Hungary After Orbán: The Hard Road Back to Democracy

In a high-stakes vote on April 12, Hungarians ended Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s 16-year tenure. It was one marked by democratic backsliding, corruption, and power consolidation. The leader of the opposition party, Tisza, and the next prime minister, Peter Magyar, have vowed to reverse many of Orbán’s illiberal policies.

While the last two decades are rife with examples of countries becoming more authoritarian, comparatively few have completed a successful “redemocratization” or “U-turn” in which they go from democracy to authoritarian regime, and then back to democracy. Many more have stumbled into pitfalls on the path back to democratic governance. This means that, while Magyar’s campaign promises hold much hope, Hungary is now entering that uncertain phase—one defined less by electoral victory than by how effectively the new government navigates a series of immediate and consequential challenges.

How Orbán Reshaped the Hungarian State

Hungary’s democracy standards began declining immediately after Orbán’s return to power in 2010, leading the country to be labeled a “hybrid regime” and an “electoral autocracy” by major democracy rankings. This makes Magyar’s victory surprising to many analysts who have now raised questions about those labels, but Hungary nonetheless has been an example of illiberal practice inside the European Union and a thorn in Brussels’s side for years, in spite of the latter’s massive contributions to Hungary’s economic growth.

The depth of Orbán’s and Fidesz’s institutional and economic takeover is a prime example of authoritarian consolidation and what could be called extreme majoritarianism. It was enabled by Fidesz’s two-thirds majority in parliament after the 2010 elections, a necessary condition of the rapid takeover.

The Fidesz administration’s first move was to weaken the institutions that could challenge Fidesz’s planned reforms. That entailed disabling the Constitutional Court of Hungary that could deem laws unconstitutional (e.g., changing the appointment of judges and narrowing the court’s jurisdiction), taking over the Election Commission to limit civil society’s power to request referendums, lowering the threshold to amend the constitution, and rewriting that constitution (amending it 12 times in their first year in office). Finally, a whole new constitution was passed and signed in 2011 under less-than-democratic conditions. Later changes affected electoral dynamics, such as gerrymandering and creating a system of “bonus votes” that favored the ruling party.

A related priority for Fidesz was to limit civil society and the media’s ability to constrain its room for maneuver and expose its reforms. Watchdog organizations have been subject to intimidation, for example, through audits and through the creation of a Sovereign Protection Authority in 2023. That entity can investigate foreign influence in domestic affairs, but whose boundaries and mandate are broad and have been used to intimidate nongovernmental and media organizations that pursue missions the government disagrees with. State media has lost all independence, while private media ownership has been concentrated in the hands of Fidesz loyalists and close individuals (an estimated 80 percent of the country’s media is directly or indirectly controlled by Fidesz). Academic institutions have also faced pressure to come under more government scrutiny—or else leave the country.

Those attacks on civil society extended to social and cultural issues as part of Fidesz’s remaking of Hungarian society. The government has unleashed campaigns against LGBTQ+ communities, from restricting the portrayal of sexual orientation or gender expression under the guise of child protection (recently struck down by the Court of Justice of the European Union as a breach of EU law) to banning public events like pride marches. Orbán has been at the center of a national conservative movement that pushes a review of memorialization efforts, a focus on traditional and Christian values, and a growing alignment of far-right and illiberal groups across Europe and the United States (including funding for such organizations).

Finally, the windfall from these changes to state institutions, rights and freedoms, and societal narratives has emerged in the economic sphere. Fidesz’s administrative takeover has translated into an economic takeover whose benefits have accrued to those close to Orbán, especially through public procurement (e.g., single-bidder tenders) and misuse of public funds (including EU funding). Corruption, though a preexisting fact of life before Orbán’s return, has been centralized around his inner circle. Hungary has not joined the European Public Prosecutor’s Office, which has impeded the investigation of complex fraud cases due to the lack of prosecutions at the national level.

