The event was opened by Kinga Kenyeres, Director General of the Századvég Foundation, who emphasised in her welcoming speech that, since its foundation, Századvég has strived to initiate honest intellectual debates about the forces shaping society and to build bridges between politics and society. Kinga Kenyeres pointed out that the West has reached the end of an era and that the fundamental promises of the liberal world order have faltered. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, many considered liberal democracy to be the end point of political development, but events of recent decades—including the 2008 financial crisis, the first election of Donald Trump as US president, and Brexit—have revealed its limitations. She added that the liberal democratic model is showing more and more signs of crisis, while societies are increasingly demanding sovereignty, security and political realism. She emphasised that the aim of the conference was to explore opportunities and choices for the post-liberal era and to promote open and courageous dialogue on the future of Western politics.
Zbigniew Rau, Polish Member of Parliament and Chairman of the Sejm Foreign Affairs Committee, analysed the basic assumptions of classical liberal thinking and their crisis in his paper entitled “Why did liberalism destroy itself?”. He explained that liberalism is based on the premise that all people are alike and have equal rights and can make rational decisions. Institutions and electoral systems in liberal states are designed to protect rights, individual freedoms and the independence of the branches of government. However, the presentation pointed out that the internal contradictions and social consequences of this model ultimately undermined its own legitimacy in the long term. Therefore, the question is whether liberalism has entered a crisis due to its own internal logic, or whether external challenges have weakened it.
In his speech, Balázs Orbán, the Prime Minister’s political director, said that the liberal, unipolar world order that emerged after 1990—characterised by strong ideological confidence and neoliberal economic policies—has now been shaken by the crises following 2001, the 2008 financial crisis, the migration crisis, Brexit, the election of Donald Trump, the coronavirus pandemic and the Russia-Ukraine war. He added that states’ actions should be determined not by ideology but by national interests, and that we are returning to an era of realistic foreign policy and competition between sovereign nations. He emphasised that EU institutions continue to make decisions based on ideology, even though war, migration, Ukraine’s accession to the EU and common foreign policy are not in Europe’s interests. He said that Hungary is one of the shapers and leaders of the post-liberal world, so if it wants to be a winner in this era, it must not return to the previous liberal world order.
Dr. Gladden J. Pappin, President of the Hungarian Institute of International Affairs, gave a lecture entitled “Post-liberalism in Practice”. He explained that liberalism had become a national principle in recent decades, placing the individual at the centre and thus becoming incapable of addressing politically important issues. Thus, liberalism does not see nations, their interests, and traditions. He explained that the system had been successful in many respects, but that it had ultimately abandoned its neutrality and shifted increasingly toward a normative, value-based approach. Dr. Gladden J. Pappin also pointed out that the proof that we are already in the post-liberal era is precisely that success must be universal, not limited to the ideology of a single community. He added that this change fundamentally transforms the framework of political thinking.
British writer and journalist David Goodhart, “Are We All Post-Liberals?” In his lecture entitled “The Branches of Liberalism and Post-Liberalism”, he asked whether we had already entered the post-liberal era, then stated: “Today, we are all post-liberals”. One of the main arguments of his lecture is that the post-liberal era has actually been going on for a long time, and the liberal period that began in the 1990s came to an end in 2016, the year Donald Trump was first elected and Brexit took place. He emphasised that liberal democracies should be more democratic and less liberal, and believes that a better elite is needed, but that such elites do not yet exist. David Goodhart also detailed the end of the liberal era and the dilemmas of the new political era.
Dr. András Lánczi, philosopher, political scientist and director of academic and international affairs at Mathias Corvinus Collegium, compared post-liberalism with postmodernism in his lecture entitled “Beyond Conservatism”, adding that in the current situation, we must not forget the foundations of European and American culture. He explained that conservatism is not the opposite of liberalism, but rather part of it, and emphasised that if the goal is to identify real problems, then we must return to European philosophical thinking, because otherwise no meaningful change will take place. He suggested that Europe needs to clarify, on a philosophical level, where it stands, what it has achieved so far, and what it wants to avoid.
Philip Pilkington, senior researcher at the Hungarian Institute of International Affairs, gave a lecture entitled “The Collapse of Global Liberalism”. The speaker talked about the collapse of global liberalism and illustrated this with geopolitical examples, such as US policy. He pointed out that liberalism may have been able to prevail in the short term, but it is not sustainable in the long term. He added that outside Europe, most of the world rejected liberalism, and it was precisely those countries that were not liberal in nature that grew stronger, contributing to the weakening of the system. Philip Pilkington argues that this process led to the collapse of global liberalism.
Tamás Magyarics, professor emeritus at Eötvös Loránd University, spoke about the isolationism of US foreign policy and the resurgence of unilateralism in his lecture entitled “USA: Going forward alone. The resurgence of unilateralism”. He emphasised that liberals tend to believe, and convince others, that the US is an exceptional and “nice” nation compared to the rest of the world. Tamás Magyarics touched upon American exceptionalism and Woodrow Wilson’s thoughts on the world war, which highlight the United States’ independent decision-making, often outside of international consensus. He emphasised that US foreign policy today still shows an overall tendency to act alone on the international stage, pursuing its own interests.
The closing speech of the conference was given by Gábor Megadja, Director of the Research Institute for Political Thought at Századvég Foundation, entitled “How did we get here – and what comes next?”. In his presentation, he described Hungary’s experiences in light of political transformation in the West. He pointed out that liberalism’s success was mainly made possible by the promise of prosperity, which also played a role in Hungary’s catching up after the communist era. He emphasized that since 2010, Hungarian politics had been guided by national interests, which is why Hungarians had not integrated into the European ideology-driven system, but instead represented their own interests. Gábor Megadja explained what new challenges have emerged from the transformation of the political and economic environment and highlighted the need to address demographic problems and the issue of multiculturalism.
