The Impact of Covid-19 on the Move towards Authoritarianism: The Case of Hungary

Abstract

As the Freedom House Report 2023 shows, there has been a global trend from democracy to authoritarianism over the past 17 years. This gained further momentum in late 2019 with the outbreak of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic in Wuhan, China. In the fight against this virus, which has resulted in the deaths of millions of people, governments implemented several significant measures, including closures, curfews, and mandatory vaccinations. Under the pretense of combatting the virus, populist politicians, who already had authoritarian inclinations before the pandemic, disregarded important democratic principles, such as free and fair elections, separation of powers, political liberties, and civil rights. The violations of these principles by populist leaders accelerated global democratic backsliding. In this context, in March 2020, in response to the coronavirus pandemic, Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orban, who has used every political crisis to find excuses to pursue undemocratic policies and strengthen his hold on power, pushed the Hungarian parliament to grant him extraordinary emergency powers. He used coronavirus precautions to establish one-man rule in Hungary by bypassing parliament. His government devised a legislative framework to suppress critics of its policies in the media, civil society, and the opposition. Orban also implemented restrictions violating judicial independence, minority rights, freedom of expression, and freedom of assembly through constitutional amendments. In other words, Orban utilized the coronavirus outbreak to further weaken Hungary’s democratic structures and principles. Human rights organizations and the European Union have criticized Hungary’s slow erosion of democracy under Orban’s administration. This article analyzes the impact of COVID-19 on the acceleration of democratic backsliding in Hungary, under the rule of Prime Minister Viktor Orban, in terms of Wolfgang Merkel’s (2004) four conditions for democratic consolidation: electoral regimes, civil rights, political freedoms, and separation of powers.