Hungary
If you ever want to study a textbook example of how a traditional liberal democracy can backslide, look no further than Hungary and its Prime Minister Viktor Orbán.
< Note: The word “liberal” is not used here as it’s used to describe someone’s political positions in U.S. politics. A liberal democracy refers to a representative democracy that protects individual liberty through established rule of law. On the other hand, an illiberal democracy places no (or very few) limits on the power of elected representatives. Orbán himself describes Hungary as an illiberal democracy. >
It’s important to make clear that Orbán is an authoritarian leader (one who favors strict obedience to authority over personal freedom) that champions autocracy (a government led by one person who has absolute power). For fifteen years, Orbán has methodically shifted Hungary away from the traditions of liberal democracy by embracing far-right, nativist politics – effectively shutting down immigration; bribing and threatening the media; stacking the judiciary with close allies; and sabotaging free and fair elections through aggressive gerrymandering.
Orbán wraps his populism in national sovereignty and antisemitic “Christian” identity while, at the same time, wages fierce culture wars on everything from multiculturalism to LGBTQ rights. He has worked hard to make the educational system in Hungary more “patriotic” – as defined by him – and spies on journalists and dissidents. The most frightening tool Orbán and his Fidesz party has used to centralize power for themselves is to place Hungary’s three branches of government – the executive, legislative and judicial – firmly under Fidesz’s control. Orbán calls this a “system of national co-operation,” probably because it’s less alarming than saying what it really is: a fully illiberal regime.
Freedom House – a nonprofit organization funded in part by the U.S. government that conducts research and advocacy on democracy, political freedom, and human rights – put it this way in 2020:
Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s government in Hungary has dropped any pretense of respecting democratic institutions. After centralizing power, tilting the electoral playing field, taking over much of the media, and harassing critical civil society organizations since 2010, Orbán moved during 2019 to consolidate control over new areas of public life, including education and the arts. The 2020 adoption of an emergency law that allows the government to rule by decree indefinitely has further exposed the undemocratic character of Orbán’s regime. Hungary’s decline has been the most precipitous ever tracked in Nations in Transit; it was one of the three democratic frontrunners as of 2005, but in 2020 it became the first country to descend by two regime categories and leave the group of democracies entirely.
In 2018, Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) removed Hungary’s status as a democracy. Based at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden and funded by several government organizations including the World Bank, V-Dem measures democracy by assessing five high-level principles of democracy: electoral, liberal, participatory, deliberative, and egalitarian.