In this commentary, Dr. Oludele Solaja challenges conventional explanations of xenophobic violence in South Africa by underscoring the concept of “survival populism.” Rather than viewing anti-immigrant mobilization simply as irrational hatred or economic frustration, Dr. Solaja argues that it represents a decentralized form of grassroots political reasoning emerging from structural abandonment, fractured citizenship, and deep socio-economic inequality. Drawing on the legacies of apartheid, decolonial theory, and contemporary populism studies, the commentary explores how marginalized communities construct exclusionary notions of belonging in their struggle for resources, dignity, and recognition. By examining xenophobia as a political response to insecurity rather than merely a social pathology, Dr. Solaja offers a compelling reinterpretation of populism from below and highlights the profound crisis of citizenship, solidarity, and democratic inclusion in post-apartheid South Africa.
Familiar narratives about unemployment, criminality, poverty, and social frustration have been used repeatedly to account for recurrent attacks against foreign nationals in South Africa. Politicians, commentators, and sometimes even academics depict xenophobic violence as either “irrational hatred” or “spontaneous public anger” over economic decay. Such accounts, although not completely false, are analytically weak. They do not reflect the underlying political logic of anti-immigrant violence in post-apartheid South Africa. Xenophobia in this case is not only hatred toward foreigners; increasingly, it has come to constitute a form of grassroots political reasoning rooted in conditions of structural abandonment, economic precariousness, and fractured citizenship.
What we have witnessed in South Africa might best be described as survival populism: the everyday, decentralized form of exclusionary politics in which economically marginalized populations establish moral and territorial boundaries in an effort to safeguard their access to scarce resources, space, urban living, and social legitimacy. Unlike conventional populism mobilized by leaders with charismatic personalities in an electoral context, survival populism evolves horizontally through conversations, neighborhood watch meetings, community patrols, forums, taxi associations and informal markets, in addition to social networking sites. It is populism without populists; an everyday political reasoning that communities use to construct a definition of “the people” in contrast to outsiders.
The above understanding challenges popular thinking on populism within contemporary political theory. Most studies of populism concentrate on political actors of elite origin such as the United States’ Donald Trump, Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro, or Hungary’s Viktor Orban, who have mobilized nationalist resentment via an anti-elite and anti-immigrant stance (Mudde & Kaltwasser, 2017). Within this context, populism is understood as an electoral strategy led by charismatic personalities. What takes place in South Africa is different in that xenophobic mobilization seldom appears through coherent ideologies and central leaders. Rather, exclusionary politics arise from what could be called everyday populism: everyday political reasoning that shapes a people against outsiders.
From Internal Foreigners to External Outsiders
This differentiation is critical because it exposes populism as not just a form of political expression occurring in parliaments, ballot boxes or rallies, but also an element that emerges from places of survival like informal settlements, townships economies, crowded taxi ranks and local markets where politics takes place through practical struggles.
The architecture of exclusion has much to do with the history of South Africa as not merely a racial but also a spatial and economic system defined by the containment of Black South Africans. Pass laws, migrant labor hostels, separate territorial structures, and fragmented spatial organization resulted in a society in which Black Africans were regarded as only temporary residents. For many decades, millions of Black South Africans were stripped of their permanent urban citizenship, yet they built South Africa’s cities through their labor.
Apartheid made many Black South Africans internal foreigners, with conditional residency in urban South Africa. Understanding the fact that Black South Africans were internal foreigners helps us realize how the modern form of xenophobia reproduces these spatial logics, with migrants presented as illegitimately possessing jobs, wealth and legitimate residency. The policing of migrants and their access to urban South Africa mirrors previous systems of apartheid governance.
One of the striking features of xenophobic attacks in South Africa is that they almost exclusively target foreign Africans from countries such as Somalia, Ethiopia, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, and Nigeria, rather than European migrants and expatriates. This racial and national specificity of South African xenophobia reveals a history of unequal relations, the persistence of colonial hierarchies, and ideas of belonging that continue to shape post-apartheid South Africa (Mignolo, 2011). The most ironic and tragic fact is that it is precisely here—the place from which the international struggle against apartheid was championed and which was seen as a beacon of African liberation and pan-African unity—that a recurrent war against Africans takes place. The support that Africa provided in the struggle against apartheid has not been reciprocated with welcome and security for African immigrants in post-apartheid South Africa.
The Unfulfilled Promise of Democratic Citizenship
In 1994, the democratic dispensation promised inclusion, human dignity, and socio-economic justice. Yet political liberation has neither brought about structural transformation nor eliminated the socio-economic inequalities inherited from the apartheid state. South Africa remains one of the most unequal countries in the world, characterized by widespread poverty, high unemployment, and spatial segregation (Piketty, 2014). For many Black South Africans, formal citizenship and the promise of democratic rule remain shallow promises.
It is this disconnect between formal political inclusion and the lack of concrete socio-economic benefits for most South African citizens that helps explain how survival populism is born. While citizens exist on paper, they often fail to achieve basic human dignity. In a society where access to and the distribution of resources are fiercely contested, particularly where the state is absent in providing economic security, protection, and opportunities, people find themselves in conditions of chronic abandonment and exclusion. Xenophobia emerges as an ultimate response to exclusion from economic benefits in society, becoming a tool through which individuals establish an ethical claim to resources and place.
It is here that the township economy becomes an interesting phenomenon. While it provides alternative livelihoods, it also represents conditions of uncertainty, competition, and survival. Furthermore, it is a site where foreign migrants often display economic success, in part through the transnational networks and cooperative practices they share, as well as their lower overhead costs (Crush & Ramachandran, 2014). Their relative visibility within township economies allows them to appear as an important source of economic anxiety for some citizens in this society.
In many township spaces, foreigners and the shops they own are portrayed not merely as competitors but as those responsible for taking over opportunities. Such descriptions and narratives serve as a way of politicizing migrants as legitimate strangers who have illegitimately claimed a portion of the available resources, while local citizens have been abandoned and subjected to misery by their own government.
Here, a Laclauian understanding of populism becomes significant. According to Laclau, populism is essentially a political discourse structured around enmity between “the people” and their enemies (Laclau, 2005). In this context, “the people” are framed as deprived yet hard-working citizens of the South African state who have been excluded from its promises. Migrants are thus represented as foreigners who, despite lacking rights and a legitimate stake, have invaded the state and appropriated what rightfully belongs to South Africans.
Populism without Leaders: Informal Sovereignty from Below
The interesting dimension here is that no such political reasoning necessarily arises from the leadership of populist figures. Rather, it is reproduced within political networks on the ground, from street committees and neighborhood patrols to organizations like Operation Dudula, which not only advocate for stricter immigration policies but also actively patrol urban areas, monitor shops and businesses, and enforce exclusive boundaries, thereby performing informal sovereignty in the absence of legitimate state authority (Misago, 2019).
Such actions are a response to a deeper malaise within the post-apartheid state. It is clear that, in many cases, state institutions have become delegitimized; citizens, feeling neglected by the state, resort to popular measures to enforce governance. Thus, xenophobic movements are not merely attacks against immigrants but expressions of citizens’ anger over the state’s incapacity to provide. Communities assert control over their territory and defend it against perceived external threats.
However, an exclusively domestic reading of the popular dynamics of discontent obscures the decolonial underpinnings of xenophobic violence in South Africa. The reality of xenophobic violence is inextricably linked to a coloniality of power (Quijano, 2007) that persists beyond the period of colonial rule and continues to value and categorize people according to histories of colonial experience. African immigrants are often despised simply because they are African and are treated by many South Africans in ways similar to how they themselves would have been treated by colonial rulers.
This means that, in a tragic sense, one formerly oppressed population has turned against another. This has much in common with what Frantz Fanon warned about decades ago in The Wretched of the Earth—that without genuine redistribution, liberation could transform former victims into oppressors themselves.
Survival populism arises precisely in this vacuum of fractured solidarity. As citizenship loses its material content due to ever-increasing economic insecurity, a range of alternative political communities based on exclusion are formed by ordinary citizens. Migrants then become convenient targets onto whom structural frustrations can be projected. Xenophobia, in this sense, is not the absence of politics; it is politics under conditions of abandonment. Yet, while the political logic of xenophobia may be recognizable, its moral implications cannot be condoned.
Migrants themselves often become victims of precisely the neoliberal inequalities from which poor South Africans suffer. Many have fled persecution, economic disaster, or armed conflict in neighboring countries, only to be subjected to violence and exclusion in South Africa. Ultimately, xenophobic mobilizations provide scapegoats that divert anger away from structural causes—corruption, inequality, unemployment, and policy failures—and toward vulnerable migrants and poor South Africans. However, ignoring these factors will result in underestimating the significance of xenophobia as a political practice and force.
Xenophobia can persist only as long as it provides a language through which the abandoned can voice their grievances, articulate a form of resistance, and renegotiate access in contexts where formal citizenship offers little tangible substance—in other words, as a distorted political response to systemic marginalization. The global significance of such a phenomenon cannot be overstated.
The Global Lessons of Survival Populism
Everywhere across the globe—from Europe to Latin America, across Africa and into Asia—increasing economic precariousness can foster exclusionary ideologies targeting migrants and minority groups. However, South Africa is remarkable because it is the historically oppressed Black majority that is involved, largely without elite populist rhetoric or direction. This challenges our conventional ways of understanding populism, nationalism, and citizenship. While populism is usually understood in elite- and election-driven terms, in South Africa it demonstrates how a populist discourse can emerge from the ground up, be highly localized, and center on survival.
A populist mode of address can emerge whenever abandoned people face the struggle for self-defense and access to resources under conditions of precarity. It is South Africa’s greatest post-apartheid tragedy that populations once excluded under the apartheid system now themselves construct an “outsider” in order to re-establish their own space through exclusion.
Xenophobic violence is a testament to a deeper crisis of belonging within the democratic framework and to the lack of transformation of apartheid’s economic landscape. This is a world in which citizenship and political freedom coexist with mass abandonment, a world where the challenge lies not only in containing migration and the violence that accompanies it, but also in reforming society so that citizenship offers material benefits, the capacity to exercise and enjoy the material aspects of citizenship is more equitably distributed, and an inclusive sense of belonging becomes the norm rather than exclusion. Until that happens, survival populism will remain one of the defining languages of the post-apartheid urban sphere.
References
Crush, J., & Ramachandran, S. (2014). “Xenophobic violence in South Africa: Denialism, minimalism, realism.” Migration Policy Series, 66, 1–35.
Fanon, F. (1963). The wretched of the earth. Grove Press.
Laclau, E. (2005). On populist reason. Verso.
Mamdani, M. (1996). Citizen and subject: Contemporary Africa and the legacy of late colonialism. Princeton University Press.
Mignolo, W. D. (2011). The darker side of Western modernity: Global futures, decolonial options. Duke University Press.
Misago, J. P. (2019). “Political mobilisation as the trigger of xenophobic violence in post-apartheid South Africa.” African Studies Review, 62(4), 111–135.
Mudde, C. & Kaltwasser, C. R. (2017). Populism: A very short introduction. Oxford University Press.
Neocosmos, M. (2010). From “foreign natives” to “native foreigners”: Explaining xenophobia in post-apartheid South Africa. CODESRIA.
Piketty, T. (2014). Capital in the twenty-first century. Harvard University Press.
Quijano, A. (2007). “Coloniality and modernity/rationality.” Cultural Studies, 21(2–3), 168–178.
In this commentary, Yacine Boubia examines why political disinformation has become one of the defining challenges of contemporary democratic life. Moving beyond conventional explanations that focus on misinformation as a mere failure of fact or technology, Boubia argues that disinformation increasingly functions as a mechanism of political identity formation. Within contemporary populist politics, false narratives often derive their power not from their factual accuracy but from their ability to reinforce collective belonging, distrust of institutions, and emotional engagement. Drawing on examples from the United States, Brazil, Hungary, India, and other democratic contexts, the commentary explores how digital media ecosystems, affective polarization, and populist communication have transformed the relationship between truth, politics, and democratic legitimacy. The result, Boubia warns, is the fragmentation of shared public reality and the erosion of the deliberative foundations upon which democratic societies depend.
Political disinformation has become one of the defining anxieties of contemporary democratic life. Governments increasingly legislate against it, social media companies develop moderation policies intended to contain it, and fact-checking organizations work continuously to identify and correct false claims circulating online. Yet despite the multiplication of these mechanisms, disinformation not only persists but often appears politically resilient. In some cases, attempts to debunk falsehoods seem to reinforce the political narratives they were intended to weaken.
The persistence of disinformation suggests that the phenomenon cannot be understood simply as a technological malfunction or as the result of insufficient access to accurate information. Nor can it be reduced to the assumption that democratic publics have suddenly become incapable of distinguishing truth from falsehood. Such explanations remain insufficient because they misunderstand the political function disinformation increasingly performs within contemporary populist politics.
The central issue is not merely that false information circulates. Falsehood has always existed within political life. Rumors, conspiracies, propaganda, and manipulated narratives long predate the digital era. What distinguishes the contemporary moment is the transformation of the relationship between political identity, media consumption, and the perception of reality itself. Increasingly, political information is consumed less as neutral knowledge than as symbolic confirmation of collective belonging.
Within this context, disinformation often functions not primarily as a factual proposition requiring verification but as a mechanism of identity formation. It tells political communities who they are, who threatens them, and which institutions can no longer be trusted. The emotional and symbolic dimensions of such narratives frequently matter more politically than their empirical coherence.
The Populist Construction of Reality
At the heart of contemporary populist politics lies a deeply antagonistic understanding of democratic society. Politics is framed not as competition between legitimate ideological alternatives within a shared democratic framework, but as a moral struggle between a virtuous and authentic people on one side and corrupt elites on the other. This binary structure does not merely organize political preferences. It also reshapes the criteria through which truth itself is evaluated.
When populist leaders denounce mainstream media as “fake news,” portray judicial institutions as politically compromised, or present experts and academics as detached ideological actors, they are not simply criticizing specific institutions. They are constructing an alternative political epistemology — an alternative framework for determining who possesses legitimate authority to define reality.
Within this framework, distrust becomes politically productive. Suspicion toward institutional information sources functions as proof of political lucidity. The citizen who rejects mainstream narratives demonstrates independence from allegedly manipulated systems of information. Consequently, disinformation often succeeds not because it is universally believed in a literal sense, but because it reinforces existing emotional and political identities.
This helps explain why factual corrections frequently fail to reduce the circulation of false narratives. For many politically polarized audiences, fact-checking institutions themselves have become incorporated into the antagonistic political narrative. A correction issued by mainstream media may therefore strengthen rather than weaken distrust, since it appears as further evidence of elite coordination against the political community with which individuals identify.
