This paper is seeking to interrogate the intersectionality of populism, nationalism and authoritarian neoliberalism as a particular temporality of radical politics and its implications on welfare in Eastern Europe. I will locate the emergence of the Hungarian regime within the context of the crisis of the EU Accession, the global economic crisis of 2008 as well as the broader crisis of post communist transformation. I will argue that the regime is negotiating new spaces between the illiberal state and the competition state, combines neoliberalism with deep anti-market sentiments, promotes strong state interventions and rolling out of the state while declaring the death of the welfare state. Its internal paradoxes challenges some of the recent theoretical works that argue for the colonisation of the markets and economic logics that erases 'politics' (see for example Streeck, 2014; Brown, 2015). Finally, the emerging authoritarian neoliberal regime will be discussed in relation to the EU integration project.
