This week we talk about Orbán, Hungary, and reformers.
We also discuss Fidesz, Tisza, and illiberalism.
Recommended Book: I’m Starting to Worry About This Black Box of Doom by Jason Pargin
Transcript
Hungary is a Central European country that was formed in the aftermath of WWI as part of the Treaty of Trianon, which—due to it having fought on the losing side of that conflict—resulted in the loss of more than 70% of its former territory, most of its economy, nearly 60% of its population, and about 32% of ethnic Hungarians who were left scattered across land that was given to neighboring countries when what was then Austria-Hungary was broken apart, initially by Hungary declaring independence from Austria, and then by those neighbors carving it up, grabbing land at the end of and just after the war, all of them pretty pissed at Hungary for being part of the Central Powers, quadruple alliance of Germany, Austria-Hungary, the Ottoman Empire, and the Kingdom of Bulgaria.
Today, Hungary is surrounded on all sides by other nations, including those who gobbled up some of their territory, back in the day. They’ve got Slovakia to their north, Ukraine to their northeast, Romania is to the east, and Serbia is to the south. Croatia and Slovenia are to their southwest, and Austria, which used to be part of the same nation as Hungary, is to their west.
In 2026, Hungary has a population of a little over 9.5 million people, and the vast majority of those people, around 97.7%, are ethnic Hungarians, the next-largest ethnic group is Romani, weighing in at just 2.4%.
During WWII, Hungary was on the Axis side of the conflict, once again ending up on the losing side of a world war, and was eventually occupied by the Soviet Union, which converted the nation into a satellite state called the Hungarian People’s Republic. Hungarians tried to revolt their way out of the Soviet Union’s grip in 1956, but it didn’t work. In 1989, though, during the wave of other regional revolutions that tore the Soviet Union apart, Hungary peacefully transitioned into a parliamentary democracy, and it joined the EU in 2004.
What I’d like to talk about today is post-Soviet, Third Republic Hungary, the country’s conversion into an ultra-conservative, ultra-corrupt state, and how a decade and a half of democratic backsliding might be eased, at least somewhat, by new leadership that just won an overwhelming majority in Hungary’s recent elections.
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In the 1990s, Hungary began its transition from state-run authoritarianism under the Soviets into the type of capitalism-centered democracy that was being spread by the US and its allies during the Cold War.
In Hungary, like many other post-Soviet nations, this transition wasn’t smooth, and the country experienced a severe economic recession that sparked all manner of social upsets, as well.
Hungary’s Socialist Party did really well in elections for a while, in large part because of how badly capitalism seemed to doing, and all the downsides locals now associated with it, but the Socialists went back and forth with other governments, especially the liberal conservative Fidesz (FEE-dez) party, each government taking the reins for four years before being voted out, replaced by the opposition, which was then voted out four years later and replaced by their opposition.
In 2006, there was a big to-do about a report that the then-Prime Minister, in charge of the Socialist Party, had admitted behind closed doors to having lied to win the last election. “We lied in the morning, we lied in the evening, and we lied at night,” he said during that closed-doors speech, and the divulgence of this led to nationwide protests and a period, which continues today, in which no left-wing party could attain power, only conservative governments standing a chance of running things in Hungary.
In 2010, the Fidesz party, led by Viktor Orbán, won a supermajority in parliament, and the following year, parliament approved a new constitution that brought a huge number of significant changes to the government and the nation’s laws. This adoption was criticized for basically being a nation-defining document that enshrines the party’s Conservative Christian ideology into law, permanently, despite that ideology not reflecting the views of the country at large; just over 40% of Hungary identifies as Christian. This new constitution also significantly cut or curtailed the rights of formerly independent institutions, removing basically all checks on the government’s power, and making it nearly impossible to push back against anything they might want to do, moving forward.
