PerspectiveUnderstanding Hungary’s Authoritarian Response to the Pandemic
In the face of the coronavirus pandemic, governments around the world have taken measures — border closures, enhanced surveillance, dramatic speech and media restrictions, election postponements, and shuttering of legislatures and courts – purportedly aimed at containing the spread of the disease. Laura Livingston writes that while some forbearance of civil liberties is reasonable in the face of a grave threat, “the pandemic has already served as an opportunity for would-be authoritarians to consolidate the power they have long coveted.” No other ruler has gone further than Hungary’s Viktor Orbán, who, critics charge, is well on his way to turning Hungary into the EU’s first dictatorship.
In the face of what the UN labels “the most challenging crisis since the Second World War,” governments across the world have introduced sweeping measures supposedly aimed at containing the novel coronavirus. These policies span border closures, enhanced surveillance, dramatic speech and media restrictions, election postponements, and shuttering of legislatures and courts. Laura Livingston writes in Lawfare that while some forbearance of civil liberties is reasonable in the face of a grave threat, “the pandemic has already served as an opportunity for would-be authoritarians to consolidate the power they have long coveted.”
She adds:
Hungary’s response to the pandemic is especially alarming. On 30 March, the Hungarian parliament voted to allow Prime Minister Viktor Orbán to rule by decree indefinitely, giving him dictatorial powers for at least the foreseeable future. Orbán can suspend existing laws or enact new ones—all with de facto parliamentary approval and without a known end date. The law also criminalizes spreading false or distorted facts that interfere with the public safety or are “suitable for alarming or agitating” the public, crimes punishable by several years in prison. Concerningly, this language is vague enough to cover anyone who challenges the government’s preferred narratives and handling of the coronavirus. With lower courts already suspended and the path to the Constitutional Court unclear, it’s difficult to envision the legislation being challenged. As legal sociologist Kim Lane Scheppele writes in the Hungarian Spectrum, Orbán’s “emergency gives him everything he ever dreamed of: The absolute freedom to do what he wants.”
Such sweeping measures did not unfold overnight. For Hungary, the coronavirus has accelerated a decade-long democratic crisis, during which Orbán has gradually consolidated his power and weaponized rhetoric to emphasize an ethnic Hungarian identity, target vulnerable groups, and dismantle the institutions responsible both for protecting those groups and for checking executive power—ultimately transforming Hungary into an illiberal state.
Livingston writes that “as governments pursue border closures, enhanced surveillance, and the shuttering of institutional checks in the name of protecting countries from this “outside virus,” Hungary should serve as a cautionary tale.”
