Politics in Hungary: Two critical junctures

Bozóki, András and Benedek, István (2024) Politics in Hungary: Two critical junctures. In: Civic and Uncivic Values in Hungary. Routledge, London, pp. 17-42. ISBN 9781003488842

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Abstract

Hungary is an experimental laboratory of autocratization, according to András Bozóki and István Benedek, who claim that the country's formal institutions of democracy have degenerated into a faade for authoritarian rule. The process of populist autocratization, initiated by Viktor Orbn, can be described in terms of a Manichean, antagonistic worldview, with a homogenizing tendency, and the prevalence of moralizing and a highly exclusionary logic of representation. The authors note that, already in his first term as Prime Minister, between 1998 and 2002, Orbán called for the political system to be based on the primacy of executive power. Upon returning to the Prime Minister's office in 2010, Orbán introduced a new constitution and incrementally eliminated the elements of rule of law. He also restructured the electoral landscape, producing a two-bloc system and, in 2015, introduced a state of exception which continues, under different names, to the present day. While the first critical juncture appeared after the mid-2000s and led to the deconsolidation of pluralist democracy, the second critical juncture marked the accommodation of the increasingly illiberal and autocratic Orbán regime in the mid-2010s. As a result of constant de-democratization, a new regime emerged that the authors call populist electoral autocracy. Both in terms of its domestic policies and in terms of its foreign policy, as of 2023 the Orbán regime is virtually marginalized within Europe.

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