In the latest CEU DI Working Paper Dorothee Bohle, Bela Greskovits and Marek Naczyk explore the long-term trajectory and the recent acceleration of the conflict over the rule of law in the EU.

The paper focuses on the motivation of the two governments in Hungary and Poland to challenge European core values increasingly aggressively, and even directly at EU level, despite the threat of significant material costs to both countries. Putting forward a Gramscian understanding, the authors argue that this radicalization is the result of a counterhegemonic strategy that aims to replace the liberal order with a new, nationalist, ultraconservative, Christian order on the domestic and European levels.

The paper traces core elements of this strategy which are either disputed or underestimated in existing literature, most importantly the pursuit of a core ideology and the massive and long-term investment into winning moral and cultural leadership through the penetration of civil society which precedes and complements electoral strategies and autocratic institution building.

Download the paper via the link below.