András Bozóki and Dániel Hegedüs – The rise of authoritarianism in the European Union

Abstract

This chapter argues that, due to its hitherto overlooked characteristics, the Orbán regime belongs to a class of its own among hybrid regimes. The unique properties of this Hungarian hybrid regime follow from the fact that it is part of the European Union, which is made up of democratic member states. The EU is both the loci of ‘domestic’ and ‘foreign’ policy-making for its members. Consequently, the EU functions as a ‘regime-sustaining’ and ‘regime-constraining’ factor for Hungary, which compels us to describe the current governmental structure of Hungary as an ‘externally constrained hybrid regime’.