Under Orbán, Hungary saw significant democratic backsliding, meaning the country was converted from a functioning democracy into something that looked like a democracy from the outside, with elections and a press and such, but with actual functionality closer to that of Russia, which also holds elections, but those elections are tightly controlled by the government, the outcomes preordained by locking up those who challenge the existing power structure and falsifying votes when necessary. The press, too, in Russia and Hungary, is severely limited in what it can report, those who fail to toe the party line locked up or otherwise punished, and most of these formerly and supposedly journalistic entities owned by close friends of the country’s leader.
This sort of setup is often called a kleptocracy or mafia-state, that hides behind the veil of democracy, because the people up top basically just do whatever they want, perpetually enriching themselves at the expense of their countrymen, and they get away with it because all the forces of government and opposition that might stand in their way are systematically removed, all while they continue to pretend that this is what the people want.
Both Hungary and Russia also publicly embrace illiberal governance, at least to some degree, meaning they loudly promote top-down systems of governance, and both of their top-down systems are vehemently anti-immigrant, anti-LGBT rights, anti-women’s rights, and pro-fellow illiberal states—which in this case means Hungary and Orbán tend to be close buddies with other oppressive nations, like Russia, like Iran, and like China.
Orbán has thus overseen the transition of Hungary from a liberalizing, open, post-Soviet nation into a different sort of totalitarian state, his version wearing the guise of western democracy instead of Stalinesque communism, but actually functioning as a private kingdom of sorts for Orbán and his friends, all of whom became wealthy by carving up state assets and making deals that favor them, just that group of oligarchs, and all of this happening at the expense of the Hungarian people and its institutions and resources.
That context established, let’s talk about what happened recently, during the 2026 Hungarian parliamentary elections.
On April 12, 2026, Hungary held elections to fill all 199 seats in the country’s parliament. 100 seats are necessary to achieve a majority, and thus to form a government and run things.
Orbán’s party, Fidesz, was seeking a fifth consecutive term, partnering with the Christian Democratic People’s Party in the hopes of elbowing out a newer competitor, the conservative, center-right Tisza (TEE-sah) party.
This election had been promoted as the most important in EU history, as while he was in control of Hungary, Orbán had been pushing the nation further and further into Russia’s orbit, allegedly even sharing classified information from private EU meetings with Russia’s government. He consistently also stood in the way of EU efforts to help support Ukraine, blocking billions of dollars of funding for Ukraine’s defensive efforts against Russia’s continuing invasion of its neighbor; if one EU member country says no, some bloc-wide efforts can be shut-down in perpetuity. And Orbán was a consistent ‘no’ for anything that was bad for Russia, or anything that was good for the EU, in the liberal democracy sense of good. He also regularly demanded what amounted to bribes to get his vote for just about anything, and was thus a consistent obstructionist for even normal government business within the bloc.
This new Tisza party, which is a Hungarian abbreviation for what translates as the Respect and Freedom Party, was established in 2020, then rose to prominence when a former Orbán ally and Fidesz member, Péter Magyar left Fidesz and joined with Tisza.
Tisza ran on populist principles and the overthrow of Orbán, who has been increasingly unpopular as he’s continued to heavy-handedly reinforce his own hold on power, rigging election maps so that nothing but the most overwhelming imbalance in votes against him would ever lead to a loss.
Unfortunately for him, that’s exactly what happened in this 2026 election: nearly 80% of potential voters turned out to vote, which is the highest since 1989, when communism originally collapsed throughout Europe. And Tisza, the new opposition party led by a former Orbán loyalist, who left Fidesz during a scandal during which the government oversaw the pardoning of people responsible for covering up child sexual abuse, Tisza took 141 of 199 seats, giving them the supermajority they need to not just form a government, but to change the constitution.
This is being seen as a massive victory for the EU, and a serious defeat for Russian President Putin, who will likely be losing a lot of influence in the region, but also his proxy within the EU, which allowed him to forestall and halt all sorts of anti-Russian and pro-Ukrainian efforts.
