Hungary and Austria in the “Third World”: A Comparison of Two Countries on Opposite Sides of the Iron Curtain

Abstract

This article examines globalization in Hungary and Austria, two equal-sized, landlocked Central European countries without an overseas colonial past, and their relationship with the Global South from the 1960s until the 1990s. Recent literature assumes that belonging to the Eastern Bloc gave the socialist countries an advantage in terms of their presence in the Global South. However, a comparison of their relations with the Global South shows that Austria, a non-communist country, had a wider diplomatic room and broader, better structured, and more durable economic, cultural, and political relations with the Global South than the socialist Hungary. Therefore, the article shows that the present day tendency of Central and Eastern European countries—Hungary in particular—to diverge from Western institutions cannot be considered as continuation of their communist-era weak global positioning, which also opposed the West.