Even in the election that would ultimately oust Orbán from power, there was “no level playing field,” and the campaign was “marred by divisive and fear-mongering rhetoric on the part of the ruling party,” according to the Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights’ observation mission. Many things had to align for Tisza to win, from a uniquely gifted opposition leader (who is, importantly, quite conservative) to remarkable investigations by independent media to massive campaigning across rural areas—and much more. Hungary’s downward economic trajectory was a key factor in Orbán’s loss, perhaps the deciding factor that helped Tisza overcome stacked odds.

The Road Back to Democracy

In addition to the confluence of many factors that removed Orbán and Fidesz from power, the path back to liberal democracy from hybrid or authoritarian governance is a long and arduous one. A country’s effort to reinvigorate its democracy is not a step-by-step process, but a difficult path forward filled with fits and starts that avoids the many pitfalls that can cause a country to remain in the authoritarian camp. In a seminal article on “redemocratization,” Matias Bianchi, Nick Cheeseman, and Jennifer Cyr identify three major barriers to redemocratization: (1) authoritarian holdovers, (2) the international context for redemocratization, and (3) “prodemocratic” parties and coalitions that turn out to be anything but. While the process in Hungary is in its earliest stages, we will address each of these in kind.

Authoritarian Holdovers

Perhaps most obvious in the threats to keep a country from reclaiming democratic accountability are the holdovers from the previous regime. A government that is staffed by the same individuals who had meticulously chipped away at democratic institutions and independent mechanisms cannot be counted on to implement the hard reforms needed to ensure proper oversight. Authoritarian regimes, knowing this reality, often work to make it difficult to remove loyalists even in the event of a change of government.

Somewhat less obvious is the legal legacy of authoritarian governance. Authoritarians utilize new laws to weaken checks and balances on their power. According to Bianchi et al., “such legislation may weaken the security of tenured judges, impose stringent restrictions on civil society and the press, and empower the government to enforce censorship online in the guise of promoting cybersecurity.”

International Context for Redemocratization

The world is not currently fertile ground for democracy. According to the democracy promotion organization Freedom House, 2025 constituted the twentieth consecutive year in which global freedom has declined. V-Dem, another organization that measures democracy globally, tells a similarly dire story in its 2026 Democracy Report, stating that only 7 percent of the world’s population currently lives in liberal democracies, and the level of freedom for the average global citizen is back to where it was in 1978, before the “third wave of democratization.”

In parallel to this trend, both supported by and supportive of it, is an era of closing civic space, a vital ingredient in democratic consolidation. According to the annual Civicus Monitor, “more people than ever before live in Closed or Repressive countries,” and only 7 percent live in countries with “free or relatively open” civic spaces. Obstructions to civic space, ensuring individuals and groups cannot work together to determine and advocate for their needs and wants, make government less responsive to its people, and make the active exercise of democracy more difficult.

The difficult international environment for democracy is compounded by a retreat from democracy promotion by donor countries. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development estimates put 2025 Official Development Assistance numbers down 26.4 percent from 2024. This impacts all sectors, but democracy promotion funding was hit especially hard, in particular from the United States, the world’s largest donor until 2025, and saw a 75 percent cut in such funding from FY 2024 to FY 2025.

“Prodemocratic” Parties and Coalitions

The final threat to redemocratization identified by Bianchi et al. is the behavior of the parties or coalitions that ultimately ousted autocrats from power. This threat is twofold and centers around questions both of intent and stability.

On the intent side, there is an incentive to utilize prodemocratic language when coalitions are challenging an entrenched autocrat that may not reflect a party’s true beliefs. This can be expansive, and can include language that explicitly opposes some of the more prominent areas of overreach, appealing to a population that is fed up with things like corruption, selective prosecutions, and a lack of adherence to the rule of law, elite impunity, or others.

On stability, broad-tent coalitions that are assembled in order to defeat a common enemy can become brittle when that collective goal is removed. A vanquished foe is far less of a rallying cry than an empowered autocrat.

The Hungarian Context

Peter Magyar’s press conference on the night of his election demonstrated a remarkable understanding of the difficult road ahead. Magyar expressed a belief that the electorate voted “not just for change of government, but of regime” and that should bring about radical changes to state institutions, protections against biased media coverage, and greater efforts to prevent corruption through membership in EU supranational prosecution bodies. This came alongside a demand that a range of senior officials resign their positions and a commitment to media transparency, fairness, and a reinvigorated rule of law. Having been a Fidesz insider, Magyar comes in with a keen sense of where power lies and how to undo Fidesz’s grip on those institutions.