It’s also being seen as a possible shot across the bow of illiberal and illiberalizing governments around the world, including others within Europe, but also that of the United States, which has seem similar democratic backsliding under two non-consecutive Trump administrations. The same forces that led to Orbán’s loss, like a successful anti-corruption message communicated by his opposition, collapsing on-the-ground economic realities for the majority of Hungarian citizens, and a wave of support for the opposition, especially amongst young people, could lead to more toppled governments and strongman leaders in the coming years.
There are still quite a few unknowns and potential pitfalls here, though.
Magyar, though now the leader of a different party, was formerly in Orbán’s camp; this could represent a changing of the guard up top, someone else holding the reins and enriching himself and a different group of friends, rather than a wholesale change that serves those at the bottom. It wouldn’t be the first time we’ve seen an authoritarian replaced by a seeming freedom-fighter who then became an authoritarian, because all those former incentives remained in place when they stepped into office.
It’s also been posited that Putin might lean more heavily on Bulgaria as Hungary steps out of his sphere of influence; one pro-Russian, anti-Ukrainian, anti-EU European Union nation replaced by another, the obstructionism continuing, but with different people on the Russian payroll.
As I’m recording this, polls from elections in Bulgaria that happened this past weekend seem to favor Bulgaria’s former president, who is pro-Russian and anti-Ukraine, though his administration seems to be filled with pro-EU representatives. It could be that he plays nice with the West while still opposing support for Ukraine, or it could be he waits to see which way the large-scale winds blow before deciding how to lean; he’s been pretty vague about how he’ll govern, and the people of Bulgaria seem like they’ll be happy just to have a functioning government after a long period without. So this guy could represent a foot in the door for Putin, but he could also be a reformer; he could also be a bit of both.
It’s also possible Orbán, who admitted defeat in the face of his opponent’s overwhelming parliamentary victory, will try some kind of last minute maneuver to stay in power, claiming that the vote was rigged against in him some way, for instance—a classic authoritarian move that has been repeated by these sorts governments over and over, including in modern history, and at times, unfortunately, successfully.
Show Notes
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/4/15/hungarys-magyar-urges-president-to-quit-vows-to-overhaul-state-media
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c4g40npz37lo
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2026/04/18/bulgaria-election-radev-russia-orban/
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-04-18/hungary-s-tisza-party-widens-election-majority-in-fresh-tally
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/18/opinion/hungary-election-orban-loses-trump-maga.html
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/apr/18/hungary-peter-magyar-donald-tusk-poland-europe
https://apnews.com/article/hungary-eu-unlock-funds-orban-5a208f4094d4d66a47de9fc10b9d194f
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/hungary-putin-orban-russia-ukraine-b2959920.html
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/04/hungary-orban-loss/686832/
https://www.npr.org/2026/04/16/nx-s1-5784063/hungarian-americans-orban-defeat-trump-authoritarianism-democrats-republicans
https://www.iiss.org/online-analysis/online-analysis/2026/04/hungarys-election-significance-and-implications/
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/apr/17/eu-officials-hungary-talks-peter-magyar-government
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/how-hungarys-vote-to-oust-viktor-orban-could-have-global-implications
https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/dispatches/hungary-just-voted-out-viktor-orban-heres-what-to-expect-in-europe-and-beyond/
https://geopoliticalfutures.com/hungarys-landmark-election/
https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/ukrainealert/could-bulgaria-replace-hungary-as-putins-proxy-inside-the-eu/
https://ecfr.eu/article/four-principles-for-an-eu-hungary-reset/
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/13/world/europe/hungary-election-results-orban-magyar.html
https://apnews.com/article/hungary-election-orban-magyar-trump-1a4eb0ba6b94e0c80c3cd18bd36254ab
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Trianon
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hungarian_diaspora
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hungary
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamental_Law_of_Hungary
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/19/world/europe/bulgaria-elections-what-to-know.html
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