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Towards an illiberal extraterritorial political community? Hungary’s ‘Simplified Naturalisation’ and its ramification

Author
Affiliation

Chris Moreh

York St John University

Abstract
“Chris Moreh opens the second part of the book, which deals with the political community and antiRoma policies. He argues that to understand what is at stake in Hungary today, it is necessary to direct the discussion towards the connection between citizenship law and constitutional changes. Specifically, the new citizenship law, being applied by Fidesz in 2010, has resulted in what is described in the current volume as ‘the anti-constitutionalist turn’. It is the end of Hungary’s post-communist transition process to a liberal West-European democracy favouring an ‘illiberal democracy’. Moreh, acknowledging the ideological background of that transformation, focuses on how it shifts the meaning of ‘political community’ while discussing extraterritorial ethnic citizenship by putting at its core the principle of ius sanguinis. Only then will anyone who wants to understand what is at stake in Hungary nowadays be able to create the general framework of the Hungarian transformation: an ongoing transition from previously adopted liberal values to the now popular illiberal values. That transition can be better understood by focusing on the clash between Hungary and the EU, the defender of liberal values, while illiberal democracies, namely China and Russia, have gained significance for Orbán’s government” (Kordas 2021).

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Reviews

Kordas, G. (2021) “The Rise of Populist Nationalism. Social Resentments and the Anti-Constitutionalist Turn in Hungary: Margit Feischmidt & Balázs Majtényi (eds), Budapest & New York, NY: Central European University Press, 2019, vi + 304pp., £55.00/€62.00 h/b.”, Europe-Asia Studies, 73(10), pp. 1971–1973. doi: 10.1080/09668136.2021.1977036

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Citation

BibTeX citation:
@incollection{moreh2019,
  author = {Moreh, Chris},
  editor = {Feischmidt, Margit and Majtényi, Balázs},
  publisher = {Central European University Press},
  title = {Towards an Illiberal Extraterritorial Political Community?
    {Hungary’s} “{Simplified} {Naturalisation}” and Its Ramification},
  booktitle = {The rise of populist nationalism: social resentments and
    capturing the constitution in Hungary},
  pages = {105–142},
  date = {2019},
  address = {Budapest and New York},
  url = {https://ceupress.com/book/rise-populist-nationalism},
  langid = {en},
  abstract = {“Chris Moreh opens the second part of the book, which
    deals with the political community and antiRoma policies. He argues
    that to understand what is at stake in Hungary today, it is
    necessary to direct the discussion towards the connection between
    citizenship law and constitutional changes. Specifically, the new
    citizenship law, being applied by Fidesz in 2010, has resulted in
    what is described in the current volume as “the
    anti-constitutionalist turn”. It is the end of Hungary’s
    post-communist transition process to a liberal West-European
    democracy favouring an “illiberal democracy”. Moreh, acknowledging
    the ideological background of that transformation, focuses on how it
    shifts the meaning of “political community” while discussing
    extraterritorial ethnic citizenship by putting at its core the
    principle of ius sanguinis. Only then will anyone who wants to
    understand what is at stake in Hungary nowadays be able to create
    the general framework of the Hungarian transformation: an ongoing
    transition from previously adopted liberal values to the now popular
    illiberal values. That transition can be better understood by
    focusing on the clash between Hungary and the EU, the defender of
    liberal values, while illiberal democracies, namely China and
    Russia, have gained significance for Orbán’s government” (Kordas
    \textless a
    href=“https://doi.org/10.1080/09668136.2021.1977036”\textgreater2021\textless/a\textgreater).}
}
For attribution, please cite this work as:
Moreh, Chris. 2019. “Towards an Illiberal Extraterritorial Political Community? Hungary’s ‘Simplified Naturalisation’ and Its Ramification.” In The Rise of Populist Nationalism: Social Resentments and Capturing the Constitution in Hungary, edited by Margit Feischmidt and Balázs Majtényi, 105–42. Budapest and New York: Central European University Press. https://ceupress.com/book/rise-populist-nationalism.