The retreat of liberal democracy: authoritarian capitalism and the accumulative state in Hungary: by Gábor Scheiring, Cham, Switzerland, Palgrave Macmillan Challenges to Democracy in the 21st Century, 2020, 367 pp., € 93,59 (hardcover), ISBN 978-3-030-48751-5; €74,89 (eBook), ISBN 978-3-030-48752-2

Although Fidesz prides itself on breaking with liberalism, and in the realm of political institutions the break is indeed fundamental, the new regime's socio-economic policies have radicalised certain neoliberal tendencies (332) At the beginning of the twenties there's nothing special about states rolling back liberal safeguards and freedoms. Accordingly, Scheiring's claim that "[t]he accumulative state replaced the competition state" (277) might also be too strong, as key economic policies of the accumulative state have not replaced but radicalized those of the pre-existing competition state. The result is a wide-ranging analysis, focusing on domestic and foreign economic actors shaping government policy, and offers an empirically rich and conceptually persuasive account of how and why domestic capital factions lost out under post-socialist neoliberalism, and how Orbán's Fidesz party aimed to alleviate this. [Extracted from the article]