Paper short abstract

This paper traces the political atmosphere linked to the national political climate through the rise of a faith-based NGO, whose critique started in opposition to the state but increasingly becomes co-opted. I develop the idea that atmosphere become adhesive and thicken by attaching more elements.

Paper long abstract

Political theorists, like Timothy Mitchell (1991), see the binary between civil society and the state as central for understanding state formation. In this paper, I argue that political atmosphere are decisive for understanding how these realm are redrawn and mingle with the increasingly authoritarian governance in Hungary. This paper develops the idea that atmosphere can become adhesive and thicken by attaching more elements. I explore this by tracing a faith-based NGO to develop a genealogy of political atmospheres that exemplifies how local incidents can become decisive within the national political climate. The organisation has increasingly taken over former state responsibilities in Hungary. Its initial critique of state neglect of the most marginalised and racialised parts of the population in this process became increasingly coopted making it an integral part of the hierarchical hegemony. Within this procsee the organisation

surrounded both its clients and the researcher with atmospheres of being stalled. Therefore, I use the notionl of political atmosphere to question social scientific critique and open up new possibilities to think change.