What is the Hungarian ruler’s source of power? It is the systematic exploitation of the weaknesses of Hungary and the European Union. Why do the Western Balkans matter for Europe’s future? Because global players easily exploit their multilayered weaknesses. What are the exact correlations between the explicit pride taken in hurting the weak (the poor, the homeless, minorities, or asylum-seekers) and the instrumentalization of weakness as a source of power?
As the French political scientist Bertrand Badie recognized in coining the rhetorical concept of the "power of the weak" in 2018, weakness is more than merely the opposite of power. In this talk, Balazs proposes a reverse perspective on power, in order to shed new light on a series of seemingly paradoxical European cases where weakness is overriding the traditional measure of power: the EU’s weaknesses as a postwar project and the specific impact of American soft power on Washington’s European allies; the increasing fragility of European democracies and the rise of nostalgic societies shaped and exploited by authoritarian discourse—as seen in the Hungarian countermodel, EU candidate countries, and various cases in Western Europe.
Adam Bence Balazs is a researcher at the Jean Monnet Chair of European Politics (University of Passau), affiliated to the Laboratoire du Changement Social et Politique (LCSP, Université Paris Cité), and the Zentrum für Demokratieforschung (Andrássy University Budapest). Formerly a post-doctoral researcher at Sofia University “St. Kliment Ohridski” and a visiting fellow at the Graduate Institute (IHEID) in Geneva, he holds an MA in political science from Central European University (CEU) and a PhD in political philosophy from Paris Diderot University – Paris 7.
Ivan Krastev, IWM Albert Hirschman Permanent Fellow, will moderate the discussion.
