Sociology Colloquium: Ideology and Populism: The Anatomy of Post-Communist Regimes featuring Dr. Bálint Magyar and Dr. Bálint Madlovics
Wednesday, January 31, 2024, 6:00PM to 7:30PM (EST)
Wolff Conference Room/D1103
6 E 16 St New York NY 10003
Drs. Magyar and Madlovics will present key findings from their books The Anatomy of Post-Communist Regimes and A Concise Field Guide to Post-Communist Regimes. Focusing on Central Europe, the post-Soviet countries and China, the studies provide a systematic mapping of possible post-communist trajectories. At exploring the structural foundations of post-communist regime development, the work discusses the types of state, with an emphasis on informality and patronalism; the variety of actors in the political, economic, and communal spheres; the ways autocrats neutralize media, elections, etc. The analysis embraces the color revolutions of civil resistance (as in Georgia and in Ukraine) and the defensive mechanisms of democracy and autocracy; the evolution of corruption and the workings of “relational economy”; an analysis of China as “market-exploiting dictatorship”; the sociology of “clientage society”; and the instrumental use of ideology, with an emphasis on populism. Beyond a cataloguing of phenomena—actors, institutions, and dynamics of post-communist democracies, autocracies, and dictatorships—Magyar and Madlovics also conceptualize everything as building blocks to a larger, coherent structure: a new language for post-communist regimes.
Presented by the Sociology Department and the Transregional Center for Democratic Studies (TCDS) at The New School for Social Research
SPEAKERS
Bálint Madlovics, Political Scientist and Economist, CEU DEMOCRACY INSTITUTE
Bálint Magyar, Sociologist, CEU DEMOCRACY INSTITUTE
Bálint Madlovics is a political scientist and economist. He is a Junior Research Fellow at the CEU Democracy Institute and visiting professor at Eötvös Loránd University (ELTE). He holds an MA in Political Science (2018) from Central European University and BAs in sociology and applied economics. He was a research fellow at the Financial Research Institute in Budapest (2018–2019) and visiting professor at BCE (2022). He has published peer-reviewed articles, book chapters, and books on post-communist regimes since 2015. His most recent books, co-authored by Bálint Magyar, include The Anatomy of Post-Communist Regimes (CEU Press, 2020), A Concise Field Guide to Post-Communist Regimes (CEU Press, 2022), and a two-volume collection of studies on Ukraine’s Patronal Democracy and Russia’s Imperial Endeavor (CEU Press, 2023).
Bálint Magyar is a sociologist. He is a Senior Research Fellow at the CEU Democracy Institute. He was an activist of the anti-communist dissident movement before the regime change, Member of the Hungarian Parliament (1990–2010), and Minister of Education (1996–1998, 2002–2006). He was an Open Society fellow (2015–2016), Hans Speier Visiting Professor at the New School for Social Research (2017), and Senior Research Fellow at CEU Institute for Advanced Study (2018–2019). He has been publishing and editing writings on post-communist regimes since 2013. His most recent books, co-authored by Bálint Madlovics, include The Anatomy of Post-Communist Regimes (CEU Press, 2020), A Concise Field Guide to Post-Communist Regimes (CEU Press, 2022), and a two-volume collection of studies on Ukraine’s Patronal Democracy and Russia’s Imperial Endeavor (CEU Press, 2023).
Health & Safety Information
Effective February 23, 2023, event guests and/or visitors to the New School are no longer required to provide proof of up-to-date vaccination or negative result from a PCR test and do not need to use the CLEAR app to present their vaccination status.
Wearing a mask is recommended but not required on campus.
Accessibility
New School students seeking accommodations should contact the Student Disability Services office at studentdisability@newschool.edu.
