Democratic Innovations in an Illiberal Landscape : Three Ideas from Hungary

Kovács Szitkay, Eszter and Oross, Dániel and Szentgáli-Tóth, Boldizsár Artúr (2024) Democratic Innovations in an Illiberal Landscape : Three Ideas from Hungary. In: Participatory Democratic Innovations in Southeast Europe: How to Engage in Flawed Democracies. Southeast European Studies . Routledge, London, pp. 214-231. ISBN 9781003426103

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Abstract

In the past decade, Hungary, under the premiership of Viktor Orbán, has habitually been portrayed as a poster child for democraduras or illiberal regimes. It may, thus, come as a surprise that the past years have brought innovative developments for deliberative and participatory democracy, of which this chapter discusses three, including top-down processes and a local-, urban-level initiative. The first initiative introduces national consultation, an example of how such an incentive to connect voters could be both a promising and ‘pseudo’ participatory attempt at the same time. The second concerns national primary elections in 2021, a first of its kind in Hungary, for a prime ministerial candidate of the opposition coalition. The third case involves citizens’ assemblies – four of which have already been held in Hungary – which establishes the opportunity for deliberation at the local level. The chapter provides a contextualized report of the three initiatives, drawing attention to the main findings: although these initiatives sound promising for revitalizing and strengthening democracy, they seem to get stuck at the level of ‘being innovative processes’ as they did not bring about the expected breakthrough results.

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