ABSTRACT
In a July 2014 speech in Băile Tu§nad, Romania, recently re-elected Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban declared that it was time for Hungary to ‘abandon liberal methods and principles of organizing society’ and to embark upon a project of building a new ‘illiberal state’. 1 Citing China, Russia, Singapore, India and Turkey as models, Orban argued that the liberal-democratic model had performed poorly compared to authoritarian states and illiberal democracies during the financial crisis in 2008. 2 Throughout that crisis, he noted, it was illiberal states – as he put it, ‘systems that are not Western, not liberal, not liberal democracies, maybe not even democracies’ – which proved more successful in responding to global economic turmoil. While he acknowledged that liberal values retained a degree of attractiveness, Orban argued that it was important for states to cut themselves loose of the legal restrictions imposed by liberal democracy and to engage in a new type of economic nationalism to ensure that their interests were protected in the global economy.
