Politics in Hungary: Two Critical Junctures

• In Event: Civic and Uncivic Values in Hungary: Values Transformation, Politics, and Religion

Abstract

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 façade for authoritarian rule. The process of populist autocratization, initiated by Viktor Orbán, 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. As a result of constant de-democratization, a new regime emerged that the authors call populist electoral autocracy.

Authors

• István Benedek, HUN-REN Research Centre for the Humanities (Hungary)

• Andras Bozoki, Central European U (Austria)