The issue is therefore not simply informational. It is relational and symbolic. Political trust itself becomes fragmented.
Emotional Politics and the Collapse of Shared Reality
The transformation of political communication over the last two decades has intensified these dynamics considerably. Digital communication environments reward immediacy, emotional intensity, and visibility rather than reflection or deliberation. Content capable of generating outrage, fear, indignation, or moral conflict circulates more rapidly and more widely than nuanced analysis or institutional communication.
This transformation has altered the emotional structure of democratic politics.
Contemporary political communication increasingly functions according to the logic of affective mobilization. Citizens are not merely encouraged to support political programs or ideological projects; they are encouraged to consume politics emotionally and permanently. Anger, resentment, humiliation, fear, and cultural anxiety become continuous mechanisms of political engagement.
Social media platforms play a central role in this transformation. Their economic models depend fundamentally on maximizing user engagement, and emotionally activating content systematically generates higher levels of interaction than neutral or procedural information. Algorithms consequently privilege content capable of provoking strong emotional responses, creating information ecosystems increasingly organized around visibility, conflict, and polarization.
Under such conditions, populist communication acquires structural advantages. Simplified narratives opposing “the people” to enemies, elites, immigrants, globalists, or corrupt institutions adapt particularly effectively to digital environments privileging emotional intensity and rapid symbolic confrontation. Donald Trump’s communication style represented one of the clearest manifestations of this transformation. His political visibility depended not on maintaining ideological consistency or factual precision but on sustaining permanent symbolic conflict. Through X (Twitter), rallies, media provocation, and continuous attacks against institutional actors, Trump transformed political communication into a form of ongoing spectacle in which emotional engagement became more politically valuable than deliberative persuasion.
Yet Trump was not an isolated phenomenon. Comparable dynamics emerged across multiple democratic contexts. Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil, Viktor Orbán in Hungary, Narendra Modi in India, and Rodrigo Duterte in the Philippines all deployed communication strategies combining direct digital engagement, hostility toward institutional mediators, and emotionally polarized narratives opposing authentic national communities to corrupt elites or threatening outsiders.¹
While the specific ideological content differs substantially across these contexts, the communicative logic remains remarkably similar. Political legitimacy increasingly derives from claims of authenticity, emotional proximity, and symbolic confrontation rather than institutional mediation or technocratic competence.
Media Visibility and the Spectacle Imperative
The contemporary media environment further amplifies these tendencies because visibility itself has become one of the central currencies of political power.
Twenty-four-hour news cycles and platform competition create continuous pressure for emotionally stimulating and conflict-driven content. Political actors capable of generating spectacle acquire disproportionate communicative advantages regardless of the substantive coherence of their positions. Outrage becomes economically profitable.
This dynamic was visible throughout the 2016 American presidential campaign. Research conducted by Harvard Kennedy School’s Shorenstein Center demonstrated that Trump received extraordinary levels of media attention during the Republican primaries, often dominating news cycles despite relatively limited institutional support within the Republican establishment.² Coverage focused overwhelmingly on conflict, provocation, and campaign drama rather than substantive policy analysis.
Trump himself appeared highly conscious of this relationship between media economics and political visibility. In 2017, he remarked that television networks and newspapers depended heavily on his presence because “without me, their ratings are going down the tubes.”³ Although characteristically provocative, the statement reflected an important structural reality. Political spectacle had become deeply integrated into the economic logic of contemporary media systems.
This integration creates a paradox increasingly visible across democratic societies. Media institutions frequently denounce populist disinformation while simultaneously benefiting economically from the audience engagement it generates. Populist actors attack mainstream media as corrupt enemies of the people while simultaneously depending upon those same institutions for visibility and political amplification. The result is a mutually reinforcing cycle of outrage, polarization, and permanent symbolic conflict.
The Fragmentation of Democratic Public Space
One of the most significant consequences of digital political communication has been the fragmentation of shared public space itself. Traditional mass media systems, despite their limitations and ideological biases, historically exposed large segments of the population to relatively similar informational environments. Citizens consuming the same newspapers or television broadcasts could still disagree politically while operating within partially shared factual frameworks.
Contemporary digital ecosystems increasingly undermine those shared frameworks. Individuals now inhabit highly personalized informational environments shaped by algorithms, ideological preferences, and social networks. Political communities consume different sources, circulate different narratives, and often interpret political reality through entirely incompatible symbolic frameworks.
The consequence is not simply disagreement. Democratic societies have always contained disagreement. The deeper issue is the erosion of common epistemic reference points necessary for democratic deliberation itself.
When citizens no longer agree on which institutions possess legitimacy to verify information, political conflict risks becoming increasingly detached from deliberative negotiation. Politics transforms into a struggle between competing realities rather than competing interpretations of shared reality.
Under such conditions, democratic polarization becomes self-reinforcing. Every institutional intervention risks being interpreted through preexisting antagonistic narratives. Judicial rulings become evidence of political conspiracy. Journalistic investigations become proof of media manipulation. Electoral outcomes themselves become vulnerable to accusations of illegitimacy.
Disinformation therefore thrives not simply because false information circulates more effectively online, but because democratic publics increasingly lack shared mechanisms for collectively arbitrating truth claims.
Beyond Fact-Checking
None of this implies that factual accuracy no longer matters. Democratic societies remain dependent upon institutions capable of producing reliable information and sustaining informed public debate. Journalistic verification, academic expertise, and independent investigative institutions remain indispensable democratic resources. Yet the limitations of purely informational responses to disinformation have become increasingly visible.
Fact-checking alone cannot resolve political conflicts rooted in identity, emotional polarization, and institutional distrust. Correcting false claims does not automatically rebuild confidence in the institutions producing those corrections. Indeed, in highly polarized environments, such interventions may reinforce existing suspicions among audiences already convinced that institutional actors operate according to hidden ideological agendas.
The challenge confronting contemporary democracies is therefore not solely technological or informational; It is political and cultural. Democratic systems increasingly struggle to maintain the conditions necessary for shared public deliberation in environments characterized by fragmentation, emotional mobilization, and permanent symbolic conflict. The issue is not simply how to eliminate falsehood, but how to preserve forms of political coexistence within societies where citizens increasingly inhabit different informational and emotional realities.
The rise of contemporary populist disinformation reveals less about the irrationality of democratic publics than about the transformation of political communication itself. In an age defined by digital visibility, affective polarization, and fragmented media ecosystems, political identity increasingly shapes perceptions of truth more powerfully than truth shapes political identity.
Until democratic societies confront the emotional, symbolic, and communicative transformations underlying this crisis, disinformation will remain not an anomaly within democratic politics, but one of its defining features.
Footnotes
¹ Cas Mudde and Cristóbal Rovira Kaltwasser. (2017). Populism: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press); Benjamin Moffitt. (2016). The Global Rise of Populism: Performance, Political Style, and Representation (Stanford: Stanford University Press).
² Thomas E. Patterson. (2016).“Pre-Primary News Coverage of the 2016 Presidential Race: Trump’s Rise, Sanders’ Emergence, Clinton’s Struggle,” Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy, Harvard Kennedy School, June 13, 2016.
³ Donald Trump, quoted in Tom Jones, “Does the Media Miss Donald Trump?” Poynter, March 23, 2021.
In this commentary, Nikoletta Syvak examines the political and regional implications of Viktor Orbán’s electoral defeat after sixteen years in power in Hungary. Rather than interpreting the outcome as the end of far-right populism, Syvak argues that the election challenges the long-standing assumption that Orbán’s model of illiberal governance had become politically irreversible. Drawing on the works of Cas Mudde, Ágnes Batory, Zoltán Enyedi, Andrea Pirro, and Milada Vachudova, the analysis situates Hungary within the broader dynamics of democratic backsliding, ethnopopulism, and sovereignist politics across Central and Eastern Europe. The commentary further explores how Poland, Slovakia, Austria, and the Czech Republic continue to sustain political demand for anti-liberal and nationalist agendas despite Hungary’s transition
By Nikoletta Syvak*
Elections are often seen as a moment of political settlement: the campaign has ended, the votes have been counted, and the winner has been determined. But in the case of Hungary, the period following the election may prove more indicative than the day of the vote itself. After sixteen years in power, Viktor Orbán’s defeat is not merely an important milestone in the history of Hungary. Rather, this event shifts how Hungary is perceived throughout Central and Eastern Europe: long considered a shining example of stable right-wing populist rule in the EU, the country is now becoming an example of its susceptibility, as Péter Magyar’s TISZA party defeated Fidesz in the April 2026 elections, marking the end of Orbán’s sixteen-year rule.
Hungary as the End of Inevitable Progress
Over the years, Hungary has been one of the clearest examples of how far-right populism can not only win elections, but also turn into a sustainable model of governance. Orbánism has become not only a political style, but also a specific system that has transformed populist discourse: emphasizing national sovereignty and national interests, conflict with Brussels, Euroscepticism, cultural polarization, control over institutions, and presenting the government as a defender of the “people” from liberal elites.
The classic idea of Cas Mudde (2004) about the “populist zeitgeist” is useful here: populism has ceased to be a marginal phenomenon and has become part of the political mainstream, especially due to the confrontation between the “pure people” and the “corrupt elite” (Mudde, 2004). In the case of Hungary, this logic was not only used in election campaigns, but also transformed into a model of governance.
This is precisely why Ágnes Batory’s (2016) analysis of Fidesz as “populists in power” is particularly important: she demonstrates that the Hungarian case should be understood not only as an electoral success, but also as an institutional restructuring of the political system through constitutional majorities, party control, and the weakening of checks and balances (Batory, 2016). Zoltán Enyedi (2016) also helps us understand Orbánism more precisely: he shows that Fidesz combined populist rhetoric with paternalism and illiberal elitism—that is, it spoke on behalf of “the people” while simultaneously concentrating power in the hands of the ruling elite (Enyedi, 2016).
Therefore, Orbán’s defeat is significant not because it signifies the end of right-wing populism. Such a conclusion would be too hasty. Its significance lies elsewhere: it calls into question the idea of the political irreversibility of the Orbánist model. For a long time, Hungary demonstrated how right-wing populist power could become institutionally entrenched. Now it is showing that even such power can be challenged.
Regions Under Pressure
The significance of the Hungarian elections becomes clearer when viewed within the broader Central and Eastern European context. Andrea Pirro (2014) emphasizes that far-right populist parties in Central and Eastern Europe cannot be analyzed as mere replicas of Western European models: they are shaped by specific post-communist conditions, with distinct historical conflicts, party systems, and conceptions of the nation, the state, and sovereignty (Pirro, 2014).
Poland is the most important comparative case here. Under PiS (2015–2023), it was close to Hungary on issues of sovereignty, traditional values, criticism of Brussels, and conflict with the EU’s liberal mainstream. However, the Polish experience also shows that the defeat of a right-wing populist government does not mean the automatic restoration of liberal democracy. The institutional legacy of the previous government—a politicized media environment, judicial reforms, personnel appointments, and deep social polarization—continues to constrain the new government. This aligns well with Milada Vachudova’s (2020) analysis, which links ethnopopulism in Central Europe to democratic backsliding and the concentration of power (Vachudova, 2020).
Slovakia illustrates another aspect of regional dynamics. Robert Fico and SMER are not direct copies of Fidesz, but the Slovak case demonstrates the resilience of a political strategy built on criticism of liberal elites, a cautious stance toward supporting Ukraine, an emphasis on national interests, and conflict with parts of the European mainstream. This is important because it prevents us from interpreting Orbán’s defeat as the beginning of an automatic “post-populist” phase in the region. Rather, it shows that one center of right-wing populist power has been weakened, but the political demand for a sovereignist and anti-liberal agenda remains.
The Czech Republic adds another important component. Andrej Babiš and ANO represent a more pragmatic and less ideologically rigid form of populism than Fidesz. But ANO’s participation, alongside Fidesz and the Austrian FPÖ, in the creation of the Patriots for Europe alliance, formed in the European Parliament in June 2024, shows that Orbán’s influence spread not only through direct replication of the Hungarian model, but also through a shared political vocabulary: national sovereignty, criticism of Brussels, migration control, and the protection of “ordinary people.”
Although Austria is not part of Eastern Europe, it is important within the Central European context. The FPÖ demonstrates that far-right mobilization remains strong even in more established democratic systems. The FPÖ’s victory in the 2024 parliamentary elections showed that far-right parties in Central Europe retain significant electoral potential.
Therefore, Orbán’s defeat should not be interpreted as a regional decline of far-right populism. Rather, it may signal a shift in its political center: if Hungary is no longer the primary symbol of far-right populist resilience, momentum may shift to other actors—in Austria, Slovakia, or the Czech Republic.
What Comes After Orbánism?
The post-election period is important precisely because populism does not end the moment the votes are counted. Attila Bartha, Zolt Boda, and Dorottya Szikra (2020) propose analyzing populism not only as electoral rhetoric, but also as a mode of governance and political decision-making (Bartha et al., 2020). In this sense, the main question following Orbán’s defeat is not only how Fidesz lost power, but also to what extent the new government will be able to change the system built over the past sixteen years.
The Hungarian case allows us to draw three broader conclusions.
First, far-right populism in Central and Eastern Europe is not disappearing. Its social and political foundations remain significant: distrust of elites, economic uncertainty, cultural anxiety, migration policy, Euroscepticism, and tensions surrounding the war in Ukraine. These factors continue to create space for parties that base their politics on the opposition between “the people” and “the elites,” national sovereignty and external pressure.
Second, Orbán’s defeat weakens the aura of inevitability surrounding right-wing populist rule. If the most enduring example of such a model within the EU can be defeated at the polls, then this model is less stable than its supporters have claimed.
Third, the region’s future will depend not only on whether far-right populists win or lose elections. Equally important is whether democratic alternatives can translate electoral victory into sustainable institutional renewal. Poland has already demonstrated just how difficult this process can be following the departure of PiS. Hungary is now the next test.
For many years, Hungary has been viewed as a laboratory for right-wing populist rule. Following Orbán’s defeat, it may become a laboratory for post-Orbán transition. This does not mean the end of far-right populism in Central and Eastern Europe. But it may mean the end of its strongest illusion: the notion that once institutional dominance is achieved, it is irreversible.
