Kim Lane Scheppele, the Laurance S. Rockefeller Professor of Sociology and International Affairs at Princeton University, is one of the foremost experts on Hungary and the collapse of constitutional democracies. On “Weekend Reading Live” today, she gave us the complete rundown on the rise and fall of Viktor Orbán, Hungary’s authoritarian prime minister who was decisively defeated yesterday, and what this defeat means both for Hungary and the world.
After Orbán won power in 2010, he quickly worked to consolidate it permanently (he thought) in the previously-robust democracy. In addition to rewriting the constitution to give himself advantage, he used tactics that should sound very familiar to us: weaponizing the state budget to defund media, NGOs, and universities that could oppose him; suspending civil service protections and mass-firing government employees; packing the courts with loyalists; and using extreme gerrymandering. (For Trump, the latter two things were already done before he took office.)
There’s a reason Orbán’s playbook sounds so familiar — Project 2025 was co-developed with Orbán’s Danube Institute think tank, which also trained figures like Christopher Rufo.
Kim explained how Orbán’s opponent, Peter Magyar, was able to use Orbán’s system against him to win a massive victory. It’s a fascinating story, complete with a zebra serving as a powerful symbol against corruption and oligarchy. There are key lessons for the U.S. about how to defeat an entrenched autocracy.
But even though Magyar has the supermajority he needs to amend the constitution, he still faces challenges that might require him to use some of Orbán’s own playbook to fully dismantle the old system. And while global far-right networks share tactics across borders, pro-democracy forces are still too often siloed within their own nations.
We covered a lot more in our conversation — the role of oligarchy, social media, and moral panic in both the U.S. and Hungary; how both the Roberts Court and Hungarian courts will occasionally rule against the executive on lower-stakes issues to maintain the illusion of independence; and more. You should also check out Kim’s article detailing how Orbán managed to steal so many elections.
