Viktor Orbán Archives - Page 2 of 4

Democracy

#Orbanistan

Democracy in lockdown

April 7, 2020 • by Kriszta Kovács

A month later, a subsequent “Enabling Act” allowed the new German government led by Adolf Hitler to issue decrees independently of both Parliament and the President. In effect, it turned Hitler into a dictator. On 23 March 2020, the Hungarian Parliament debated a piece of legislation so similarly sweeping that some Hungarians informally now call it ...

Democracy

Unlimited Power for an Indefinite Period

Coronavirus becomes an opportunity for Viktor Orbán to extend his power

April 6, 2020 • by Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger

On March 30, 2020, the Hungarian Parliament passed the so-called “Enabling Act”. In the future, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán will, therefore, be able to govern by decree without parliamentary approval. The law does not have a time limit. The Hungarian government claims that the massive spread of the novel coronavirus is the ...

Unlimited Power for an Indefinite Period

Europe & Central Asia

Labor Rights in the Time of Pandemic

Hungary’s return to the 19th Century in response to Covid 19

March 23, 2020 • by Laszlo Bruszt

This step is unprecedented in the post-second World War continental law that uses Labor Codes to provide guaranteed rights to employees. It also deviates from the more recent treatment of labor relations during the pandemic in the OECD countries. This move back to absolute ‘freedom of contract’ is reminiscent of ...

Europe & Central Asia

The EU’s University in Exile

December 3, 2019 • by Laszlo Bruszt

On November 15, Central European University (CEU) officially inaugurated its new campus in Vienna, Austria, having been arbitrarily ousted from Hungary. On the same day, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s government opened another large sports stadium in Budapest. Predictably, the government-controlled Hungarian media focused on the latter event and ignored the departure of ...

Democracy

Why Did Trump Let Erdogan Go?

The Turkish Invasion of Syria and the Global Alliance among Authoritarian Leaders

October 18, 2019 • by Utku Balaban

Trump imposed sanctions on Turkey, which is likely Trump’s way of both appeasing the opposition in the GOP and indirectly supporting Erdogan, as, in their current scope, the sanctions were not an effective instrument to deter Erdogan from going further. Furthermore, Trump accused Kurds of releasing the ISIS-related prisoners, while there is strong evidence ...

Feature

A Ticket for the Rome Express

A Strategy for Democracy

September 27, 2019 • by Andrew Arato

In Budapest, and shortly before local elections, some of my friends now speak of the Istanbul Express. As readers know, in that enormous city, followers of the slightly left Republican People’s Party (CHP), of the Kurdish People’s Democratic Party (HDP) and a small nationalist grouping, “the Good Party,” united to ...

Europe & Central Asia

Hungary: How Liberty Can Be Lost

Tyrannies always collapse, but whether Hungarians will escape with their sanity and sufficient clarity for a new start remains to be seen

July 23, 2019 • by Agnes Heller

As the Bible (Exodus) teaches and, more recently, Hannah Arendt warns, liberation is not yet liberty. The institutions of liberty must first be constituted, and people need to learn how to make them work while breathing spirit into them. The years 1989–1991 were a time of liberation for all the people ...

Feature

How to Beat a Populist

Populists’ biggest strength is a weak opposition

April 12, 2019 • by Sławomir Sierakowski

The progressive reformer Zuzana Čaputová’s victory in Slovakia's presidential election suggests that populists' biggest strength is a weak opposition. If her winning formula is adopted elsewhere, populist forces' recent gains in Western democracies could be reversed. There have never been more populist governments in place than today. Until now, populists have ...

Europe & Central Asia

Democracy in Hungary

The Alliance of State Autocracy and Neoliberal Capitalism

April 10, 2019 • by Attila Antal

Looking at the last few years in Hungary – overflowing as it is with hate against refugees, migrants, liberals, George Soros, leftists, homeless people, NGOs, public intellectuals, and the political opposition – we can easily recognize that the political system is as far from a democracy as it was during ...

Europe & Central Asia

Democracy in Hungary?

The Orbán regime is clearly not democratic

March 5, 2019 • by Zoltán Gábor Szűcs

There is no democracy in Hungary anymore. If you have a hegemonic party that has gained a constitution-making majority in the parliament three times in a row, in increasingly rigged elections, one does not have a democracy. If the power of all major independent institutions is curtailed, or they are led ...

Feature

Policing the Womb 2.0

Why Hungary and Poland’s pro-natalist policies won’t work

February 28, 2019 • by Maria Bucur

Fifty years ago, neo-Malthusian demographers and politicians warned that overpopulation would wipe out all efforts to modernize the world, especially the postcolonial Global South. Rapid population growth in India, Nigeria, Brazil, and Iran were depicted as impediments to development. Republicans (Richard Nixon) and Democrats (Lyndon B. Johnson) worked with Planned ...

Feature

How Orbán Manipulates Markets to Suppress Hungary’s Opposition

An interview with Kim Lane Scheppele and Daniel Hegedűs

January 27, 2019 • by Daniel Hegedűs, Kim Lane Scheppele and Krisztian Simon

The Hungarian regime has a wide range of tools to repress its people and it deploys them cleverly to avoid drawing too much criticism at home and abroad. The Green European Journal spoke with Professor Kim Lane Scheppele of Princeton University and political scientist Daniel Hegedűs about Hungary’s autocratic turn ...