(*) Nikoletta Syvak is a Graduate Student, Department of Political Science and International Relations, East China Normal University (ECNU). Email: syvaknikoletta@gmail.com
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References
Bartha, A., Boda, Z. & Szikra, D. (2020). “When populist leaders govern: Conceptualising populism in policy making.” Politics and Governance, 8(3), 71–81. https://doi.org/10.17645/pag.v8i3.2922
Pirro, A. L. P. (2014). “Populist radical right parties in Central and Eastern Europe: The different context and issues of the prophets of the patria.” Government and Opposition, 49(4), 599–628. https://doi.org/10.1017/gov.2013.32
In this timely and deeply analytical essay, Professor Ibrahim Ozturk examines how Turkey is moving beyond competitive authoritarianism toward what he terms a system of “managed permanence,” in which elections formally survive while meaningful democratic alternation becomes increasingly constrained. Focusing on the judicial intervention into the CHP, the encirclement of opposition municipalities, media capture, and the erosion of institutional autonomy, Professor Ozturk argues that the Erdoğan regime is no longer merely repressing opposition actors, but actively re-engineering the political field itself. The essay further explores how lawfare, economic fragility, transactional geopolitics, and institutional decay have become mutually reinforcing dynamics. Ultimately, the piece warns that Turkey’s crisis is no longer only democratic or economic, but fundamentally a crisis of institutional credibility and constitutional uncertainty.
When Hungary’s 2026 elections produced an early wave of enthusiasm around the idea that “dictators, too, can be defeated,” the reaction was understandable but premature. In a recent ECPS long-read commentary on Péter Magyar and Hungary’s hybrid-authoritarian rupture, I warned against romanticizing Orbán’s defeat as automatic democratic restoration, and stressed that comparative analogies travel badly: what may be cooking in the neighbor’s house does not necessarily fall onto our plate — Turkey is not Hungary, and each authoritarian case rests on its own institutional, geopolitical, social, and economic architecture.
Turkey has now confirmed that warning with brutal speed. Before the optimism generated by Hungary’s rupture could settle into a broader democratic lesson, Ankara moved in the opposite direction: the main opposition was judicially destabilized, municipal autonomy was further encircled, a major university’s operating license was revoked, and the already fragile boundary between competitive authoritarianism and managed permanence narrowed even further. The message is unmistakable: authoritarian regimes may sometimes lose elections, but they do not necessarily accept political contingency — and in Turkey’s case, the regime appears determined to prevent meaningful alternation before it can happen.
Thus, Turkey has entered a new and more dangerous phase of competitive authoritarianism. The issue is no longer confined to the imprisonment of opposition figures, the removal of elected mayors, or the selective deployment of criminal investigations. The deeper transformation now concerns the legal and institutional re-engineering of the opposition itself. The court decision annulling the Republican People’s Party (CHP)’s 2023 congress—effectively removing Özgür Özel and reinstating Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu as party leader—marks a qualitative escalation: the judiciary is no longer merely disciplining opposition actors from the outside; it is intervening directly in the internal sovereignty of the main opposition party. Reuters reported that the ruling annulled the CHP’s 2023 leadership election, suspended Özel and the party executive, and reinstated Kılıçdaroğlu, while the CHP’s elected executives denounced the decision as a judicial coup.
In Turkish legal terminology, the concept of “absolute nullity” may appear technical. Politically, however, it functions as a mechanism of retroactive delegitimation. A past party congress is declared void; the current leadership is suspended; a former leadership is restored; and the organizational continuity of the opposition is plunged into legal uncertainty. The outcome is not merely a leadership change. It is the construction of a “lame-duck opposition”: formally present and electorally significant on paper, yet institutionally constrained, internally fragmented, and increasingly vulnerable to judicial veto.
From Electoral Defeat to Judicial Containment
The turning point came with the local elections of March 31, 2024. In those elections, the CHP delivered President Erdoğan and the AKP their most significant electoral defeat in decades, while retaining Istanbul and Ankara—long regarded as key opposition strongholds—and achieving major gains across the country. CHP secured approximately 37 percent of the nationwide vote, narrowly surpassing the AKP, and won municipalities in 36 of Turkey’s 81 provinces. The outcome was Erdoğan’s biggest electoral setback and Ekrem İmamoğlu had emerged as his “default nemesis.”
The result fundamentally altered the regime’s threat perception. The opposition was no longer merely a parliamentary minority or a symbolic protest bloc. It had acquired administrative capacity, access to local budgets, service-delivery networks, public visibility, and presidential contenders with nationwide appeal. İmamoğlu, Mansur Yavaş, and the renewed CHP leadership under Özgür Özel represented not only electoral competition, but the emergence of an alternative governing infrastructure.
The regime’s response has followed a recognizable authoritarian playbook: do not abolish elections outright; hollow them out. Do not ban the opposition; fragment, criminalize, and bureaucratically paralyze it. Do not formally dissolve local governments; restrict their fiscal instruments, remove or prosecute their elected leaders, and make every municipal decision vulnerable to criminalization. In this sense, the CHP ruling should not be read as an isolated party-law dispute. It is part of a strategy to convert the main opposition from an electoral threat into a controlled, divided, and procedurally disabled actor.
Lawfare and the Collapse of Rule of Law
The CHP case sits inside a wider pattern of lawfare against opposition mayors, party officials, journalists, lawyers, academics, and civil society actors. Freedom House’s 2026 assessment classifies Turkey as “Not Free,” with a score of 32 out of 100, including 16/40 for political rights and 16/60 for civil liberties. This is not a marginal decline. It signals a political system in which elections continue, but the freedoms necessary for meaningful electoral competition are structurally impaired.
The rule-of-law picture is equally severe. The World Justice Project’s 2025 Rule of Law Index places Turkey 118th out of 143 countries. Turkey also ranks near the bottom of its region and among upper-middle-income countries. The index measures constraints on government powers, absence of corruption, open government, fundamental rights, regulatory enforcement, civil justice, and criminal justice — precisely the institutional foundations now under stress in Turkey’s opposition cases.
This matters because authoritarianism in Turkey does not operate primarily through overt illegality. More often, it functions through excessive legality: sprawling investigations, procedural ambiguities, retroactive annulments, prolonged pre-trial detention, anonymous witnesses, and charges that are difficult to contest because the process itself becomes the punishment. In such a system, the courts do not need to formally ban the opposition as a political force. They can exhaust it, fragment it, delegitimize it, and keep it in a permanent state of defensiveness.
The logic is as coercive as it is punitive. Opposition figures are pressured through detention, threats to personal assets, indictments, reputational attacks, and the prospect of escalating sentences. Where evidentiary standards are weak or politically contested, mechanisms such as anonymous witnesses and “effective remorse” provisions can become instruments of narrative production: lower-level actors are pressured to implicate higher-ranking opposition figures, while refusal may expose both them and their families to further legal vulnerability. This is not merely prosecution; it is political extraction through criminal procedure.
Of course, the authoritarian acceleration did not begin with the most recent CHP case. It was dramatically intensified after the failed coup attempt of July 15, 2016, which the government used to consolidate emergency rule, neutralize the unresolved political consequences of the December17–25, 2013 corruption allegations, and restructure the judiciary, bureaucracy, media, and civil society under executive command. Many opposition actors, including the CHP, underestimated or tolerated the early stages of this process; today, as thousands of cases reach the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) under Article 7 and Article 3 concerns, the same emergency-state machinery has expanded from alleged Gülenists to Kurds, socialists, liberals, journalists, mayors, academics, and now the main opposition itself.
Capturing the Public Sphere
Judicial pressure becomes far more effective when it operates inside a captured information environment. Turkey’s media landscape is already deeply distorted. In the 2026 World Press Freedom Index, Reporters Without Borders (RSF) ranks Turkey 163rd out of 180 countries, with a score of 27.94. RSF’s country profile places Turkey in the “very serious” category and notes that media pluralism remains under severe pressure.
Media repression in Turkey has evolved beyond the traditional closure or capture of media outlets into a hybrid authoritarian system of digital censorship, where online news links and social media content are removed without effective judicial review on elastic grounds such as national security, public order, religious or family values, and the unity of the state, while those who escape imprisonment may still be silenced through account suspensions and platform-level restrictions.
This means that electoral competition is distorted not only through courts, prosecutions, and candidate bans, but also through unequal access to information. When opposition leaders are criminalized, government-aligned media amplify the accusations, while independent journalism operates under conditions of fear, fines, arrests, ownership pressure, and regulatory intimidation. Elections may still take place, but voters encounter the opposition through a public sphere heavily structured by executive power.
This is the contemporary version of “open voting, secret counting.” Today, the mechanisms are more sophisticated. The ballot may remain secret, and the counting process may remain formally observable, yet the media landscape, judiciary, party autonomy, local government capacity, candidate eligibility, and financial environment are all subjected to sustained political pressure. Elections survive as ritualized procedures; democratic alternation is rendered increasingly improbable.
Municipal Counter-Power and Administrative Encirclement
The The attack on the CHP is inseparable from the broader assault on opposition-run municipalities. After the 2024 local elections, Istanbul, Ankara, and other major cities represented not merely electoral victories, but alternative centers of political legitimacy. Municipal governments possessed the capacity to deliver services, develop their own patronage networks, expose failures of the central government, and cultivate presidential contenders with executive credibility.
This is why the restriction of municipal autonomy has become so consequential. Turkish media reports indicate that recent legal changes now require presidential approval for municipalities and their affiliated entities to establish companies, acquire shares, or join cooperatives. Opposition critics argue that these measures transform local economic initiative into a permission regime ultimately controlled by the presidency.
The corruption data help explain why this matters. Transparency International’s 2025 Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) gives Turkey a score of 31/100, ranking it 124th out of 182 countries. The CPI is not simply about bribery; it is about discretionary public power, weak accountability, and the erosion of impartial administration. In Turkey’s case, this means that municipal resources, public tenders, regulatory approvals, media licensing, universities, and courts increasingly operate within a political economy of executive discretion.
The closure of Istanbul Bilgi University on the same political night adds another layer to this broader pattern. The Erdoğan regime revoked the university’s operational license, effectively forcing it to shut down, after the institution had already been seized by the state through a criminal investigation the previous year. Under Decree-Law No. 667, 15 private and foundation universities were closed in July 2016. This pattern later continued with the closure of İstanbul Şehir University in 2020 and the revocation of İstanbul Bilgi University’s operating license on May 21, 2026, effectively bringing another major academic institution to an end.
This pattern demonstrates that university autonomy—like municipal autonomy, media autonomy, and party autonomy—has increasingly become conditional on executive tolerance rather than protected by constitutional guarantees. Universities, municipalities, opposition parties, media outlets, and civil society organizations all represent potential alternative centers of legitimacy. The current trajectory seeks not necessarily to abolish all of them outright, but to render their survival contingent upon executive tolerance.
The Constitutional Horizon: Erdoğan’s Problem of Time
The deeper strategic horizon concerns the presidency itself. Erdoğan’s rule faces a constitutional time problem. Current constitutional provisions limit the presidency to two terms, although scenarios involving early elections and constitutional reinterpretations have long been debated. Erdoğan’s coalition partner, Devlet Bahçeli, has already floated the possibility of a constitutional amendment that would allow Erdoğan to extend his tenure beyond the existing limits. In 2024, Bahçeli openly proposed such an amendment, while also acknowledging that Erdoğan would otherwise be serving his final term unless early elections were called.
This is precisely why the organizational integrity of the opposition matters so much. A unified CHP under Özgür Özel, with Ekrem İmamoğlu or Mansur Yavaş as credible national contenders, would constitute a serious obstacle to any attempt to redesign the constitutional calendar. By contrast, a fragmented CHP operating under sustained judicial pressure provides the ruling bloc with greater room for maneuver. Under such conditions, the government can call early elections when the opposition is weakened, pursue constitutional changes within an asymmetric political environment, or manufacture the appearance of pluralist consent through a domesticated opposition.
The objective is not necessarily to abolish elections altogether. It is to eliminate uncertainty. Turkey is increasingly moving toward a model of managed permanence: the ballot box remains, but the possibility of democratic alternation becomes structurally disabled.
External Complicity: Europe’s Dependency and Trumpian Transactionalism
The external environment has facilitated this authoritarian acceleration in Turkey. The European Union remains rhetorically committed to democracy and the rule of law, yet its leverage over Turkey has steadily weakened. The European Commission continues to define Turkey as a candidate country and an essential partner on issues such as climate policy, migration management, security, counterterrorism, and trade. CEPS has similarly arguedthat EU–Turkey relations increasingly expose the limits of transactionalism, noting that bilateral engagement now extends across energy security, foreign and security policy, trade, counterterrorism, and defense connectivity amid growing uncertainty in transatlantic relations.
This dependence produces a familiar European dilemma: democratic values are invoked rhetorically, but meaningful conditionality remains weak. The EU may express concern, but concern alone does not impose political cost. Turkey’s strategic role in migration control, NATO, Russia policy, Black Sea security, Middle Eastern diplomacy, and regional energy corridors has created an external environment that is increasingly permissive of democratic backsliding.
The United States under Trump adds another layer of transactional permissiveness to this environment. This does not necessarily mean that Washington explicitly endorses every domestic crackdown carried out by the Erdoğan government. It does, however, suggest that Erdoğan is increasingly able to exchange geopolitical utility for international normalization. The German Marshall Fund cited remarks by US Ambassador Tom Barrack in 2025 indicating that Trump wanted to give Erdoğan what he needed — “legitimacy” — within the framework of a more transactional and deal-oriented bilateral relationship.
This pattern is hardly new in American foreign policy. Across the Middle East and Latin America, Washington has often found authoritarian partners easier to manage than democratic societies. The rhetoric of democracy promotion has frequently coexisted with the practical support of rulers who provide security cooperation, military access, migration control, energy stability, or regional alignment. Turkey now appears to be increasingly drawn into this older geopolitical pattern: a strategically useful authoritarian partner whose domestic repression is treated as secondary to broader strategic bargaining.
The Political Economy of Repression
Authoritarian continuity also carries mounting economic costs. Every major judicial or administrative intervention against the opposition produces immediate financial repercussions. Following Ekrem İmamoğlu’s arrest in March 2025, the Turkish central bank reportedly sold roughly $50 billion in reserves and subsequently raised interest rates to 46 percent amid severe market turbulence. The EBRD similarly stated that the central bank sold more than $40 billion in foreign exchange during the weeks after İmamoğlu’s detention, reducing net reserves excluding swaps from above $60 billion to below $20 billion.
A similar pattern re-emerged following the CHP ruling. BIST 100 index fell sharply, while the Turkish lira reached a record low near 45.74 against the US dollar. Analysts warned that renewed political instability was once again undermining the currency at an already fragile moment. JPMorgan further projected that the central bank could be forced to raise interest rates from 37 percent to 40 percent in an attempt to stabilize the lira.
