post-communist mafia state model are led by the logic of power and wealth concentration in the hands of the clan. But while the classical mafia channeled wealth and economic players into its spheres of interest by means of direct coercion, the mafia state does the same by means of parliamentary legislation, legal prosecution, tax authority, police forces and secret service. The new conceptual framework is important and timely not only for Hungary, but also for other post-communist countries subjected to autocratic rules.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title page
• Copyright page
• Table of Contents
• Timeline of the Past Century of Hungary
• Acknowledgments
• Foreword by Kim Lane Scheppele
• 1. The system we live under
• 2. The disintegration of the Third Hungarian Republic in 2010
• 3. Approaches of interpretation: from the functional disorders of democracy to a critique of the system
• 4. Definition of the post-communist mafia state
• 5. Specific features of the mafia state: a subtype of autocratic regimes
• 6. The legitimacy deficit faced by the mafia state and the means to overcome it
• 7. Legitimizing the mafia state: the ideological arsenal
• 8. The Criminal State
• 9. Pyramid schemes—the limits of the mafia state
• Annexes
• List of accompanying studies
• Former publications
• Index of Names
• Back cover