During the 2016 US presidential election, the Brexit campaign and the recent parliamentary election in Hungary populist politicians contradicted the globalized city, urban lifestyles and multiculturalism with the traditional countryside, with Christian culture, with the lagging industrial areas and with local communities. However, the Hungarian case proves that populist politicians do not want to solve the problems of local communities, but wish to exploit the abovementioned anxiety by fueling the fear from globalization (i.e. European integration, migration). Independent local communities could also hinder the centralization of power. Thus the populists’ goal here is to build a patron-‐client hierarchical relation.
The ‘good king’ solves the problem of the local community, which should demonstrate political loyalty in return. This is an asymmetrical power relation, the exploitation of local political, social problems. An important challenge of contemporary liberalism is to answer this challenge by mitigating the uncertainties, the anxiety of local communities and by offering liberal local policies, which can ensure autonomy, confidence and entrepreneurship. With the help of the communication technologies of the 21st century it is possible to create cheap, transparent municipalities and participative local politics. Our volume wishes to consider the role of liberalism on the local level. We believe, that autonomy of communities and the individual, which is a central liberal value should have priority on local policy planning. In this volume good practices of successful local economic policies, local liberal results are presented for liberal politicians, experts and also for the broader audience. Those social groups, stakeholders are identified, who could be the target groups and allies of liberal local politics.
The volume offers cultural, economic, historical and political explanations of liberal opportunities on the local level in different countries in Central Europe. In the first chapter Miłosz Hodun presents the political issues, which defined the 2018 municipal elections in Poland. He demonstrates that liberal cultural policies, like women’s rights and LGBTQ recognition could be achieved on the local level as well and a smaller liberal party can define the agenda even in alliance with bigger political parties. In the second chapter Dejan Ravšelj, Marko Ropret and Aleksander Aristovnik analyzes the barriers of development and economic success for small and medium sized enterprises in Slovenia. They conclude that due to the regional differences good economic policies should be addressed on the local level or at least with a reflection on regional and local differences. In the third chapter Andrea Virág, Virág Bagi, Sára Baló and Soma Sárkány assess the local results of liberal political parties in Hungary, namely the former SZDSZ party and the new Momentum party. Also, they present the good practices of incumbent liberal mayors and the 2019 oppositional primary elections form a liberal aspect. Finally, Robert Braun in the final chapter presents the historical-‐cultural barriers of liberalism on the local level in Austria.
The whole publication is available HERE.