Eva, thank you very much for joining us. I wanted to discuss your book, The Gender Regime of Anti-Liberal Hungary. To start, I want to ask about the label “anti-liberal.” Why do you apply anti-liberal to the Orbán regime, and is anti-liberalism an ideology? If so, is it thick or thin, and what kind of liberalism is the Hungarian state opposed to? Political liberalism? Economic liberalism? Cultural?
Thank you so much for inviting me to discuss my book. I actually don’t insist on the term anti-liberal. I used it, instead of “illiberal,” for two reasons. First, when I started writing the book “illiberal” sounded more like a political slogan than an analytical category. Prime Minister Viktor Orbán called his regime illiberal at a political rally and thus turned this word into a battle cry around which like-minded thinkers could unite. Orbán has moved on to other labels since then, so I suppose the term “illiberal” can be taken back by analysts.
The other and perhaps more important reason for the use of the word “anti-liberal” in my title is a reference to the so-called “anti-gender movement.” The anti-gender movement is a loose transnational network whose activists fight against what they label “gender ideology,” a term that encompasses a variety of issues, from sex education in schools to same-sex marriage, reproductive rights, treatment for trans youth, and support for various forms of gender equality. I wanted to situate Orbán in this international ideological context and simultaneously highlight the fact that his self-proclaimed political ambition is to fight against what he calls “liberalism” and “liberals.” Ironically, Orbán would probably not oppose the gender policies of 18th-century contractarian liberals, who conceived of a political order where only men qualified as citizens and independent owners of their own bodies. Yet over the past decades, western feminist movements have redefined the meaning of liberal gender politics, demanding the equal inclusion of women in all realms of public life and, more recently, tolerance towards different forms of gender identities, sexualities, and choice in family formations. It is these issues that anti-gender, anti-liberal politicians, including Orbán, take issue with.
In general, I conceptualize anti-liberalism—borrowing from Aihwa Ong’s 2006 article—as a “mobile technology of governing” consisting of a set of ideas and policies that politicians draw on, adjust, and reinterpret selectively depending on the geopolitical, economic and cultural context in which they govern. The repertoire of anti-liberal ideas and policy actions is rich, prone to change, and blurry at the edges—but not infinite or incoherent. My interest as a sociologist of gender is primarily in identifying the changing nature and content of these repertoires as well as in uncovering how and with what impact on gender inequality and gender relations they are deployed in different institutions and environments.
The repertoire of anti-liberal ideas and policy actions is rich, prone to change, and blurry at the edges—but not infinite or incoherent.
Relatedly, you study Hungary’s gender relations using a political-economic lens. In the book, you talk at various times about Hungary’s relationship with neoliberalism, noting that consecutive Orbán governments have flexibilized labor markets, disciplined workers, and courted foreign capital, but also moved away from hallmarks of the neoliberal state, like the “individual-based principle of social citizenship.” How does this mixed story play out in the country’s gender regime? What is “carefare” and to what extent is it in continuity with, or departing from, neoliberalism?
I use the term “carefare” to describe a novel form of state-citizen relationship characteristic of Orbán’s illiberal regime. There is a long literature describing how, in Western capitalist countries, citizens can make claims on the state, i.e., about who is eligible for solidarity and welfare distributed by state institutions, and under what conditions. Researchers have argued that in neoliberal economies paid work has become the primary basis on which social assistance can be claimed: if you have a paid job, you may rightfully expect to receive sick leave, unemployment benefits, etc.—all based on your work history. To show your deservingness, you may even have to work in specific state programs to be eligible for welfare: this system is called “workfare.”
In anti-liberal Hungary, a new logic of social citizenship is emerging: people are eligible for the most generous state subsidies on the basis of birthing and caring for children.
In anti-liberal Hungary, a new logic of social citizenship is emerging: people are eligible for the most generous state subsidies on the basis of birthing and caring for children. There are a number of additional conditions too: one has to be working for wages and raise children in a specific type of family unit (more about this later). But the amount of social subsidy one can get depends not on how much money one made in the past (as, for example, in the case of unemployment benefits or pensions) but on how many children a family is raising. Hungary is spending an enormous amount of money on what is called “family protection” measures, essentially welfare subsidies paid to working parents. These include tax benefits, loans, grants upon the birth of children, mortgage support, and many others. Unlike in neoliberal economies, these welfare benefits are not distributed to individuals but to families (married couples) if they have or promise to have children. I call this “carefare”—a new logic of welfare distribution that is a clear break from practices elsewhere.
You lay out four features of carefare. The first of which we just discussed—its conception of social citizenship. Can you talk about some of its other features and perhaps its relationship to gender equality?
