Hungary’s Illiberal Turn: Disabling the Constitution

Issue Date July 2012
Volume 23
Issue 3
Page Numbers 138-46
file Print
arrow-down-thin Download from Project MUSE
external View Citation

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.