Neo-Feudalism and Neo-Traditionalism as Responses to Liberalism

Abstract

The rise of right-wing populism as a challenge to liberalism has two major explanations: cultural and economic. Cultural explanations must strike a balance between general mechanisms and specific conditions of concrete regions or countries. There is an argument that a large segment of the population in east central Europe has rejected liberalism because it sees liberalism as an alien implant from “the West.” However, this explanation does not answer two key questions: Why this rejection seems to have come after a considerable delay and why it took the form of right-wing populist reaction. Relying on the concepts of neo-traditionalism and neo-feudalism, I propose answers to these questions.