In some sense, Orbán’s carefare regime realized a decades-old feminist dream: revaluing, even remunerating care work. To give you an example: if you are a mother of 4 children, you do not have to pay income tax at all. What is this if not a public appreciation of care work? If this sounds too good to be true, that is because it is. Only certain types of care work matter: those that promise to reproduce a “healthy” and ethnically homogeneous nation.
In some sense, Orbán’s carefare regime realized a decades-old feminist dream: revaluing, even remunerating care work…If this sounds too good to be true, that is because it is. Only certain types of care work matter: those that promise to reproduce a “healthy” and ethnically homogeneous nation.
For this reason, looking after elderly parents or disabled children—similarly time-consuming and costly endeavors—does not count for much. For most of the benefits, care work must be provided within what the regime defines as a family: a state-sanctioned marriage of a man and a woman and must be done by members of the family themselves (not hired care workers). Also, not exactly in a feminist spirit, Orbán’s regime purposefully ignores all international directives and recommendations that are designed to achieve gender equality in paid or unpaid work or reduce gender-based violence.
Building on this, how is care work “sentimentalized” in Hungary and why? Moreover, how can we square this sentimentalization with the fact that Hungary’s gender regime is not, in your telling, conservative in the traditional sense, i.e., it does not wish to send women “back to the kitchen.”
“Sentimentalization” of care work refers to politicians’ predilection for replacing remuneration of women’s care work (maybe except for some forms of childcare) with expressions of gratitude and praise. This is not unique to Hungary, but it is especially striking given the excessive political attention dedicated to care work here. We often hear politicians and public figures praise women for their self-sacrifice, arguing that only women could solve workplace problems involving patience, tact, and care, yet also implying that these are natural traits that do not require monetary compensation, and may indeed suffer from it. This is what I call sentimentalization.
“Sentimentalization” refers to politicians’ predilection for replacing renumeration of women’s care work with expressions of gratitude and praise…in contrast to neoliberal tendencies to commercialize care work, Orbán’s anti-liberal regime sentimentalizes it.
I argue that, in contrast to neoliberal tendencies to commercialize care work, Orbán’s anti-liberal regime sentimentalizes it. Childcare is no exception unless it means birthing children in heterosexual married families. But even here, birth grants or tax exemptions hardly compensate for the ongoing work of raising children, which is assigned almost solely to women. In addition, and again not unique to Hungary but indicating that the attention is not on care work but on the production of future Hungarians, childcare workers are one of the lowest-paid groups in Hungary.
Interestingly, this does not imply that the government encourages women to abandon paid work and stay at home to look after family and hearth. Instead, women are incentivized to return to their paid jobs after childbirth but not to strive for high-flying careers. That would require adjusting the workplace to become a more family-friendly environment, which is absolutely not on the agenda, regardless of EU policy directives. Instead, women are expected to be content with contributing some income to the family and revel in their roles as mothers and carers for household duties—their true gift.
I’d like to move on to the political calculus that undergirds these changes, and its potential political effects. You talk at length about “churchification” and how it is both ideologically motivated, but also politically so (as it shores up key constituencies for Orbán) What is churchification and how does it fit into this new gender regime, and why is it politically advantageous?
Churchification is indirectly connected to Orbán’s emerging gender regime. Orbán’s FIDESZ party rules in coalition with the Christian Democratic People’s Party. While this latter party has practically no independent role, it brings the endorsement and political support of the Catholic Church, the largest religious organization in Hungary by far.
Deregulation and commercialization of social services is the ongoing practice in neoliberal economies: services earlier provided by state agencies are farmed out to market-based actors. Orbán has been deregulating too—not to market actors but to political loyalists, specifically to a small number of handpicked churches, including the Catholic Church, which have proven their loyalty to the government. Over the past decade a significant proportion of schools at every level of education, as well as practically all social welfare institutions, such as old people’s homes, foster parent agencies, and the like, have been handed over to selected church organizations. If a church runs a school, the state pays more per child than in regular public schools. In addition, along with the funding for the service provisions, the real estate where the services are conducted is also often passed into the hands of the organization. In exchange, these churches are loyal political soldiers working for the government. This is what I call “churchification” (to rhyme with commercialization) and it is simply the government’s deal with religious organizations, which allows the latter to flourish and the government to expand its anti-liberal and anti-gender political ideology and influence.
I want to ask you more pointedly about the class dynamics of this new system and their political effects. You are quite clear-sighted in the book about the fact that, while social spending has been in net decline since 2010 and precarity has grown, the government’s generous “family protection” programs offer upward mobility for certain populations, have decreased child poverty, have “ameliorated social conflict around redistribution” and are in some ways better than the alternatives. Are Fidesz and carefare fairly popular in Hungary because they represent a kind of “least bad”—in economic terms—version of the options on offer?
