Forum on International Issues
Sponsered by the Global Education Center and the Theater and Dance Department

New Authoritarianism in Hungary

Gyorgi Cspeli

Eotvos Lorand University, Hungary

Dr. Csepeli is currently a Global Education Scholar at Montclair State University, teaching in the History Department and the Honors Program. He is Chair of the Interdisciplinary Social Research doctoral program at Eotvos Lorand University in Budapest, Hungary. He has served in the Ministry of Communications and Informatics and as Director of Public Policy. Public Policy Director in the Prime Minister's Office and in the Ministry of Economy and Transport. Dr. Csepeli received his Ph.D. from the Hungarian Academy of Sciences in Social Psychology of Hungarian National Identity, and has been a visiting scholar at Yale University, University of Michigan, Oregon State University, and a Fulbright Scholar at UCLA.

He will discuss a 2010 sociological study aimed at revealing manifestations of authoritarianism in Hungary such as social dominance, antisemitism, anti-Gypsy sentiments, xenophobia and extreme forms of nationalism. The interpretation of the results are put into the paradoxical context of transition from state socialism into market economy and liberal democracy. Ironically enough, the transition has been halted by the processes unleashed by itself.