Answer:
hi
Explanation:
Viktor Orbán’s right-wing government came to power in Hungary in the spring of 2010; since doing so, it has significantly altered the country’s public legal infrastructure. It unilaterally voted on a new Constitution, it has substantially weakened the balance of power, and it has done away with the principle of power sharing. Power is concentrated in the hands of the prime minister, who does all that he can to establish a monopoly of power: his notion of a “central arena of power” has thus become a reality.
Between 1990 and 2010 Hungary had been a functioning liberal democracy, when judged against the principles and practices of a modern, Western-type democracy — that is, characterized by competition between political parties, the participation of civil society, and respect for civil rights. In 2011, democracy fell into a crisis in Hungary. It has not completely disappeared, but it is in deep crisis. Led by Orbán, the ruling party, Fidesz, has succeeded in destroying the components of a consensus-based liberal democracy in the name of a majoritarian democracy.1 But Orbán has gone even beyond this, since the eliminating of independent institutions has transformed this so-called majoritarian democracy into a highly centralized, illiberal regime. The “majority” today is nothing but an obtuse justification for the ruling political party to cement its power further in a country where the qualified majority of citizens now believe that things have gone badly awry. If this so-called “revolutionary” process continues, the result will be a solidly authoritarian semi-democracy, both in the short run and, if they get their way, in the long run as well.
This anti-liberal, anti-democratic turn did not emerge out of the blue: it was a direct response to the hectic, incoherent reforms implemented between 2006 and 2010, as well as the corruption and the economic crisis that ensued. The rise of the Orbán regime has deeper roots as well, ones that point to structural, cultural, and political factors that evolved over the period of post-transition Hungary. These include the early institutionalization of a qualified majority consensus, which has obstructed reforms over the past two decades; a plethora of informal practices, ranging from tax evasion to political party financing, that have stalled formal democratic institution-building; and the serious impact of existing democratic forms on competition between political parties (i.e., the phenomenon of “partocracy”), which has gradually killed off both the willingness of civic groups to engage in politics and incentives for results-based performance by governments, and has instilled a hatred in the populace towards politicians and politics. The survival of privileged and influential social groups on the other side of the transition has also destroyed networks of solidarity, thereby further discrediting democracy. Finally, the failure of meaningful economic reforms made the country defenseless against the global financial crisis that exploded in 2008. Taken together, these have produced a perfect political storm; let us now review these points one by one.
