Authoritarian neoliberalism and the instrumentalization of the banking sector in Turkey and Hungary

Abstract

This paper studies the evolution of the domestic banking sector in Hungary and Turkey where Viktor Orban and Recep Tayyip Erdogan have intervened to politically control credit allocation. We argue that both leaders have instrumentalized the banking sector to serve their political needs rather than following a developmentalist agenda under authoritarian neoliberalism. This occurred through two distinct patterns following the 2008 Global Financial Crisis in an attempt to ensure their political survival: while Orban intervened in the banking sector to secure partisan access to consumption, Erdogan did so to ensure partisan business access to cheap credit. These policy preferences reveal additional components of an autocrat’s toolkit for political survival, which are strongly influenced by the constellation of dominant social bloc interests and the relative position of their national economies within the overall global financial hierarchy.