I wish I could answer this question. Illiberalism is most enthusiastically studied by political scientists, while sociologists are less engaged. So, there is a dearth of analyses on the social consequences of illiberal politics. It’s also probably a bit too early to see the changes quite clearly and illiberally-minded politicians are not particularly keen on widely sharing data.
There has certainly been some reorganization of class positions and not only at the top. Among those who received baby loans and cheap mortgages, there are many for whom access to such sums of money would have been impossible otherwise. These lower- to lower-middle-class groups are enthusiastic political supporters of the regime and for a good reason.
At the same time, the truly impoverished benefitted little from the subsidies but suffered from the simultaneous elimination of practically all universal social benefits. Only people of childbearing age, those living in heterosexual married-couple families, and those who are working for wages in legally registered workplaces (or whose spouses are making exceptionally large sums of money) are eligible for the full benefits. This excludes a lot of poor people, including many who belong to Hungary’s largest and vastly disadvantaged ethnic minority, the Roma, who are often forced to make ends meet by working in the informal labor market. I am also concerned about the long-term impact of the measures on lower-class families who received large amounts of cash on the promise of having three children within the span of 10 years. When a couple divorces—not a rare event in Hungary—or the children do not materialize, the grant has to be paid back with a penalty. How these families, and how divorced parents, especially women, would be able to do this is an important question for the future. To understand the full impact of these policies on gender, class, and ethnic inequalities, coupled with the lack of other types of social protection measures, serious research is required.
Two more questions. The first is about the parochialism of Hungarian carefare. Orbán’s Hungary has captured the imagination of many Rightists in the West, and many are drawn specifically to Orbán’s carefare model and its so-called pronatalism. But how applicable is this model for countries in Western Europe or the United States? Do you think it is possible to copy-and-paste this gender regime onto other states, should the radical right win there? Or is this something distinctly Hungarian?
Copy-pasting is clearly not possible, but it is ironic to hear people like JD Vance praising Viktor Orbán— the Prime Minister of a country he probably wouldn’t find on the map—for the way he dealt with left-wing universities and claiming that the US could learn from him on a number of policy issues. Orbán, however, is not the source of all the policy wisdom attributed to him: much of what he has introduced has been conceived and tried elsewhere. He draws from a repertoire of ideas and policies familiar to many right-wing politicians. Orbán, however, has the added advantage of being in power and fully controlling Parliament and much of the media and thus being able to fast-track policies and avoid much debate or opposition.
It is also important to note that other illiberal leaders, while also interested in pursuing a pronatalist agenda, translated this desire into quite different measures. In Poland, for example, policies supporting childbirth are distributed much more equitably across social groups. In other words, while the spirit of anti-liberalism has clearly been adopted elsewhere too, the actual discourse and policies vary depending on a number of factors. This is why I called anti-liberalism a “mobile” technology of governing.
Finally, we always ask our guests a question about illiberalism, the term that graces our Program’s title. We talked a bit about your preference for anti-liberalism as a label, but I’m curious if you think illiberalism has explanatory power as well, or do you find it obfuscatory or somehow lacking?
I simply cannot answer this question purely on a conceptual level. I live in Hungary and have experienced first-hand the impact of an illiberal regime on everyday life. I teach in a Gender Studies department, a discipline that was summarily banned a few years ago. I work at a university that was forced out of the country because it was deemed too liberal by the regime. I have two children, so I benefitted from the tax breaks and housing renovation grants. I travel on the subway and see an endless stream of posters depicting happy, white, young, heterosexual families with multiple children…I could go on.
You cannot deny the impact, explanatory power, and viciousness of this regime (as compared to earlier ones) when you live in it…I frankly don’t care what we call it, illiberal, anti-liberal, or anything else: we should try to understand its appeal, try to conceptualize better solutions to the problems illiberal regimes claim to be solving.
You cannot deny the impact, explanatory power, and viciousness of this regime (as compared to earlier ones) when you live in it. From this perspective, I frankly don’t care what we call it, illiberal, anti-liberal, or anything else: we should try to understand its appeal, try to conceptualize better solutions to the problems illiberal regimes claim to be solving, and prepare for the fallout that will no doubt happen when these regimes fail. Not if, but when.
Eva Fodor is Professor of Gender Studies and is currently a member of CEU’s Senior Leadership Team as Pro-Rector for Teaching and Learning. She has a Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of California in Los Angeles and works in the field of comparative social inequalities. Specifically, she is interested in how and why gender differences in the labor market and elsewhere are shaped, reshaped, renegotiated and reproduced in different types of societies and in different social contexts. Her recent book, The Gender Regime of Anti-Liberal Hungary describes the introduction of what she calls a “carefare” regime in Hungary after 2010.