Inflation remains the clearest macroeconomic symptom of collapsing credibility. In April 2026, Turkey’s monthly inflation rate surged to 4.18 percent, while annual inflation reached 32.37 percent. By comparison, the OECD projects average headline inflation across the G20 at approximately 4.0 percent in 2026. Turkey’s inflation is therefore not merely above target; it stands several times higher than the broader G20 benchmark.
These cumulative distortions are also visible in Turkey’s growing decoupling from comparable emerging-market economies. Both inflation and the interest-rate premium required to sustain lira-denominated assets have risen far above emerging-market averages, making borrowing costs one of the clearest macroeconomic expressions of authoritarian-risk pricing.
Foreign direct investment also reflects the cost of institutional erosion. World Bank-based data show Turkey’s FDI net inflows at only 0.887 percent of GDP in 2024. For a G20-sized economy that claims to be a regional hub for production, logistics, energy, and finance, this is strikingly weak. Investors may still buy high-yield bonds or short-term assets, but a durable, productive investment requires legal predictability, property-rights protection, judicial neutrality, and confidence that political shocks will not suddenly destroy the investment environment
There are also signs that Turkey’s liquid external buffers have come under mounting pressure. Reporting based on US Treasury data indicated that Turkey’s holdings of US Treasury securities fell sharply in March 2026 as authorities sought to defend the lira, although such figures should be treated cautiously, since holdings are often routed through custodians and third countries.
The broader point, however, is unmistakable: political repression carries significant balance-sheet costs. It necessitates reserve sales, interest-rate hikes, credibility-restoration measures, and repeated interventions aimed at containing market panic. Turkey is therefore not experiencing a conventional emerging-market volatility cycle. It is paying a compounded authoritarian-risk premium.
Repression undermines confidence; weakened confidence places pressure on the lira; pressure on the lira forces reserve depletion or higher interest rates; elevated rates suppress growth and investment; deteriorating economic performance intensifies political anxiety; and that anxiety, in turn, generates further repression. This is the circular political economy of authoritarianism.
Conclusion: The Cost of Managed Permanence
Turkey’s crisis is no longer merely a crisis of democracy, nor solely a crisis of macroeconomic management. It has become a crisis of institutional credibility. The same political system that imprisons rivals, captures media institutions, weakens municipalities, subordinates the judiciary, and intimidates universities also generates persistent inflation, currency fragility, reserve depletion, heightened corruption risk, and declining long-term investment confidence.
The CHP ruling is therefore not simply a procedural dispute within a political party. It is a constitutional event. It signals that the regime is prepared to intervene directly in the organizational structure of the main opposition party in order to reshape the political field ahead of the next presidential contest. The intended outcome is increasingly clear: Erdoğan should not confront a united, administratively capable, and electorally confident opposition at the precise moment when his own constitutional future becomes uncertain.
The irony is that this strategy may stabilize the regime in the short term while simultaneously deepening Turkey’s long-term fragility. No country can indefinitely finance authoritarian control through reserve depletion, high interest rates, coercive legality, and transactional diplomacy. The more the regime suppresses political competition, the more costly economic stabilization becomes. The more it seeks external legitimacy, the more sovereignty it implicitly trades away. And the more it attempts to manufacture a controlled opposition, the more clearly it reveals that genuine electoral competition has become the central threat to its survival.
Turkey’s crisis, therefore, is not only about Erdoğan, the CHP, İmamoğlu, Özel, Kılıçdaroğlu, or even the 2028 election itself. It is about whether a country with a long electoral tradition will gradually be reduced to a system of formal voting without meaningful democratic alternation. The answer will depend not only on domestic resistance, but also on whether Europe and the United States continue treating Turkey’s authoritarian consolidation as an acceptable price for strategic convenience.
In this piece, Dr. João Ferreira Dias examines how the Israeli–Palestinian conflict has increasingly been transformed within Europe into a broader struggle over identity, immigration, Islam, nationalism, and political belonging. Focusing on Nakba Day mobilizations in London, Dr. Dias argues that Gaza now functions as a symbolic battlefield onto which competing ideological camps project their anxieties, fears, and moral claims. For parts of the progressive left, Palestine represents anti-colonial resistance and counter-hegemonic struggle; for the radical populist right, it reinforces narratives of Islamization, multicultural crisis, and civilizational decline. The article ultimately warns that when international conflicts are absorbed into domestic culture wars, liberal democracy itself becomes increasingly polarized, emotionally charged, and politically fragile.
On May 16, 2016, London became the stage of a culture war made material, as pro-Palestinian demonstrations and anti-Muslim, anti-immigration mobilizations occupied the same symbolic and physical space. Nakba Day thus became more than a moment of historical remembrance: it fueled social, ideological, and affective polarization.
One may discuss the historical, legal, geopolitical, religious, and humanitarian dimensions of Gaza and the wider Middle East: the long dispute over land, identity, sovereignty, security, and regional spheres of influence. Yet in Western societies, especially in Europe, the Israeli-Palestinian question is increasingly translated into a different grammar: left versus right, oppressor versus oppressed, civilization versus threat, emancipation versus replacement.
For much of the radical and progressive left, the Palestinian cause has become part of a Gramscian counter-hegemonic struggle on behalf of the “silenced voices of the oppressed.” In this framework, Palestine operates as a symbolic capsule of progressivism, anti-colonialism, and resistance, while Israel is cast as the embodiment of the great oppressor: capitalism, colonialism, militarism, and Western domination.
For ultraconservative movements, and especially for the radical populist right, this is precisely the “woke” and “leftist” narrative they claim to be fighting. In their reading, multiculturalism is not a liberal framework for coexistence, but a Trojan horse for Islamization, Sharia, and the so-called “great replacement” of Western societies. The argument is blunt: the left lost its traditional voters and is now replacing them with immigrants, especially Muslims — its new “proletariat.”
This is where the Israeli-Palestinian conflict ceases to be merely an international crisis and becomes an internal struggle over the moral boundaries of the political community. Gaza becomes a mirror. Each side does not only see the Middle East; it sees itself, its enemies, and the future it fears.
The real battle, therefore, is not only over territory, sovereignty, or security. It is over narrative. Who is the victim? Who is the oppressor? Who speaks for humanity? Who threatens civilization? And, above all, who has the authority to define the moral meaning of the conflict?
Liberal democracy is weakened when every external conflict is immediately absorbed into domestic identity wars. The tragedy of Gaza becomes, in Europe, a proxy battlefield for unresolved anxieties about immigration, Islam, colonial memory, antisemitism, multiculturalism, and national decline. The more each side claims moral purity, the less space remains for political judgement.
This commentary examines Hungary’s 2026 political rupture through the paradox of Péter Magyar: a former Fidesz insider now positioned as the possible dismantler of Orbánism. Rather than romanticizing the defeat of Viktor Orbán as automatic democratic restoration, Professor İbrahim Öztürk situates Hungary alongside the US, Brazil, and Poland to show that authoritarian-populist systems often survive electoral defeat through media ecosystems, patronage networks, institutional residues, and polarized identities. Magyar’s supermajority creates a rare “Cincinnatus moment”: he can either rebuild pluralist institutions or reproduce Orbán’s majoritarian methods under a pro-European vocabulary. The commentary argues that Hungary’s democratic opening is real but fragile, and that its future depends on institutional restraint, EU conditionality, civic vigilance, and genuine democratic reconstruction.
Péter Magyar’s Tisza Party ended Orbán’s sixteen-year rule in the April 12, 2026, parliamentary election and, after the final count, secured 141 of the 199 seats in Hungary’s National Assembly—comfortably above the two-thirds threshold required for constitutional change. As a result, Viktor Orbán’s regime, carefully constructed since 2010 and ideologically legitimized under the banner of “illiberal democracy,” has for the first time been seriously shaken by a figure produced within its own political architecture. Such a political rupture cannot be reduced to an ordinary electoral defeat or a conventional alternation of power.
Although Hungary is relatively small in population, economic weight, and geopolitical scale, Orbán’s era in power has become one of the most visible laboratories of authoritarian populism in Europe. Even more damaging than Hungary’s domestic democratic regression was the corrosive perception it created: Hungary is in permanent conflict with Brussels over the rule of law, media freedom, migration, Ukraine, Russia, and EU funds. In 2022, the European Parliament declared that Hungary could no longer be considered a full democracy, describing it instead as an “electoral autocracy” resulting from the government’s deliberate and systematic efforts to undermine European values. As a result, the message was that the European Union could no longer serve as a reliable democratic anchor, even for its own members.
Yet Péter Magyar’s rise should not be romanticized as a straightforward victory of democratic opposition. Tisza’s electoral landslide undoubtedly reflected accumulated fatigue with Orbánism: economic stagnation, perceptions of endemic corruption, deteriorating relations with Europe, and growing frustration with the cartel-like fusion of party, state, media, and oligarchic capital. But the bearer of this anti-Orbán moment is not a pristine liberal democrat emerging from civil society. Magyar is a product of the Fidesz world itself: someone who knows the regime’s language, networks, reflexes, vulnerabilities, and internal codes.
Hungary’s paradox lies precisely here. The first actor capable of breaking the Orbán system did not come from outside it but from within. The possibility of dismantling a hybrid-authoritarian regime has emerged not through a “clean” outsider but through an insider who understands the machinery of power because he was once close to it. This is both promising and dangerous. It is promising because authoritarian systems often fracture when insiders defect. It is dangerous because those who know how such systems work may also be tempted to reproduce their techniques under a new moral vocabulary.
For this reason, Hungary should be read not merely as a national case of regime change but as a broader laboratory for understanding the contemporary democratic crisis. As emphasized at the ECPS Fifth Annual International Symposium on “Reforming and Safeguarding Liberal Democracy: Systemic Crises, Populism, and Democratic Resilience,” (Hereafter, ECPS Symposium), the crisis of democracy today cannot be understood through a single discipline, region, or causal factor. It is political, institutional, ideological, economic, technological, and geopolitical. The ECPS symposium report likewise frames the contemporary crisis of liberal democracy in terms of systemic pressures, populist mobilization, institutional erosion, and democratic resilience. Hungary concentrates all of these dynamics into a single case: electoral competition, media capture, judicial dependence, party-state fusion, EU conditionality, nationalist-populist discourse, and the unresolved problem of post-authoritarian reconstruction.
The Orbán Regime: From State Capture to Party-State Fusion
Former Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban.
Understanding Magyar’s challenge requires understanding the nature of the regime he inherits. Orbán’s Hungary was not a classical military dictatorship. Elections continued. Opposition parties were not formally banned. Courts existed. Parliament functioned. Civil society survived, though under pressure. Yet the substantive capacity of these institutions to promote fair competition, constrain power, protect the rule of law from political influence, and sustain pluralism was steadily weakened.
Hungary became one of the most instructive examples of contemporary authoritarianization. Elections took place, but the electoral field was tilted. Media existed, but large parts of it were controlled by government-friendly capital and state resources. Courts remained, but key appointments increasingly reflected political loyalty. Universities, foundations, media councils, prosecution offices, regulatory bodies, and constitutional institutions continued to exist formally, but their internal logic was increasingly subordinated to the party-state.
The House of Commons Library notes that Orbán held power from 2010 until 2026 and was widely criticized by domestic opponents and international bodies for moving Hungary in an authoritarian direction. It also recalls Orbán’s own 2014 declaration that his government was building an “illiberal” state and emphasizes that Fidesz’s long-standing two-thirds majority enabled far-reaching constitutional changes that repeatedly brought Hungary into conflict with the EU.
This illustrates one of the broader mechanisms highlighted at the ECPS symposium: democratic erosion does not proceed only through electoral manipulation. It advances through the transformation of political language, the weakening of judicial authority, the loss of neutrality in public institutions, the narrowing of media pluralism, and the reshaping of civic imagination. Orbánism, in this sense, was never merely a governing style. It was an attempt to reorganize the state, society, and public reason around a durable nationalist-populist order.
This architecture was also designed to survive electoral defeat. Long-term appointments in the prosecution service, constitutional court, media authorities, university foundations, public companies, and regulatory bodies created a state structure capable of resisting a new government. In such a system, winning an election does not mean automatically taking control of the state. It opens the first gate; the deeper struggle begins inside the bureaucracy, the judiciary, public finance, and media infrastructure.
Magyar’s victory is therefore not an endpoint but the beginning of a difficult transition. Orbán may have lost office, but the institutional residues of Orbánism—its economic networks, media ecology, bureaucratic habits, legal traps, and cultural reflexes—are likely to persist. The crucial question is whether Magyar will dismantle these structures or make them more usable for himself. Before focusing directly on Magyar, a comparative perspective would provide further insight into the personality, ideology, and experience of the leadership that might lead to the transformation of power.
Comparative Lessons: Trump, Lula, Tusk, and the Difficult Art of Defeating Authoritarian Populists
Hungary can only be properly understood through comparative and historical analysis. As the ECPS Symposium emphasized, populism and democratic backsliding do not take identical forms everywhere. Yet across cases, recurring mechanisms can be identified: humiliation, polarization, institutional weakening, executive aggrandizement, cultural backlash, strategic disinformation, and the political exploitation of uncertainty. Reading Hungary alongside the United States, Brazil, and Poland helps clarify not only how authoritarian-populist incumbents can be defeated, but also why democratic restoration remains fragile after electoral victory.
In the ideal world of democratic theory, one might expect a principled, pluralistic, and untainted civil-society leader to rise against an “authoritarizing” regime. Real politics rarely works that way. Where media space has been captured, opposition actors have been criminalized, electoral rules tilted, and public resources converted into partisan instruments, a “clean” outsider may never effectively reach the electorate. The European Parliament’s 2022 finding that Hungary had become a “hybrid regime of electoral autocracy” captures precisely this kind of distorted competitive environment.
Hungary’s 2022 opposition experiment around Péter Márki-Zay is instructive in this respect. The Guardian describedMárki-Zay as a conservative outsider backed by a broad opposition alliance to challenge Orbán. Yet he was rapidly damaged by Orbán’s media and propaganda apparatus. The lesson was blunt: in a captured information environment, a plausible candidate is not enough. The opposition must also find a way to penetrate the regime’s communicative architecture.
Magyar’s rise did precisely that, though not because it was the product of a carefully designed opposition strategy. It resembled an unexpected explosion from within the regime’s own crisis. His “surprise candidate” effect rested on two sources of credibility. First, insider testimony carries a distinctive political force. Corruption allegations repeated for years by Hungary’s opposition had limited impact on Fidesz voters; similar accusations voiced by a former insider produced a different kind of rupture. Second, Magyar escaped the exhaustion associated with the traditional opposition. He appeared outside its record of fragmentation, ideological baggage, and repeated failure.
