Assoc Professor in Comparative Central and East European Politics, UCL School of Slavonic and East European Studies. Personal take on politics, Eastern Europe and suburbia.
Seán Hanley
✍️ Hungary’s “electoral revolution” swept away Fidesz’s 16-year rule. But in many marginalized rural communities, the revolution barely arrived.
Vera Messing and Judit Durst examine how media isolation and clientelist dependency sustained the party's support.
🧑💻 Read it now:
👉 tinyurl.com/yhj57t7t
Far-right hatred in the UK, like Brexit a decade ago, is fanned and funded by those - US far-right, tech oligarchs, the Kremlin - with an agenda to fragment and weaken European democracies, and to undermine our ability to hold the powerful to account.
bylinetimes.com/2026/06/10/r...
(2/2)
What Orbán’s defeat means for Central Europe. @frankfukuyama.bsky.social on Robert #Fico, Donald #Trump and why he believes the populist tide may be turning. spectator.sme.sk/politics-and... #Orbán
According to my very rough maths that's around 131% of the HS2 budget for 2,043% of the track (and that's not including the upgrades to the existing track)
📣 NEW PAPER
My paper reviewing how Fidesz reshaped Hungary’s foreign policy—and, consequently, what the new Tisza government is now faced with—has been published by @carnegieendowment.org.
📖 Read the paper here: carnegieendowment.org/research/202...
See the key takeaways below ⤵️
Also yesterday, Berlin-Hamburg trackwork ended, two direct Czech ComfortJet trains now link Prague, Dresden, Berlin & Copenhagen. I’m sure these will do well - and not just because they introduce the concept of restaurant cars to Danish travellers! www.seat61.com/internationa...
They’ll be banning the Scouts next
“Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold...
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity...”
The Second Coming, 1919, by W.B. Yeats, Irish poet born #OTD 1865; inspired Chinua Achebe and Joan Didion.
Portrait: charcoal drawing, John Singer Sargent 1908, Met Museum
A generation of children confined to exclusively posting on LinkedIn, humbled to share that they have been recognised as thought leaders in vertically integrating your mom's supply chain.
On Farage's decision to turn to 'anti-white discrimination' I looked at this in a post last year. Here's what I found "every single group of Reform voters not only thinks white Brits are more discriminated against than ethnic minorities but they do so by over two points on the ten point scale."
