Europeanization, Welfare and Variegated Austerity Capitalisms - Hungary and Croatia.

This article focuses on the implications of understanding ' Europeanization' as a complex, dynamic and troubled translation process. It discusses post-communist welfare in the context of variegated forms of austerity capitalism in the EU. In particular, the complex relationships between modalities of welfare, the uneven development of neo-liberalisms and the multi-scalar restructuring of welfare assemblages, are discussed in the context of the reframing of relationships between the economic, the political and the social in a period of deep crisis and austerity. Post-communist Europe cannot be conceived as a flattened map or a singular regime type. Rather, diverse and often contradictory restructurings operate in different places at different times, and political agency continues to matter. Comparing and contrasting the changing relationships between neo-liberalism, authoritarian populism and ethnicized nationalism in Hungary and Croatia provides a more nuanced understanding of the variable geometries of transnational translations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]