This suggests a broader pattern: authoritarian-populist regimes are rarely defeated by pristine figures alone. Success often requires three conditions: a broad democratic front, a credible figure capable of puncturing the incumbent’s information monopoly, and a pragmatic promise of transition that reduces voter fear.
The US: The Return of Trump and the Failure of Liberal Restoration
Trump supporters marched toward Capitol Hill on January 6, 2021, in Washington, D.C., USA. Photo: Dreamstime / Bgrocker
The United States offers the most important first comparison because it shows that defeating an authoritarian-populist leader at the ballot box does not necessarily defeat the political formation he has created. Donald Trump lost the presidency in 2020, but Trumpism did not disappear. It survived as a mass political identity, a media ecosystem, a party-capturing force, and a movement built around resentment, grievance, distrust of institutions, and the claim that the system had been stolen by hostile elites.
The trauma of January 6, 2021, seemed at the time to mark a possible rupture. The Final Reportof the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack described a sustained effort to overturn the 2020 election result and placed Trump at the center of that campaign. Yet the institutional reckoning remained incomplete. The Republican Party did not decisively break with Trump; conservative media did not abandon the stolen-election narrative; and the broader social grievances that sustained Trumpism were neither politically absorbed nor materially addressed.
This is why Trump’s return in 2024 is so analytically important. The National Archives’ official Electoral Collegeresults recorded Trump’s victory over Kamala Harris by 312 electoral votes to 226, while AP described his victory as a remarkable political comeback rooted in appeals to frustrated voters. His second inauguration as the 47th president on January 20, 2025, confirmed not merely a Republican electoral victory but the return of a populist movement that many had prematurely assumed would be exhausted after 2020.
The American case, therefore, reveals a central post-populist trap. Joe Biden’s presidency defeated Trump electorally in 2020, restored a measure of institutional normality, and defended NATO, administrative professionalism, and democratic procedure. But it did not fundamentally transform the socioeconomic, cultural, and institutional conditions that had produced Trumpism in the first place: regional decline, working-class insecurity, border anxiety, distrust of expertise, racial and cultural backlash, media fragmentation, and the perception that liberal institutions served insulated elites rather than ordinary citizens.
In this sense, Trump’s comeback was not only a personal return. It was the revenge of an unresolved political formation. The Brennan Center’s analysis of Project 2025 warned that the conservative governing blueprint associated with Trump’s return aimed at a major expansion of executive power. The Carnegie Endowment’s comparative analysis of US democratic backsliding similarly situates the second Trump presidency within a wider global pattern of democratic erosion, comparing developments in the United States with cases such as Hungary, India, Poland, and Turkey.
Trump’s comeback shows that authoritarian populism is not merely a government; it is an ecosystem. It can survive defeat through party capture, alternative media, loyal courts, donor networks, grievance politics, and a disciplined narrative of betrayal. Unless the post-populist government delivers visible reform and democratic renewal, the defeated populist can return as the voice of unfinished revenge.
The American case also sharpens the central dilemma of reform. If democratic successors move too cautiously, they appear weak and irrelevant. If they move too aggressively, they may be accused of weaponizing institutions and confirming the populist claim of elite persecution. Biden’s difficulty was precisely this: restoring procedural normality was not enough to rebuild democratic confidence. Voters who experience insecurity, disorder, or decline do not reward the process alone. They demand protection, direction, and visible change.
Brazil: Lula’s Broad Coalition and the Survival of Bolsonarism
Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva walks among supporters on Augusta Street at São Paulo on the eve of the brazillian election on October 1, 2022. Photo: Yuri Murakami.
Brazil’s 2022 election offers a second powerful comparison. Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva was not a new or immaculate candidate. He was a former two-term president, a deeply polarizing figure, and someone who had been imprisoned on corruption charges later annulled on procedural and judicial impartiality grounds. Yet he proved to be the most effective candidate against Jair Bolsonaro, a radical right-wing populist who attacked institutions, questioned the electoral system, and polarized society. AP described Lula’s victory as an extremely tight election that marked an about-face after four years of far-right politics.
Lula’s success rested on strategic coalition-building rather than ideological purity. By choosing Geraldo Alckmin, a former center-right rival, as his running mate, he reassured markets, moderates, conservative voters, and institutional actors. The contest was thereby reframed not as a conventional left-right struggle, but as a choice between Bolsonaro’s destabilizing authoritarian populism and democratic normalization.
Lula also benefited from powerful social memory. For millions of poorer voters, workers, trade unionists, northeastern Brazilians, and beneficiaries of earlier social programs, he was associated not merely with ideology but with concrete improvements in living standards. Just as importantly, Brazil’s electoral institutions held firm against Bolsonaro’s efforts to delegitimize the result. Bolsonaro delayed full acceptance, but the institutional outcome held; The Guardian reportedthat Bolsonaro broke his silence without conceding, while his chief of staff indicated that the transition process would begin.
As I argued in an earlier article,Lula’s return should not be read merely as the return of the left. It represented a broad coalition for democratic normalization: workers, poorer voters, environmental constituencies, institutional actors, moderates, and democracy-minded conservatives converging around a minimum democratic agenda. In a former commentary at the ECPS, I further argued that the decisive question in confronting authoritarian populists is not simply whether the incumbent has produced economic crisis, corruption, or institutional decay. It is whether the opposition can construct a credible, governable, and inclusive alternative in the eyes of voters.
The lesson for Hungary is clear. Authoritarian-populist regimes are not always defeated by flawless candidates. Sometimes they are defeated by figures who can reassure broad social blocs, understand how the state works, and pierce the regime’s information monopoly. Lula did this through historical legitimacy and social memory. Magyar has done it through insider credibility. Yet the difference is equally important: Lula was the carrier of a long political movement, party tradition, and social program; Magyar still leads a movement largely organized around his person, with limited ideological and institutional depth.
Lula’s example, therefore, offers both hope and a warning. It shows that authoritarian populists can be defeated at the ballot box and that broad democratic fronts still matter. But it also shows that defeating authoritarian populism does not automatically eliminate its social base, media networks, economic interests, or institutional residues. Bolsonaro lost, but Bolsonarism survived. AP’s reporton Brazil’s Congress overriding Lula’s veto of a bill reducing Bolsonaro’s coup-related sentence demonstrates the Bolsonaro camp’s continuing institutional and political resilience.
Poland: Democratic Restoration in a Minefield
President-elect Karol Nawrocki campaigning ahead of Poland’s 2025 presidential election in Łódź, Poland, on April 27, 2024. Photo: Tomasz Warszewski.
Poland offers a third instructive case, but it should not be read as a simple story of populist defeat followed by democratic restoration. The last five years reveal a more uneven trajectory: PiS retained the presidency in 2020, lost its ability to govern in 2023, continued to shape the reform environment through institutional legacies, and regained strategic leverage through the 2025 presidential election.
The starting point matters. Poland’s presidential archive records that Andrzej Duda was re-elected in 2020 with 51.03 percent of the vote, keeping the presidency in the hands of a PiS-aligned figure and preserving a powerful veto point inside the Polish political system. This mattered greatly after the 2023 parliamentary election. Although PiS won the largest share of the vote, Freedom House notes that it secured only 194 Sejm seats, while Civic Coalition, Third Way, and The Left won a combined 248 seats and formed a governing majority. Freedom House also emphasizes that turnout reached 74.3 percent, the highest since 1989, signaling not only anti-PiS mobilization but also a powerful democratic re-engagement by Polish society.
Donald Tusk’s return to power in December 2023, therefore, ended eight years of PiS-led nationalist-populist rule, but it did not amount to a clean institutional break. Tusk was not a new civil-society outsider; he was a former prime minister and former president of the European Council. His strength lay not in novelty but in governability, experience, international credibility, and coalition-building.
The Polish case shows that opposition forces do not always need to merge into a single ideological bloc. Tusk’s Civic Coalition, Third Way, and The Left preserved distinct identities while mobilizing different constituencies: urban liberals, moderate conservatives, agrarian centrists, young voters, women, and citizens concerned with the rule of law. This flexible democratic majority proved more effective than forced ideological homogenization. For Hungary, this is a crucial point: defeating authoritarian populism may require not a single purified opposition identity, but a broad, strategically plural coalition capable of reassuring different social blocs.
Yet Poland also reveals the fragility of democratic restoration after victory. Tusk’s government moved quickly to repair relations with the EU. The European Commission’s February 2024 decision paved the way for Poland to access up to €137 billion in EU funding, citing rule-of-law reforms and immediate steps toward strengthening judicial independence. But the domestic process of institutional repair proved far more difficult. President Duda, still aligned with PiS, remained able to block key reforms and frustrate the government’s efforts to reverse the institutional legacy of the previous era.
The public media crisis illustrated the dilemma sharply. Tusk’s government argued that it was restoring impartiality after years of PiS control over state media. Critics, however, claimed that the government was stretching legal procedures. AP reported that Duda vetoed a spending bill that included 3 billion zlotys for public media, turning media reform into an early constitutional and political confrontation. Poland thus became a real-time laboratory of the central post-populist dilemma: how can a new democratic government undo politicized institutions without itself appearing to politicize them further?
The 2025 presidential election then exposed the limits of Tusk’s restoration project. Le Monde reported that Karol Nawrocki, backed by PiS, narrowly defeated Tusk’s ally Rafał Trzaskowski by 50.89 percent to 49.11 percent. This did not remove Tusk from government, but it weakened his coalition politically and gave the populist right a renewed institutional platform. AP’s assessmentof Nawrocki’s victory underlined that Tusk’s multiparty coalition now faced serious questions about its capacity to survive and pursue reform under a president with veto power. In the Financial Times, Jarosław Kuisz similarly argued that Nawrocki’s win reflected not only PiS’s resilience but also Tusk’s own errors, poor management of expectations, and the danger of liberal complacency after electoral victory.
Poland, therefore, offers Hungary both encouragement and warning. It shows that nationalist-populist governments can be removed from office despite media bias, state resources, polarization, and institutional asymmetry. But it also shows that electoral victory does not dissolve the old regime’s social base, cultural influence, presidential veto points, or judicial and media legacies. Democratic restoration survives only if it produces tangible results, preserves public trust, and neutralizes the populist claim that “nothing has changed.”
For Hungary, the comparison is sobering. If Magyar wins the state but fails to deliver visible institutional and social repair, Fidesz may retain or rebuild its political force from outside government, much as PiS did after 2023. Conversely, if Magyar moves too aggressively against captured institutions, he may reproduce the very majoritarian logic he claims to overcome. Poland’s last five years, therefore, sharpen the central lesson of this article: defeating authoritarian populism is only the first stage; the harder task is governing the transition without either paralysis or overreach.
Europe’s Wider Crisis of Liberal-Democratic Governability
Row of EU Flags in front of the European Union Commission building in Brussels. Photo: VanderWolf Images.
This problem is not confined to countries emerging directly from authoritarian-populist rule. The faltering performance of Emmanuel Macron’s Renaissance-led centrist presidency in France, Keir Starmer’s Labor government in the United Kingdom, and Friedrich Merz’s CDU/CSU–SPD grand coalition in Germany suggests that Europe faces a broader crisis of liberal-democratic governability. In Britain, YouGov’s April 2026 voting-intention poll showed Reform UK leading on 26 percent, ahead of both Conservatives and Labor. In Germany, PolitPro’s poll trend showed the AfD ahead of the CDU/CSU in early May 2026. In France, The Guardian’sassessmentof the 2027 race framed the crowded anti–National Rally field as a potential gift to Jordan Bardella and the far right.
The difficulty is no longer simply that authoritarian-populist actors are hard to defeat, or that their institutional legacies are hard to dismantle once defeated. The deeper problem is that liberal-centrist governments, even when they reach office, often fail to address the underlying structures that generate resentment: stagnant living standards, insecure work, housing shortages, deindustrialization, bureaucratic sclerosis, regional abandonment, elite insulation, and the perception that public authority no longer protects ordinary citizens. The Draghi report on European competitiveness makes a related structural point: Europe faces slowing productivity, demographic challenges, rising energy costs, global competition, and the need for unprecedented investment, yet EU decision-making remains slow, fragmented, and difficult to coordinate at scale.
They promise competent management after populist chaos, but competence without transformation quickly becomes another name for managed decline. This is why defeated or marginalized populists often regain momentum: they can present liberal restoration as the return of the same establishment that produced the crisis in the first place. In this sense, the post-populist trap is circular. Populists are difficult to defeat; their legacies are difficult to undo; and when their successors fail to deliver visible reform, they help rebuild the emotional and political conditions for the next populist surge.
These Cases Suggest Three Lessons for Hungary
First, authoritarian-populist regimes are often defeated not by morally pure outsiders but by pragmatic figures capable of building broad alliances. Trump’s return shows what happens when a defeated populist movement is not structurally dislodged; Lula shows how broad democratic normalization can defeat an incumbent populist; Tusk shows the value and limits of experienced coalition-building; and Magyar represents the risky but potentially effective figure of the regime insider turned challenger. Their legitimacy does not derive from purity, but from their ability to connect with constituencies that traditional opposition forces could not reach.
Second, electoral victory requires breaking information blockades. Lula did so through social memory and organized constituencies; Tusk through the mobilization of plural opposition; and Magyar through the credibility of insider defection. Trump’s return, however, shows the reverse side of the same lesson: if the populist media ecosystem and grievance machine remain intact after defeat, they can convert loss into martyrdom and return to power with even greater determination.
Third, the defeat of an authoritarian-populist leader is not the end of authoritarian-populist politics. Trump lost in 2020 but returned in 2024. Bolsonaro lost, but Bolsonarism survived. PiS left the government but remained institutionally and socially powerful. Hungary is likely to face a similar pattern: Orbán’s defeat will not automatically dissolve Orbánism.
The synthesis is therefore sobering. Democratic breakthroughs in hybrid regimes often emerge from morally ambiguous conditions: insider defections, imperfect candidates, broad but uneasy coalitions, and pragmatic compromises. These are not defects of democratic transition; they are often its real-world preconditions. But they also explain why transition moments are so unstable. The very actors capable of defeating an authoritarian-populist regime may lack the ideological clarity, institutional depth, or self-limiting discipline needed to rebuild democracy.
This comparative frame helps assess Magyar more realistically. His lack of purity does not doom him. On the contrary, his insider background may have enabled him to break Fidesz’s information monopoly in a way Hungary’s traditional opposition could not. But the same background makes skepticism legitimate. The democratic meaning of his victory will not be determined by the fact that Orbán lost, nor by Magyar’s current pro-European language. It will be determined by what follows: whether he dismantles authoritarian infrastructures or repurposes them; whether he builds institutions or concentrates authority; whether he transforms anti-Orbán momentum into democratic pluralism or into a new form of leader-centered politics.
