Europeanization, Welfare and Variegated Austerity Capitalisms – Hungary and Croatia

Abstract

AbstractThis 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.