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The scholar was awarded for a book on the rise of authoritarianism in Hungary

Gabor Schering (Bocconi Department of Social and Political Sciences) is the winner of the George Blazyca Prize 2022, awarded by the British Association for Slavonic and East European Studies (BASEES), for his book The Retreat of Liberal Democracy: Authoritarian Capitalism and the Accumulative State in Hungary (Palgrave Macmillan, 2020). (Bocconi Knowledge published an excerpt here.)

"Putin's aggression against Ukraine shows painfully the need to understand authoritarianism in Eastern Europe. So, it's a sad honor that my book won this prize," said Scheiring.

BASEES is the UK national learned society for the study of Russia, Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. Its annual conference, held normally in Cambridge in Spring, usually over 400 participants drawn from the UK , Continental Europe and North America as well as Russia and Eastern Europe.

BASEES has established the George Blazyca Prize in recognition of the outstanding contribution to its field of study made by the late George Blazyca. The George Blazyca Prize is offered annually for scholarly work of high quality in East European studies.

Scheiring's book "addresses one of the most pressing questions of Central and Eastern Europe today: why has Hungary, a member of the EU and NATO, embraced 'illiberal democracy'?" reads the motivation. "The answer is that significant sections of the Hungarian population have a material interest in it. The judges found Scheiring's book to be a tour de force, combining political, sociological and economic analysis, always supported by extensive empirical evidence."

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