While to their supporters, the right-wing leaders of Hungary and Poland—Viktor Orbán of Fidesz and Jarosław Kaczyński of Law and Justice (PiS)—promise a wholesale transformation of the “rotten” post-1989 political and economic order, to critics who denounce them as creeping authoritarians they say they are just realizing their electoral promises. Since opposition parties and organizations are free to protest, they say, continued accusation of undemocratic ways proves that the opposition is not just losing but acting in treacherous ways by denouncing their countries abroad.

It is easy to demonstrate the falseness of the government’s claim to be just another party in power. As The Hungarian Patient shows, Fidesz uses its time in office less to realize a concrete program, which—other than “revitalizing the nation”—it lacks, than to change the rules of the game to all and assure that its dominance cannot easily be undone. Miklos Bankuti, Gabor Halmai & Kim Scheppele show how Fidesz eliminates judicial checks, rewrites electoral laws to marginalize the opposition, and staffs the entire state bureaucracy with loyalists that can block a retreat even if an opposition is able, and allowed, to win. Peter Bajomi-Lazar covers the “reforms” of media laws and cultural institutions aimed at bringing a near monopoly to pro-government standpoints. Andras Bozoki writes of Orbán’s focus on a “central arena of power” that “gets things done” for “the nation” and refrains from “endless debates.” Fidesz promulgated an entire new Constitution without allowing critics any voice.

This book’s special contribution is documentation of the breadth of the pushback, organized not by parties but by new civic organizations. Special chapters are devoted to Milla, a movement organized to fight restrictive press laws that soon brought tens of thousands onto the streets; Solidarity, a worker-based opposition built by trade unionists from law enforcement and the chemical sector; the disruptive activism of the Hungarian Student Network; and the “Politics Can Be Different” party-movement, with origins in the environmental struggle.

The chapters were written just prior to Fidesz’s repeat victory in 2014, and several have epilogues lamenting the failure of these movements to thwart just that. Most suggest that the problem was disunity or internal quarrels (all the chapters have detailed accounts of the movements’ evolution). But a close reading suggests a more troubling interpretation: focusing almost exclusively around the attack on liberal democracy, these civil society movements lack a program capable of winning.

Right-wing governments eviscerating liberal democratic institutions have appalled perhaps 20-25 percent of the electorate in Hungary and Poland. This is the group making up the bulwark of the opposition. Most of the support for the right, however, came not from a popular rejection of political liberalism but rather from dissatisfaction with economic liberalism, and its perceived inability to protect the nation in today’s world. Most of the opposition, however, either neglects to focus on such matters, or gains little traction in face of the right’s ability to deliver some relief. Why join the opposition when your government finally takes action to defend “the little guy”?

Liberal democrats after 1989 focused on “joining Europe,” which meant building up the domestic political and economic elites who could interact with the west. Regular people were told to tighten their belts and wait. Fidesz, PiS, and the nationalist right reverse this pattern and appeal directly to “the people.” And although this right does not challenge capitalism, it revels in forcing small concessions, which builds popular support by showing that it cares.

Fidesz forces a reduction of utility rates, PiS offers universal child payments, and both pay for programs by taxing international banks and corporations (just like left parties have promised), which liberals argued would drive away investment. Both maintain the rigors of capitalism — Fidesz has smashed numerous social programs for the poor, which it gets away with by racially conflating poverty with the Roma, and regime economists in Poland urgently seek to dampen expectations aroused by populist pronouncements. But even a new recession is not likely to trigger regime downfall, since the right has established itself as the “caregiver of the nation” against foreign elements inside and out, while the opposition focuses chiefly on “defending democracy.”

It is hard to see how “civil society” fighting on a program of “defending democracy” can win no matter how united it is, against a party that both allows opposition (and thus, for most people, has at most “only” weakened democracy) and offers real avenues of relief.

Social democracy, of course, used to offer relief and defend democracy and the nation. But in Poland and Hungary nominal social democrats after 1989 sought to legitimate themselves by embracing neoliberalism, while in the west most social democrats, feeling their accomplishments secure, had already in by the 1970s starting turning away from a national focus and towards campaigns, at home and abroad, to include the previously excluded. All this opens up space to the old radical nationalist right, or fascism, to race in as champion of the nation, occupying turf the left thought they owned.

Many in the democratic opposition see business as a bulwark on their side. And indeed, for a long time, particularly in core western Europe, business came to see social democracy as something positive: supplying the skilled workers and social stability needed to facilitate global advance. ^{Footnote 1} Globalization, however, has greatly weakened the attraction. East European democrats, accustomed to seeing the European Union as a chief facilitator of democracy, do not yet fully understand this; thus their continued reluctance to criticize business the way the radical right does.

Of course, liberals and even many socialists in Hungary and Poland used also to argue that any restrictions on foreign capital would only trigger debilitating capital flight. One of the key lessons of the right-wing turn is its refutation of this myth. Neither country, still offering relatively cheap labor, has encountered resistance from foreign capital. ^{Footnote 2}

Nor is global business worried about extremism, at least outside their home base. American-based global corporations press southern states to remove Confederate flags and end discrimination around sexual identity out of concern to maintain maximum market reach and their position as equal-opportunity exploiters of labor. They utter no objections in eastern Europe, however. Racism in the semi-periphery does not hurt their brand.

What about domestic capital? Lacking global ambitions, supportive of nationalist calls to favor domestic products, and not having to worry about an ethnically diverse market, local business cares even less about state-sanctioned bigotry and exclusion.

The right is thus likely to stay in power and even grow. Opposition movements championing political liberalism but reluctant to reject economic liberalism will continue to be weak. New left anti-neoliberal parties, like Razem in Poland, are likely to gain, but the irony is that joining with liberals in a united front against the right—which the liberals call for—would probably be counterproductive, as it would keep the right as the sole voice of anti-neoliberalism. Until the opposition is unified around a commitment to social protection, the right will continue to gain. The democratic opposition must learn from the current success of today's populist right just as social democrats once learned from the fascists. ^{Footnote 3} Globalization makes it more difficult for the democratic left to offer social protection but not any less necessary— if democracy is to be preserved, which, of course, it may not be.