Soft Authoritarianism, a concept that appears contradictory, aims to capture the current fuzziness of democracies sliding into authoritarian rule the world over. Formal elections bolster the power of strongmen, majoritarian democracies undermine the rights of minorities, the rule of law is hollowed out using the constitution, and discourses of freedom of expression are deployed to dismantle fundamental human rights.
Our Research Group studies in comparative perspective the fluid and flexible political, juridical, social and discursive configurations which blur the line between democratic and authoritarian practices of rule. It examines how soft authoritarianisms of various varieties are established and contested in different contexts. How are these new forms of rule legitimized discursively, implemented institutionally? How are responsibilities and accountability watered down, power centralized and its transfer impeded? What forms of mobilization and action by citizens attempt to stem the slow and systematic erosion of liberal democratic institutions? In what ways has the Covid-19 pandemic exacerbated authoritarian tendencies and are they here to stay?
Our four contrastive case studies linking ethnography with discourse analysis and documentary research focus on Poland, France, India, and Turkey/the Turkish-European diaspora.
Elections, Tactics and Violence – Erdoğan’s Soft Authoritarianism and the Current Developments (Part II)
In light of the recent wave of arrests targeting politicians of the main opposition party CHP – including the prominent Mayor of Istanbul, Ekrem İmamoğlu – and the subsequent mass…
Elections, Tactics and Violence – Erdoğan’s Soft Authoritarianism and the Current Developments (Part I)
In light of the recent wave of arrests targeting politicians of the main opposition party CHP – including the prominent Mayor of Istanbul, Ekrem İmamoğlu – and the subsequent mass…
Wahlen, Taktiken und Gewalt - Erdoğans soft-autoritäres Regime angesichts der aktuellen Entwicklungen (Teil II)
Angesichts der jüngsten Verhaftungswelle gegen Politikerinnen und Politiker der größten Oppositionspartei CHP einschließlich dem berühmten Oberbürgermeister Ekrem Imamoğlu und die darauffolgenden Massendemonstrationen im ganzen Land, wird in der Türkei die…
Wahlen, Taktiken und Gewalt – Erdoğans soft-autoritäres Regime angesichts der aktuellen Entwicklungen (Teil I)
Angesichts der jüngsten Verhaftungswelle gegen Politikerinnen und Politiker der größten Oppositionspartei CHP einschließlich dem berühmten Oberbürgermeister Ekrem Imamoğlu und die darauffolgenden Massendemonstrationen im ganzen Land, wird in der Türkei die…
Introducing Podcast Series: Democracy in Question
S11E02: Quinn Slobodian on Capitalism, Democracy, and the Politics of Zones (Part 1)
This episode explores the tension between democracy and capitalist markets. How could the fragmentation of national sovereignty offer a “solution” in the neoliberal imagination? What can experiment in special economic…
S11E01: Arjun Appadurai on Universities, Autonomy, and the Future of Democracy
This episode examines the unprecedented attacks on universities under the Trump administration. Why do these assaults go beyond culture-war battles over the humanities and diversity to target the very foundations…
S10E10: Michael Ignatieff on the Contradictions of Liberal Democracy
This episode explores the tensions and contradictions of liberal democracy. What are some recent developments regarding opposing dynamics of economic globalization and the political sovereignty of the nation state? And…
S10E09: Luiza Bialasiewicz on the Dilemmas of Academic Freedom
This episode explores recent challenges to the ideal of the university as a space for open debate and the plurality of views. What is emerging in various national contexts of…
Gender Justice under Soft Authoritarianism
Public Keynote Lecture by Eva Fodor (CEU Vienna) at Weserburg Museum of Modern Arts
An important feature of the rising tide of authoritarian politics across the world today is their emphasis on crafting ‘gender regimes’ that reassert the role of women in patriarchal terms. In the context of the anti-liberal and soft-authoritarian transformation of Hungarian democracy since 2010, this talk will outline the key challenges to gender justice arising out of the pro-natalist agenda of the Orban government. It will focus especially on how the Orbanist regime shaped a set of policies that ties social citizenship rights to having children, thereby engendering a new variety of gender regime that I call “carefare”. Coupled with the authoritarian crackdown on what is often dubbed “gender ideology” in universities and other spaces in the civil society, this reformulation of the ‘problem of care’ into one of reasserting the gender roles of women poses a powerful challenge to gender justice. While this talk will draw on the distinct trajectory of gender regimes within the specific history of state socialism and post-socialist society in Eastern Europe, it hopes to open a wider dialogue on the ramifications of the rise of soft-authoritarian politics in different parts of the world for the question of gender justice.
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 (open access with Palgrave Pivot, 2022). Her ongoing research projects puruse this agenda further and seek to create a gendered political economy of illiberalism.