In that sense, the comparative lesson is clear: elections can open the door to democratic renewal, but they do not walk through it on their own. The decisive struggle begins after victory, when the new leadership must choose between restoration and replacement, between institutionalization and personalization, between dismantling authoritarianism and inheriting its tools.
Magyar’s ‘Cincinnatus Moment’: Three Possible Paths After Orbán
Tisza Party volunteer collecting signatures in Mosonmagyaróvár, Hungary on June 5, 2024 during a nationwide campaign tour ahead of the European Parliament elections. Photo: Sarkadi Roland / Dreamstime.
Péter Magyar’s premiership begins with a classical democratic dilemma: can a leader who receives extraordinary power to rescue damaged institutions later restrain himself and return authority to those very institutions? This is the Cincinnatus question. In the Roman republican myth, Cincinnatus accepts emergency authority to save the republic but relinquishes it once the crisis is over. The moral force of the story lies not in the acquisition of power, but in the discipline to give it up.
Magyar now faces a comparable test. Tisza’s parliamentary supermajority gives him the capacity to reverse key Orbán-era legal arrangements, pursue anti-corruption measures, and redesign Hungary’s constitutional order. After the final count, Tisza secured 141 of the 199 parliamentary seats, giving Magyar a two-thirds majority capable of effecting constitutional change. Yet the same majority could become a vehicle for new majoritarian dominance if used without restraint. The central question, therefore, is not simply whether Magyar can defeat Orbánism, but whether he can dismantle it without reproducing its political logic.
This question is sharpened by Magyar’s origins. He is not an idealistic liberal democrat who emerged from outside Orbán’s system. He came from the center, not the margins, of the Fidesz universe. His former marriage to Judit Varga, Orbán’s former justice minister, his connections to governing elites, and his proximity to state-linked positions place him in a different category from Hungary’s traditional opposition figures. Magyar has been characterized as a figure once inspired by Orbán who broke with the ruling bloc after the 2024 pardon scandal and rapidly became the leader of the pro-European, center-right Tisza movement.
That scandal was the decisive rupture. The 2024 presidential pardon controversy involving a child-abuse cover-up forced President Katalin Novák’s resignation and ended Varga’s frontline political career. The Guardian describedNovák’s resignation as an unusual and serious setback for Orbán’s ruling party. The episode pierced Fidesz’s moral armor: a political project that had long justified itself through the language of family, Christianity, national protection, and conservative values suddenly appeared hypocritical even to parts of its own milieu. It also gave Magyar the opening to convert insider knowledge into political rupture.
A past inside the ruling bloc does not automatically disqualify a politician from contributing to democratic transformation. Many regime transitions begin when elites within the regime defect, split, or turn against one another. Internal rupture is often the beginning of authoritarian collapse. Yet Magyar’s trajectory still requires caution. His break appears to have been driven less by a long-standing ideological conversion to liberal democracy than by Fidesz’s handling of its own crisis, especially the political sacrifice of Varga. Put differently, Magyar did not leave when the system functioned smoothly for him; he left when its costs reached his own inner circle.
This does not make him illegitimate. It does, however, clarify the risk. Personal grievance, whistleblowing, and revenge can destabilize authoritarian power in the short run. They cannot, by themselves, supply the patience, restraint, institutional imagination, and legal discipline required for democratic reconstruction.
Magyar’s strength and weakness are therefore inseparable: he understands the Orbán system from within. He knows its corruption networks, propaganda techniques, loyalty chains, legal engineering, and bureaucratic traps. This knowledge allowed him to make visible what Hungary’s traditional opposition had long diagnosed but struggled to communicate persuasively. Yet it also raises the transition’s most important second-order question: will Magyar dismantle the machinery of Orbánism, or merely redirect it toward new ends?
The ideological thinness of Tisza makes this question more urgent. Magyar’s current rhetoric centers on European standards, transparency, judicial independence, media freedom, anti-corruption, and the rule of law. A recent Al Jazeera reportshowsthat he vowed to overhaul state media and urged the pro-Orbán president to resign, while Euronews reported that he promised to join the European Public Prosecutor’s Office to investigate the misuse of EU funds. These commitments are essential to Hungary’s democratic renewal. The harder question is whether they are deeply internalized principles or simply the most effective instruments for defeating Orbánism.
Democratic language does not always produce democratic character. As the Turkish case under Recep Tayyip Erdoğan illustrates, movements that rise against old authoritarian or oligarchic orders may deploy democracy as a language of transition, only to build their own centralized power structures once in office. When charismatic leadership, weak party institutionalization, and a “mission to dismantle the system” converge, democratic restoration can slide into a new personalist regime.
Tisza’s rapid ascent deepens this danger. The party gathered anti-Orbán energy with extraordinary speed, but it remains ideologically and institutionally shallow. A block from the LSE’s Zsófia Barta and Jan Rovny argue that Tisza’s victory opens a historic opportunity while leaving major questions about how the party will govern after such a rapid rise. Magyar’s political image can be read as a promise of a “corruption-free Fidesz,” a cleaner center-right alternative, or a pro-European Hungarian nationalism. That may be enough to defeat Orbánism electorally; it is not enough to reconstruct democracy.
Hungary needs more than a change of rulers. It requires the separation of state from ruling party, media from political capital, courts from partisan loyalty, public procurement from oligarchic networks, and national identity from executive domination. The European Parliament’s 2022 assessment that Hungary had become a “hybrid regime of electoral autocracy” points to the depth of institutional distortion Magyar must now confront.
The danger is that institutional repair may require pressure on institutions already hollowed out by partisan capture. A post-Orbán government cannot simply leave Fidesz-era appointees untouched if they are positioned to obstruct reform from day one. Yet if it intervenes too aggressively, democratic restoration may begin to resemble a political purge. Le Monde reported that Magyar said his government would legislate to remove President Tamás Sulyok if he did not resign—an episode that captures the tension between institutional repair and institutional pressure. The task is not merely to act decisively, but to transform emergency authority into durable constitutional restraint.
Three broad paths now stand before Magyar.
The first is democratic restoration. On this path, Magyar uses his supermajority to rebuild the rule of law, restore judicial independence, pluralize the media, make public procurement transparent, dismantle oligarchic networks, and redesign the constitutional order along pluralist lines. He investigates the abuses of the old regime without turning accountability into revenge. Most importantly, he transfers political energy away from his own leadership and into institutions capable of constraining future governments, including his own. In this scenario, Magyar becomes a transitional leader rather than a new founding father. The Center for European Reform describes Orbán’s departure as a unique but time-limited opportunity to restore democracy and strengthen Europe, capturing both the promise and urgency of this path.
The second is controlled center-right normalization. Here, the crudest forms of Orbán-era corruption and propaganda are reduced; relations with the EU improve; some frozen funds are released; economic management becomes more predictable; and Hungary moves away from open confrontation with Brussels. Yet the deeper structures of centralized power remain largely intact. The media becomes less brutal but not genuinely pluralistic; public procurement becomes less scandalous but not fully transparent; courts become less openly politicized but not truly independent. Hungary exits hard Orbánism without achieving deep democratization. Magyar’s talkswith Ursula von der Leyen over frozen EU funds illustrate both the opportunity and risk of this scenario: EU relations may normalize quickly while domestic transformation remains shallower than the rhetoric suggests.
The third is a new leader-centered regime. In this scenario, Magyar begins by promising to dismantle Orbánism but gradually recentralizes authority around himself. Fidesz loyalists are replaced by Tisza loyalists. Media pluralism gives way to a new communication apparatus. Judicial independence is invoked rhetorically while new forms of political influence emerge. Anti-corruption becomes selective. The language changes from illiberal nationalism to Europeanized renewal, but the political technology remains familiar: personalization of power, control over institutions, and the fusion of national destiny with the leader’s project. TheGuardian’s reporton Orbán-linked wealth networks shows why dismantling the old order will require confronting entrenched economic power; the danger is that such confrontation becomes selective redistribution rather than genuine institutional cleansing.
It is too early to know which path Magyar will follow. His promises are encouraging, and Hungary now has a rare opportunity to reverse democratic decline. Yet his past, personal style, ideological ambiguity, and Tisza’s institutional thinness demand caution. The real test is not whether Magyar speaks the language of Europe, transparency, and the rule of law. The test is whether he can build institutions strong enough to limit himself.
As the ECPS Symposium states, democratic erosion is not destiny, but democratic resilience is neither automatic nor linear. It survives in institutions that resist capture, civil societies that continue to mobilize, scholarship that clarifies rather than obscures, and public debate that refuses fear, simplification, and authoritarian temptation.
Magyar’s Cincinnatus moment has therefore arrived. The question is not whether he can use power to defeat the remnants of Orbánism. The question is whether; after using that power, he will have the discipline to limit it.
Lessons for Europe: Institutions, Not Personalities
Flags of Hungary and the European Union displayed together in Budapest. Hungary has been an EU member since 2004. Photo: Jerome Cid / Dreamstime
Magyar’s victory creates a major opportunity for the European Union. Orbán’s government had spent years in conflict with Brussels over the rule of law, media freedom, migration, Ukraine, Russia, and EU funds. Magyar’s post-election talks with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen focused on the release of frozen EU funds, including recovery funds blocked over rule-of-law concerns. Magyar described the talks as constructive, while the Commission emphasized anti-corruption and rule-of-law measures.
But the EU must be careful. If Brussels rushes to declare that “Hungary has returned to democracy,” it will repeat an old mistake: personalizing democratization and losing leverage over institutional reform. The EU’s priority should not be Magyar as a personality but Hungary as a constitutional order. Pro-European rhetoric should not be enough. The release of funds should remain tied to concrete, measurable, reversible reforms: judicial independence, public procurement transparency, anti-corruption enforcement, media pluralism, and institutional accountability.
This approach reflects a broader lesson from the ECPS symposium: in difficult times, serious scholarship and public debate are not luxuries; they are components of democratic defense. Europe’s engagement with Hungary should be grounded not in sympathy, geopolitical relief, or the emotional satisfaction of Orbán’s defeat, but in institutional verification. Otherwise, the language of “return to democracy” may become another illusion, substituting rhetoric for reform.
Hungary’s democratization will not be completed by Orbán’s defeat. The real question is how much of Orbán’s system can be dismantled and what kind of constitutional architecture replaces it. Europe’s approach to Magyar should therefore be neither romantic embrace nor cynical distance. The right posture is conditional support and institutional scrutiny.
Conclusion
Hungary’s historical threshold lies between the ideal and the possible. Péter Magyar is not a Scandinavian-style institutional democrat: calm, ideologically coherent, and unburdened by proximity to the old order. He is better understood as a pragmatic, charismatic, partly populist transition figure who knows the authoritarian system from the inside and can use its vulnerabilities against it.
This does not diminish his significance. But it makes his sanctification dangerous. Magyar is an opportunity, not a guarantee. He may accelerate the collapse of the Orbán system; he may not become the architect of liberal-democratic reconstruction. Hungary’s real test did not end on election night. It began there. The ballot box has weakened an authoritarian regime, but power networks, media monopolies, oligarchic interests, and judicial-bureaucratic linkages remain entrenched. Magyar’s historical role will be judged by whether he dismantles these structures and limits his own power.
If he uses his two-thirds majority not for a new majoritarian domination but to distribute power, autonomize institutions, and place law above politics, Hungary may enter a genuinely new democratic phase. If he reproduces Orbán’s methods under a different moral justification, Hungary’s story will become not democratic restoration but elite replacement.
Hungary, therefore, reveals both the fragility and the possibility of democratic politics. As argued in the closing reflections of the ECPS Fifth Annual International Symposium, democratic erosion is not destiny, but democratic resilience becomes durable only when institutions, civil society, critical scholarship, and public debate work together. Magyar’s historical test lies here: will he transform anti-Orbán momentum into a personal power project, or into a pluralist, accountable, institutionalized democratic order?
This is why Hungary’s hope is also its danger. The insider who can break an authoritarian system may also reproduce its reflexes in a new form. The central question for Europe, Hungarian society, and Magyar himself is therefore this: will this victory mark the end of Orbánism, or the birth of a more refined, more acceptable post-Orbán version of it?
This commentary by Dr. Oludele Solaja advances a compelling decolonial critique of populism by relocating its analytical center from ideology to material life. It argues that, in the Global South, democratic breakdown is experienced less through electoral conflict than through ecological failure—flooding, waste accumulation, and infrastructural neglect. In this context, environmental crisis becomes a language of political judgment and a site of democratic contestation. The study highlights how citizens respond by improvising governance, producing forms of “everyday sovereignty” that reconfigure legitimacy around performance rather than formal institutions. By foregrounding environmental citizenship and survival politics, the article calls for a fundamental rethinking of populism theory, emphasizing the material genesis of antagonism and the centrality of ecology in shaping contemporary democratic claims.
Democratic anxiety is being defined by populism everywhere today. With elections becoming increasingly polarized, institutions increasingly distrusted, and elites denigrated by citizens hungry for clear moral answers in an age of uncertainty, contemporary populism theory increasingly defines the crisis of democracy in terms of ideological confrontation between “the pure people” and “the corrupt elite.” Influential concepts such as those of Cas Mudde and Ernesto Laclau define this process in terms of party politics, electoral struggles, and discursive clashes, strongly grounded in European experience. The rise of democratic contestation globally necessitates a reassessment of these ideas.
Citizens in many parts of the Global South do not often frame political resentment first and foremost in terms of party politics, immigrant threats or nationalist appeals. For them the crisis of democracy often occurs when streets become inundated, waste accumulates, sanitation collapses, water becomes polluted, food prices spike and the everyday fragility of survival in urban space defines the state’s responsiveness. Citizens experience this failure of government less as a constitutional crisis and more as a systematic material breakdown, turning ecology into language for political dissent.
This is a crucial insight because democratic legitimacy is increasingly negotiated in terms of environmental realities. When storm drainage becomes a source of flooding and waste management failures prevent sanitation, ordinary people perceive these as evidence of the abandonment of the populace, or of their lives being deprivileged by governing authorities. Such environmental breakdown becomes a source of moral judgment, casting doubt upon the moral authority of political elites.
The work of a growing body of scholars is showing that climate and ecological crisis is reframing populist narratives not only through established ideological distinctions. Some argue that the ideational framework of climate populism theory has already failed because it cannot accommodate the varied ways in which ecological grievance leads to different kinds of articulation across various institutions.
The implications are vast: the study of populism cannot be separated from the ecological reality with which it is increasingly tied.
