Adam Bence Balazs

Why do the Western Balkans matter for Europe’s future? Because global players easily exploit their multilayered weaknesses. What is the Hungarian ruler’s source of power? It is the systematic exploitation of the weaknesses of Hungary and the European Union. 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. Balazs proposes a reverse perspective on power 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.