Case Study: Hungary and Orban

From Liberal to Illiberal

Viktor Orban's political journey mirrors Hungary's. In 1989, as a young liberal activist, he delivered a famous speech demanding Soviet troops leave Hungary. By 2014, as prime minister, he declared his goal was building an 'illiberal state,' citing Russia, China, and Turkey as models.

Orban's Fidesz party won a two-thirds supermajority in 2010, exploiting a constitutional provision that amplified their seat share beyond their vote share. With this supermajority, Orban could change the constitution at will — and he did, writing an entirely new fundamental law that packed the constitutional court, created a new media regulatory body loyal to the government, and changed electoral rules to favor Fidesz.

The Orban Method

Orban's approach is often called 'soft authoritarianism' because it maintains the forms of democracy while gutting its substance. Elections still happen, but the playing field is so tilted that losing is nearly impossible.

Key moves included: capturing the constitutional court through court-packing; rewriting electoral laws to favor Fidesz (including gerrymandering and extending voting rights to ethnic Hungarians abroad); channeling over 80% of media into allied hands; using EU funds to build a loyalist oligarch class; and targeting civil society organizations, particularly those funded by George Soros.

The result is a system where opposition parties exist but cannot effectively compete, media is nominally free but overwhelmingly pro-government, and courts function but do not challenge the government on important matters.

A Timeline of Consolidation

What makes Hungary the defining case of modern backsliding is that every major step was legal. The timeline reads like the authoritarian playbook executed cleanly.

Worked example — winning without a fair fight. In 2022, six opposition parties finally united behind a single candidate, Peter Marki-Zay. They still lost decisively. Why? Fidesz enjoyed overwhelming media dominance, gerrymandered districts, state resources deployed as campaign tools, and expat votes engineered in its favor. This is the essence of 'competitive authoritarianism': elections are real and losing is possible in theory, but the incumbent has rigged the conditions of competition rather than the ballot count itself. That distinction is why outside observers still call Hungary an electoral system while classifying it as no longer fully democratic.