Why Existing Theory Is Not Enough
The existing literature assumes that populist actors are largely capable of mobilizing symbolic opposition against rulers within relatively functioning institutions. In weak democracies the institutional framework is precarious, and the state can be rhetorically present, but materially absent. This creates a unique political terrain.
When institutions routinely fail to provide sanitation, safety and infrastructure, anti-elite discourse emerges less as a battle of ideologies and more as a concrete test of the performance of the state and democratic governance. Citizens criticize rulers not just for corruption, but because roads are impassable, waste remains undeposited and water and electricity do not function properly.
This kind of anti-elite sentiment, in this situation, does not always constitute a threat to democracy. Instead, it constitutes claims to practical citizenship. This is the point at which a decolonial critique must be introduced, for in weak democracies in the Global South the language of populism increasingly derives from everyday experience with ecological neglect.
Environmental Degradation as Democratic Testament
In places of rapid urbanization such as Lagos, Nigeria, environmental crisis has become the defining public face of democratic strain. Repeated flooding, collapsing drainage, rising sea levels, escalating waste accumulation and the spread of disease have increasingly defined the political experiences of urban inhabitants. A recent analysis of flood vulnerability in Lagos highlights how poor waste management, inadequate urban planning enforcement and a lack of community participation continue to undermine efforts to respond to climate risks, despite multiple state interventions. This demonstrates not simply administrative shortcomings, but a failure to provide unequal protection.
Environmental risk in Lagos and elsewhere is socially and materially distributed. Informally governed settlements and the poor suffer greater and more repeated ecological risks than more affluent neighborhoods, yet it is precisely these vulnerable communities that receive slower and poorer infrastructural responses from authorities. Ecology thus becomes a language of inequality and injustice.
The impact of class and settlement vulnerability on flood exposure is reflected in recent studies of urban spatial inequality in Lagos, demonstrating that environmental insecurity is inextricably linked to democratic exclusion. Ecological collapse thus acquires symbolic power: floodwaters signify state abandonment, waste streams become markers of inequality, and infrastructural failures translate into tangible accusations of undemocratic neglect. Citizens may not explicitly define these dynamics as “populist” framework, but the underlying logic is clearly so—a confrontation between the common people and a distant, selectively responsive, and morally indifferent government.
Informal Governance and Everyday Sovereignty
People rarely wait patiently when their formal institutions persistently fail. They improvise governance. Communities organize the cleaning of drainage ditches, youth groups coordinate waste disposal, street vendors pay for sanitation services, religious networks provide disaster relief, and neighborhood committees enforce rules that sustain survival infrastructures. This is not merely emergency survival; it is also a form of practice that demonstrates effective political authority.
This may be understood as everyday sovereignty: the transfer of legitimacy and power from a failing formal state to individuals and organizations that produce concrete solutions to community needs. In weak democracies, citizens increasingly trust those who demonstrate competence in managing crises to produce political order, rather than those who hold office but fail to deliver. This has profound democratic implications. Authority is no longer legitimized primarily by institutions but is increasingly validated by performance. Recent research in Lagos on struggles against displacement-driven urban restructuring shows how communities develop collective strategies to resist state interventions, contest policies, and articulate claims to political belonging as formal governance proves exclusionary.
This demonstrates a radical redistribution of democratic legitimacy from the state to citizens and communities. Waste itself, more than anything else, has become one of the most significant symbolic sites of democratic breakdown. It is immediate, material, accumulating, and unevenly distributed—settling where and when political neglect occurs and public disorder emerges. The prolonged presence of waste in public space signifies delayed state intervention, while its concentrated accumulation in poorer neighborhoods clearly articulates unequal treatment of citizens.
Waste thus emerges as a public inscription of political relations, where the accumulation and persistence of material residue represent not merely sanitation problems but a testament to the priorities governments set in service provision. This sense of abandonment and differentiated citizenship—captured in narratives such as “we contribute but are not protected” or “they rule but do not care”—mirrors populist discourse: the citizenry versus a distant state and ruling elites. Waste has therefore become not only a material problem but also a democratic issue, constituting a core site of political struggle over resource access and state responsibility. It demonstrates that environmental sociology and populist studies must engage more closely to account for the material genesis of antagonism—the very foundation of populism.
A Decolonial Perspective: Three Shifts Required in Populism Studies
For a theory of populism to be decolonized, it needs to abandon some established ideas:
i) Instead of viewing populism as an ideology of the people versus corrupt elites, a material approach to governance can frame political resentment. This recognizes that in fragile democracies, such feelings emerge not from abstract ideas of morality but from tangible experiences of infrastructural failure.
ii) The electoral arena needs to be widened to include the daily life of neighborhood politics, where claims to citizenship are made on the basis of practical survival mechanisms, not solely through party-led contests.
iii) Instead of a detached analysis of the “people,” the concept of environmental citizenship becomes crucial to understanding populism, as citizens engage in political struggle as part of a struggle over their own survival in an ecological context that increasingly determines who has rights and who has a claim to care.
These adjustments do not necessarily invalidate previous research in the field. Rather, they enable populism studies to engage with phenomena that extend far beyond what has until recently been considered “the political.” Increasingly, the theory of populism itself is being reshaped by the recognition of ecological dynamics; this process has arguably already begun in Europe, where ecological movements are contributing to new populist formations. The Global South, however, reveals an even more radical potential, because for its citizens, ecology is often not merely about ideology but about survival itself.
Why Now Is the Critical Moment
Democratic theory needs to acknowledge that political legitimacy is increasingly tied to how effectively the state responds to ecological challenges. In Europe, political disillusionment is fueled by the climate crisis, and the perceived indifference of governments only intensifies citizens’ perceptions of exclusion and corruption. The implications of populist struggles for the state’s capacity and functioning—at both local and international levels—are becoming evident worldwide. The effects are even more pronounced in weaker states, where democratic buffers are less robust and citizens may prioritize life-sustaining functions over procedural norms in demanding effective governance. This underscores that managing drainage systems, coastal defenses, and waste management can no longer be treated as peripheral issues.
Conclusion: Democracy Is Now Being Judged by Its Performance on Ecology
A decolonized approach to the theory of populism must address how it plays out on the ground in contexts where people navigate the daily crises of floods, waste, and uncertain service provision, and where ordinary survival politics are becoming increasingly central struggles that often define the state’s legitimacy in their eyes. It is no longer sufficient for democratic theorists to focus solely on elections and parliamentary institutions when seeking to understand the challenges confronting the globe. The crisis of democracy and the rise of populism in the Global South are, in many respects, a testament to the critical role of ecological and environmental realities in mediating and generating political conflict and claims in everyday life.
In this ECPS European Observatory commentary, Dr. João Ferreira Dias offers a theoretically rich analysis of Péter Magyar’s electoral breakthrough, arguing that it should not be read as a simple liberal shift but as a reconfiguration of Hungarian nationalism. Focusing on migration and Mitteleuropa, he shows how Magyar preserves a moderated nationalist grammar while repositioning Hungary within a more plural, regionally grounded Europe. Rather than abandoning sovereignty or identity, this emerging project seeks to detach them from illiberal statecraft and reintegrate them into a European framework. The piece introduces the idea of a national Europeanism beyond Orbánism, highlighting the central question facing Hungary: whether nationalism can be rearticulated within democratic institutions without reproducing authoritarian dynamics.
Péter Magyar’s victory in Hungary should not be read as the sudden liberalization of Hungarian politics. Such a reading would be analytically tempting, but politically misleading. A society shaped by post-socialist dislocation, imperial memories, border anxieties, regional asymmetries, and sixteen years of illiberal statecraft is unlikely to move overnight from national-conservative politics to post-national liberalism. The defeat of Viktor Orbán’s Fidesz marks a profound political rupture, but not necessarily an ideological tabula rasa. Yes, Magyar’s Tisza party won Hungary’s April 2026 election, ending Orbán’s sixteen-year rule and paving the way for the formation of a new government. Yet the more interesting question is not simply whether Hungary is “returning to Europe.” It is what kind of Europe, and what kind of nationalism, Magyar is now attempting to articulate.
The first signals suggest that Magyar’s emerging political project is not built against Hungarian nationalism, but through its reconfiguration. Its novelty lies less in abandoning the national grammar that Orbán radicalized than in relocating it within a more institutionally acceptable, pro-European, and strategically autonomous framework. Two discursive axes are particularly revealing. The first is migration, where Magyar preserves a nationalist concern with cultural cohesion, border control, and the limits of multicultural integration. The second is Mitteleuropa, where he appears to reimagine Hungary not as an isolated sovereigntist fortress, but as part of a Central European space capable of giving Europe greater internal plurality and strategic depth.
Taken together, these axes point towards a possible post-Orbán synthesis: nationalism without Orbán’s full illiberal infrastructure; Europeanism without unconditional deference to Brussels; and Central European regionalism without geopolitical ambiguity towards Moscow.
Migration and the Continuity of Nationalist Grammar
Migration remains the clearest field of continuity between Orbánism and the emerging Magyar project. Across Europe and the United States, immigration has become one of the privileged arenas through which contemporary nationalist politics articulates anxieties over identity, sovereignty, cultural continuity, and social trust. The populist radical right has been especially effective in transforming migration from a policy question into a symbolic frontier: between the nation and the outsider, order and disorder, cultural continuity and multicultural dissolution. In Cas Mudde’s terms, the radical right often combines nativism, authoritarianism, and populism, and migration is the issue through which these elements are most visibly condensed (Mudde, 2007). In the broader literature on cultural backlash, hostility to immigration is also interpreted as a reaction against cosmopolitanism, rapid value change, and perceived threats to national identity (Norris & Inglehart, 2019).
Orbán’s political genius was to radicalize this grammar and convert it into state ideology. Under his rule, migration was not merely a matter of border management. It became a civilizational drama: Christian Hungary against multicultural Europe; national sovereignty against Brussels; the border fence against liberal universalism. Migration offered Orbán a language through which economic insecurity, demographic anxiety, anti-EU resentment, and cultural conservatism could be fused into a single political narrative.
Magyar’s position appears less incendiary, but not simply opposite. According to The Guardian, he argued that Europe had “mismanaged” the migration crisis and that the issue should have been addressed primarily in countries of origin, rather than by bringing populations into Europe. This is not the language of liberal multiculturalism. Nor is it the apocalyptic rhetoric of Orbán’s civilizational border politics. It is something more subtle: a moderated, humanitarianized, and administratively respectable version of migration skepticism.
That ambiguity is politically important. On the surface, the emphasis on addressing migration in countries of origin can seem pragmatic and humane. It recognizes that migration has causes — war, poverty, instability, state failure, climate pressures — and that durable solutions cannot be reduced to reception policies in Europe. Yet the same formula may also operate as a politically acceptable form of closure: solidarity without settlement, assistance without multicultural transformation, responsibility without internal absorption.
This is where Magyar’s discourse preserves a nationalist grammar while softening its tone. Migration remains framed not only as a humanitarian issue, but as a question of cultural cohesion and governability. The political community is still imagined as something whose boundaries must be protected, whose identity cannot be indefinitely diluted, and whose social trust depends on controlled membership. In that sense, Magyar does not fully break with Orbán’s migration politics. He changes its register.
The distinction is therefore not between nationalism and liberalism. It is between two uses of nationalism. Orbán embedded nationalist discourse within an illiberal regime marked by institutional capture, constitutional engineering, media domination, and clientelist power consolidation; features widely discussed in the literature on Hungary’s hybrid and illiberal transformation (Bozóki & Hegedűs, 2018; Krekó & Enyedi, 2018; Scheppele, 2018). Magyar, by contrast, seems to be attempting to detach national-conservative discourse from that authoritarian infrastructure. His wager is that Hungarian voters did not reject nationalism as such; they rejected corruption, exhaustion, state capture, deteriorating public services, and Russia-friendly isolation.
This is a crucial insight. Orbán did not fall because nationalism disappeared from Hungarian society. He fell because his nationalism became inseparable from regime fatigue. Magyar’s challenge is therefore not to erase the national vocabulary, but to make it governable again.
Mitteleuropa and the Reinvention of European Agency
If migration reveals the continuity of Hungarian nationalist grammar, Mitteleuropa reveals its attempted transformation. Magyar’s Europeanism should not be read simply as a return to Brussels after the long Orbán years. It seems better understood as an effort to recover Central Europe as a strategic, historical, and political space within a more multidimensional Europe.
This distinction matters. A merely Brussels-centered interpretation would reduce Magyar’s project to normalization: Hungary returns to the European mainstream, restores its institutional credibility, unlocks EU funds, and abandons Orbán’s obstructive diplomacy.
There is truth in this reading. The new government’s early economic and ministerial signals suggest an emphasis on policy stability, EU funds, and economic recovery. But this is not the whole story. Magyar’s rhetoric points not only to reintegration, but to repositioning.
Mitteleuropa is not a neutral geographical term. It carries historical density. It evokes empires, shifting borders, multilingual societies, imperial collapse, Soviet domination, peripheralization, and the recurring experience of being located between larger powers. In Milan Kundera’s famous formulation, Central Europe was a kidnapped West: culturally Western, politically displaced eastwards by history (Kundera, 1984). Later interpretations of post-1989 Central Europe have stressed another dimension: the ambivalent relationship between liberal imitation, Western tutelage, and the resentment generated by the feeling of being permanently evaluated from outside (Krastev & Holmes, 2019).
Orbán exploited this historical repertoire through a politics of resentment. Hungary was presented as a besieged nation: pressured by Brussels, misunderstood by liberal elites, threatened by migration, and entitled to defend its own civilizational path. Sovereignty became trench warfare. Europe was not a plural home, but a disciplinary center. Central Europe became less a region of European agency than a rhetorical shield against liberal-democratic constraints.
Magyar appears to be proposing a different use of the same historical memory. His Mitteleuropa is not necessarily a retreat from Europe, but a way of making Europe more internally plural. It suggests that Hungary need not choose between two poor alternatives: Orbán’s nationalist isolation or passive obedience to a Brussels-centered technocratic order. Instead, Central Europe can be imagined as a third space: European but not submissive; nationally rooted but not authoritarian; historically conscious but not paranoid.
This is the deeper meaning of the “return of Mitteleuropa.” It is not nostalgia for empire. Nor is it a romantic escape from the European Union. It is a proposal for a Europe made of historical regions with their own memories, vulnerabilities, and strategic vocabularies. In this vision, Hungary is not a void between Germany and Russia, nor a problematic periphery to which Brussels grants certificates of good behavior. It is part of a Central European constellation capable of shaping Europe from within.
