How Illiberal Democracy Kills Regional Government in Hungary?

Szente, Zoltán (2017) How Illiberal Democracy Kills Regional Government in Hungary? In: Federalisme, Decentralisation et Regionalisation de l'Europe; Federalism, Decentralisation and Regionalisation. La Collection L’Unité du Droit (XVII). Editions L'Epitoge, Toulouse, pp. 99-114. ISBN 979-10-92684-17-9

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Abstract

The 19 Hungarian “counties”, which are both decentralised (like the municipalities) and deconcentrated (like the districts) units of the State, have become less powerful since the creation of more than 3 100 municipalities in the 1990s. The counties’ local autonomy has been further restricted under the conservative government that came to power in 2010: in addition to the lack of financial autonomy, the counties lost 4/5th of their competences; these were transferred to the central government in return for cancelling their debts. This dismantling of the regional level of self-government and democracy has resulted in a very strong consolidation of power at the central level; the underlying aim has been to establish an illiberal democracy dominated by a single political party.

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