Hungary’s 2010 election brought to power a Fidesz parliamentary supermajority led by Prime Minister Viktor Orbán. In just two years, they have fundamentally changed the constitutional order of Hungary. The current government now has very few checks on its own power, but the new constitutional order permits the governing party to lodge its loyalists in crucial long-term positions with veto power over what future governments might do. As a result, the Fidesz government has achieved a remarkable constitutional feat: giving themselves maximum room for maneuver while simultaneously entrenching their power, their policies and their people for the foreseeable future.
About the Authors
Miklós Bánkuti
Miklós Bánkuti is senior research specialist at Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School.
Kim Lane Scheppele is the Laurance S. Rockefeller Professor of Sociology and International Affairs in the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs and the University Center for Human Values at Princeton University.
The countries of Central and Eastern Europe successfully transitioned to democracy. Do their ongoing political problems exist today because of or in spite of the European Union?
The case of Hungary shows how autocrats can rig elections legally, using legislative majorities to change the law and neutralize the opposition at every turn, no matter what strategy they…
Viktor Orbán’s Fidesz party has used its two-thirds majority in parliament to change the constitution, erase checks and balances, and make the electoral system even more majoritarian.