Further, while Hungary is not immune to the international malevolence toward democracy, it may be more insulated than some other states working to reestablish democratic systems. To start, it is an EU member state, providing treaty constraints and financial incentives against many forms of authoritarian overreach. The Court of Justice of the European Union continually demonstrated a willingness to stand up for democracy in Hungary, a role it will likely maintain. Second, it exists in a neighborhood that is actively fighting against creeping authoritarianism. Ukraine is among the world’s most prominent examples of pushback against tyranny, and Hungary’s neighbor, Poland, is currently in the midst of redemocratization after the unwinding of democratic norms and accountability mechanisms under a previous populist administration. The Polish process has not been without its pitfalls, in particular the difficulty in unwinding existing policies without a constitutional supermajority. Yet it can provide both solidarity and vital lessons learned for Hungary, where Magyar and his allies won enough seats to avoid Poland’s sputtering reform agenda (e.g., overcoming presidential vetoes).

Additionally, Hungary has not received U.S. democracy, human rights, and good governance funding since FY 2021. In part, this is responsive to the aforementioned attacks on civic space and foreign agents’ laws; however, it also means that those fighting for greater democracy are less likely to be impacted by the reductions in democracy promotion funding from the United States. Pro-democracy groups in Hungary have received notably more external funding from the European Commission, a funding source that is likely to be easier to work with given the pro-EU bent of the new administration.

The final prong is the most difficult to assess at this stage; however, early moves point to a genuine commitment to democracy and countering corruption from the incoming Magyar administration, as discussed in detail above.

What the Authoritarian World Lost

One of the most important themes of the last two decades of democratic backsliding has been authoritarian collaboration and cross-learning. Dictatorships all over the world have demonstrated a predilection toward working together on tactics for repression, strategies for consolidation, and continuity models. This project has known no geographic nor ideological bounds. Orbán’s Hungary has been central to that global effort, not only utilizing, developing, and improving tactics, but becoming a beacon for movements centered on a coalition of illiberal populist groups and a focus on traditional and Christian values—in effect, an illiberal poster child.

That means that Hungary is far more important to authoritarians the world over than its lower-middle GDP EU country status would suggest. It is a proof of concept. It demonstrates that countries can go through democratization to a consolidated democracy status and then go back to authoritarianism, as Hungary did. This means that no democracy is safe from a return to authoritarianism, whether its experience with that system of governance was long ago or within the memories of its middle-aged citizens.

This importance animated an outsized interest in the election internationally. Russia allegedly deployed intelligence agents to Budapest to lead disinformation campaigns and, when it became clear Orbán was still well behind in the polls, more extreme approaches, such as a fake assassination attempt, were allegedly hatched, though never carried out. In line with the Trump administration’s National Security Strategy that celebrates “the growing influence of patriotic European parties” and aims to work “with aligned countries that want to restore their former greatness,” Vice President JD Vance campaigned with Viktor Orbán in Budapest, and President Donald Trump called into a rally to sing Orbán’s praises. Hungary has been elevated as a model example of the kind of conservative governments this administration (and its movement allies) would like to see across Europe.

This makes the loss particularly striking to what Anne Applebaum calls “Autocracy Inc.” While a charismatic leader was able to direct general discontent and deteriorating socioeconomic conditions toward a populist authoritarianism, couched in terminology like “sovereignty” and “traditional values,” the turn need not be permanent, even if the leader uses power to rig the game. Hungary’s place within the European Union offers a unique set of circumstances that may not exist elsewhere (e.g., a supranational court that rejects certain laws in breach of treaties), but the new ruling party’s coming redemocratization and anticorruption efforts will offer valuable lessons to those trying to reverse authoritarian trends.

Andrew Friedman is the director and senior fellow in the Human Rights Initiative at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington, D.C. Donatienne Ruy is a fellow in the Europe, Russia, and Eurasia Program at CSIS.