The Rediscovery of Developmental Statism in Populist Hungary and Poland

By comparing Hungary and Poland, one-time star performers of economic transformation and European integration, the article demonstrates how these two economies endorsed the build-up of statist and autocratic regimes, making explicit references to (old style) developmental statism. Such illiberal and populist tendencies were often equated – even in scholarly works – with a conscious design of shifting Hungary and Poland away from the neoliberal paradigm of development towards the model a developmental state, exemplified by the successful emerging economies of East Asia. These tendencies were identified as a nationalist-populist strategy of economic development (Appel and Orenstein 2018), a deliberate move towards conservative developmental statism (Bluhm and Varga 2020). The article applies a comparative case study method by initiating the parallel scrutiny of the institutional dimensions of successful East Asian developmental states and the policy implications of this paradigm both at the domestic and the global levels. By contrasting the most recent Hungarian (2010-2024) and Polish (2015-2023) statist experience under populist rule with the main features of the classical concept of developmental states, the article demonstrates that these two CEE economies’ recent “declaratory” developmental statism deviates significantly from the East Asian model, and this is consequential both in terms of developmental outcomes and the sustainability of the regime. The article argues that the Hungarian and Polish states might have evolved into a strong one under populist rule, but their statist turn had nothing common with the original model of the developmental state. Hungarian and Polish developmental statism is more like a rhetorical twist than a substantive policy choice by which the two countries’ (extreme) right-wing ruling elites attempted to hide the costs of their illiberal turns in the sphere of the economy. The co-author of the paper is Judit Ricz (Corvinus University of Budapest). Appel, H. & Orenstein, M. A. (2018) From Triumph to Crisis: Neoliberal Economic Reform in Postcommunist Countries (New York, Cambridge University Press) Bluhm, K. & Varga, M. (2020) ‘Conservative Developmental Statism in East Central Europe and Russia’, New Political Economy, 25, 4, 642-659.