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.