The contrast with Orbán is again instructive. Orbán’s Europe was vertical: Brussels above, Hungary below, sovereignty as resistance. Magyar’s Europe appears potentially horizontal: Paris, Berlin, Vienna, Prague, Bratislava, Warsaw, Zagreb, Ljubljana, Rome, Copenhagen, Brussels, and Budapest as parts of a plural continental architecture. Such a Europe is not merely a union of institutions; it is a field of regions, memories, and strategic positions.
This does not make Magyar a liberal cosmopolitan. Rather, it suggests a form of national Europeanism. The nation remains the primary symbolic community, but Europe becomes the necessary arena of agency. Mitteleuropa provides the bridge between the two. It allows Magyar to say that Hungary can be proudly national without being anti-European, and European without becoming politically weightless.
A Post-Illiberal National Europeanism?
Magyar’s two early signals therefore reveal a more complex ideological architecture than the language of “liberal victory” allows. Migration preserves the nationalist grammar. Mitteleuropa gives that grammar a new European geography.
The first axis is defensive: it protects the boundaries of the political community, insists on cultural cohesion, and keeps alive a skepticism towards large-scale multicultural integration. The second is expansive: it seeks to recover agency for Hungary and Central Europe within a more plural, multidimensional Europe. One axis looks inward, towards identity and membership. The other looks outward, towards regional strategy and European architecture.
The tension between them may define the coming Magyar period. If the nationalist grammar of migration hardens, it may reproduce exclusionary assumptions under a more polished vocabulary. If Mitteleuropa becomes another language of exceptionalism, it may simply replace Orbán’s resentment with a more elegant form of regional self-importance. But if the two axes are held in democratic balance, they may allow Hungary to move beyond Orbán without demanding that Hungarian society abandon the national vocabulary through which it still understands itself.
That is why Magyar’s project should not be understood as post-national liberalism. It is better described as an attempt at post-illiberal national Europeanism: a politics that preserves sovereignty, identity, and Central European memory, while seeking to detach them from authoritarianism, corruption, and Russian dependency.
The real test of post-Orbán Hungary will therefore not be whether nationalism disappears. It will not. The test is whether nationalism can be rearticulated within democratic institutions, European pluralism, and a regional imagination capable of enriching Europe rather than fragmenting it.
Magyar’s early discourse suggests that this is precisely the wager: to keep the nation but change its political grammar; to return to Europe, but not as a pupil; to recover Mitteleuropa, not as nostalgia, but as strategy.
References
Bozóki, A. & Hegedűs, D. (2018). “An externally constrained hybrid regime: Hungary in the European Union.” Democratization, 25(7), 1173-1189. https://doi.org/10.1080/13510347.2018.1455664
Krastev, I. & Holmes, S. (2019). The light that failed: A reckoning. Allen Lane.
Krekó, P. & Enyedi, Z. (2018). “Explaining Eastern Europe: Orbán’s laboratory of illiberalism.” Journal of Democracy, 29(3), 39–51. https://doi.org/10.1353/jod.2018.0043
Kundera, M. (1984). “The tragedy of Central Europe.” The New York Review of Books, 31(7), 33–38.
Norris, P., & Inglehart, R. (2019). Cultural backlash: Trump, Brexit, and authoritarian populism. Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108595841
Scheppele, K. L. (2018). “Autocratic legalism.” The University of Chicago Law Review, 85(2), 545–584.
In this incisive analysis, Dr. Gwenaëlle Bauvois interrogates how contemporary far-right discourse mobilizes gendered and aesthetic hierarchies to structure political legitimacy. Focusing on the controversy surrounding Rassemblement National (RN) leader Jordan Bardella’s relationship with Princess Maria Carolina of Bourbon-Two Sicilies, Dr. Bauvois demonstrates how misogynistic rhetoric operates through a dual mechanism of delegitimation and idealization. The stigmatized figure of the female sociologist—constructed as intellectually suspect and aesthetically deficient—is juxtaposed with the idealized “princess” archetype, embodying socially sanctioned femininity. This contrast reveals how populist communication instrumentalizes gendered imagery, transforming private relationships into symbolic resources that reinforce political narratives, hierarchies of visibility, and claims to cultural legitimacy.
The relationship between Jordan Bardella, president of the National Rally / Rassemblement National (RN), and Princess Maria Carolina of Bourbon-Two Sicilies has recently attracted significant media attention in France and abroad, particularly after their romance was featured on the cover of a gossip magazine and circulated widely across both political and lifestyle media outlets.
During a televised exchange on this subject, Sébastien Chenu, a leading figure of the Rassemblement National, stated: “I am delighted that [Bardella] is in love, I am delighted that his partner, who could possibly become First Lady, is a young lady who speaks six languages.” Interpelled by the journalist who noted that Maria Carolina is a “luxury influencer,” he responded: “Why not!” He then added: “Not everyone is destined to be a sociology lecturer,”“ugly, badly groomed, and bitter,” (Chenu, n.d.).
Chenu’s remarks triggered significant backlash across political, media, and academic circles.As a national spokesperson for the Rassemblement National, Chenu is already recognized for his provocative communication style, which was especially apparent in this instance. The French National Union of Researchers, for instance, stated that these comments reflect the Rassemblement National’s anti-feminist positioning, which regularly targets women’s rights and reproduces outdated gender stereotypes.
The Sociologist: Failed Femininity
At the center of Chenu’s remark lies the figure of the Sociologist, a familiar symbolic target in far-right discourse. In France, sociology occupies a particularly visible position within broader “culture wars” dynamics, where academic disciplines become entangled in political and ideological conflicts over questions of identity, inequality, and gender. Within this context, sociology is often framed by some right-wing and far-right political actors as emblematic of a politicized or ideologically biased academia.
Crucially, however, the figure used by Chenu is here implicitly gendered: it is not a neutral academic subject that is evoked, but specifically the female sociology lecturer, whose presence is central to the rhetorical effect of the statement rather than incidental to it. The emphasis on a woman in an academic position is significant because it enables the statement to operate simultaneously through professional and gendered delegitimation, thereby amplifying its symbolic effect.
This framing reflects three intersecting discursive logics. First, populist anti-intellectualism constructs experts and academics, more often in social science, as ideologically driven rather than legitimate producers of knowledge. Second, it specifically frames female academics as socially deviant and suspect. Third, misogynistic aesthetic stereotyping delegitimizes women through appearance and affect, casting them as Chenu describes as “ugly” and “bitter.” Together, these patterns construct the figure of the female social sciences academic as a rhetorically productive figure within far-right discourse, whose authority is simultaneously undermined along epistemic, social, and gendered lines.
Female academics and public intellectuals are disproportionately targeted through appearance-based insults and narratives of emotional instability, particularly when they are associated with feminist or progressive positions. Within this frame, the figure of the female sociology lecturer mobilized by Chenu is used as an instance of failed femininity, insofar as she is represented as failing to conform to normative expectations of feminine appearance, emotional disposition, respectability and desirability.
The Princess: Worthy Femininity
In contrast to the representation of the female sociologist as ugly and bitter, Maria Carolina of Bourbon-Two Sicilies is implicitly constructed through a combination of aristocratic lineage and conventional markers of attractiveness—youth, blonde hair, and normative beauty—alongside her prestige and glamour. The opposition between these stereotypes reflects two radically different regimes of femininity within far-right populist discourse, structured around processes of delegitimation and idealization.
Within this configuration, the figure of the Princess does not merely function as an aesthetic ideal, but also as a form of symbolic validation. It produces a culturally legible ideal of femininity in which aesthetic conformity and social status reinforce one another. It illustrates how visibility and worth are distributed unevenly, rendering certain bodies desirable and socially legitimate, while others are marked as deviant or unworthy —an opposition explicitly echoed in Chenu’s references to ugliness and bodily neglect.
More than a static ideal, the Princess figure operates as a normative reference point for acceptable and desirable femininity, where beauty, refinement, and social legitimacy are tightly aligned. Taken together, these contrasting constructions of femininity serve a broader populist logic of image-making, in which gendered archetypes are mobilized to organize hierarchies of legitimacy, visibility, and credibility. In this sense, the Princess archetype embodies the “right” kind of femininity and womanhood within this symbolic economy—one that is aesthetically intelligible, socially valorized, and politically functional.
The Princess figure also works particularly well in the context of Bardella’s electoral positioning ahead of the 2027 presidential race, especially given the timing and circulation of the orchestrated, paparazzi-style photographs of the couple. The Princess figure is highly media-friendly and easily integrated into simplified narrative formats, including “fairy-tale” framings that translate personal relationships into emotionally resonant political stories. In this sense, rather than functioning as a private individual, the Princess operates as a branding resource.
The Populist Leader and the Princess: Romance as Political Resource?
This romance between the young, ambitious populist leader of the French far right and the glamorous jet-setter princess can indeed be seen as part of a wider strategy of political communication and personal branding, contributing to the construction of Bardella’s profile as a prospective presidential candidate.
It also reinforces a narrative of upward social mobility, in which Bardella’s self-presentation as emerging from a modest, working-class background is juxtaposed with his growing proximity to aristocratic lineage and inherited forms of cultural and social capital.
However, this construction is also potentially ambivalent. Bardella has long cultivated an image as a politician who speaks for ordinary people against the elites, a figure of social ascent from below. Yet his relationship with a luxury influencer, jetsetter and heir to a fortune worth several hundred million euros—risks complicating that populist narrative of proximity to these “ordinary people” he claims to represent.
References
Chenu, S. [@sebchenu]. (n.d.). “Je suis ravi de voir @J_Bardella amoureux et que tous les deux soient épanouis ! N’en déplaise à certains, tout le monde n’a pas vocation à finir comme une prof de sociologie à Nanterre, moche, mal coiffée et aigrie ! @franceinfo” [Post]. X.https://x.com/sebchenu/status/2045028471185821837
This commentary by Professor Majid Bozorgmehri situates the 2026 confrontation within a broader matrix of regional rivalry, nuclear deterrence, and asymmetric warfare. He argues that the conflict reflects not an isolated escalation but the deepening of a long-standing security dilemma, driven by both material power asymmetries and ideational forces. Drawing on a synthesis of realism and constructivism, Professor Bozorgmehri demonstrates how strategic calculation, identity, and normative commitments interact in shaping state behavior. As the war expands across multiple domains—from proxy networks to maritime chokepoints—it highlights the limits of conventional military superiority and points toward a likely trajectory of managed escalation, coercive diplomacy, and negotiated equilibrium.
The ongoing war involving Iran, the United States, and Israel in 2026 can be interpreted as a complex interstate conflict situated within a broader matrix of regional rivalry, nuclear deterrence concerns, and asymmetric warfare dynamics. Rather than constituting an isolated confrontation, the war reflects an intensification of long-standing geopolitical tensions in the Middle East, generating wide-ranging humanitarian, economic, infrastructural, political, and environmental consequences. For Iran, which has already experienced prolonged exposure to international sanctions, economic stagnation, and domestic socio-political pressures, the war has exacerbated existing structural vulnerabilities while introducing new dimensions of humanitarian strain and systemic instability (Akhigbodemhe & Azubuike, 2025: 300). At the same time, this confrontation appears to be entering a qualitatively new phase with the potential to reshape the regional geopolitical order (Alobeid, 2025: 8).
From the standpoint of international relations theory, and particularly within the framework of structural realism, the conflict can be conceptualized as a manifestation of the security dilemma, whereby defensive measures undertaken by one actor are interpreted as offensive threats by others, thereby producing a self-reinforcing cycle of escalation (Waltz, 1979; Jervis, 1978; Baltaci, 2022: 2241). However, a single theoretical lens is insufficient to fully explain the dynamics of this war. A more comprehensive analytical framework emerges from the integration of realism and constructivism, as proposed in the concept of “realist constructivism” (Barkin, 2003: 338). Within this hybrid framework, the policies of the United States and Israel can be interpreted primarily through realist assumptions emphasizing power, security, and strategic calculation, whereas Iran’s behavior reflects a stronger influence of ideational factors, including identity, revolutionary ideology, and normative commitments. This theoretical synthesis enables a more nuanced understanding of how material power and normative structures interact in shaping state behavior.
Historically, the strategic rivalry between Israel and Iran has evolved over several decades, particularly since the late 1990s, into a multidimensional confrontation encompassing direct and indirect forms of conflict. Iran has consistently supported a network of non-state actors positioned along Israel’s periphery, while Israel has responded through a combination of military deterrence, intelligence operations, and targeted strikes aimed at constraining Iran’s regional influence (Dryden, 2023: 84; Tanios, 2020). The escalation observed in 2026, including coordinated military actions by the United States and Israel against Iranian nuclear and military infrastructure, represents the culmination of these long-term antagonisms. Such actions have been interpreted by analysts as preventive or preemptive strategies designed to limit Iran’s nuclear capabilities and weaken its deterrence posture.
The military balance within this conflict is characterized by a pronounced asymmetry. The United States and Israel possess significant advantages in terms of conventional military capabilities, including advanced airpower, intelligence systems, and precision-strike technologies. In contrast, Iran has developed an asymmetric warfare doctrine intended to mitigate these disadvantages. This doctrine relies on ballistic missile systems, unmanned aerial vehicles, and decentralized proxy networks capable of operating across multiple theaters (Cordesman, 2007). Furthermore, Israel has intensified its military activities in Syria and expanded covert security cooperation with several Arab states, particularly in response to perceived Iranian entrenchment in the region (Furlan, 2022: 178). Consequently, the conflict cannot be reduced to a simple balance-of-power equation but should instead be understood as a confrontation between divergent strategic paradigms.
The persistence of Iran’s retaliatory capabilities despite sustained military pressure underscores a central finding in strategic studies: the superiority of conventional force does not necessarily guarantee decisive political outcomes when confronting a resilient and adaptive adversary (Arreguín-Toft, 2005). In this regard, the conflict demonstrates key features of hybrid warfare, combining direct interstate confrontation with proxy engagements, cyber operations, and economic coercion. Iranian-aligned groups operating across the Middle East and extending in some cases toward the Red Sea and parts of Eastern Africa, have contributed to broadening the geographical scope of the conflict (Bazoobandi & Talebian, 2023). This expansion complicates the strategic environment for both the United States and Israel, increasing the likelihood of miscalculation and unintended escalation (Byman, 2018).
One of the most critical dimensions of this escalation concerns maritime security, particularly in relation to the Strait of Hormuz, through which approximately one-fifth (20.9 %) of global oil supply transits (U.S. Energy Information Administration, 2026). Any disruption in this chokepoint would have profound implications for the global economy, potentially triggering inflationary shocks, financial instability, and broader systemic risks (World Bank, 2025: 81–82). Additionally, the strategic positioning of external powers such as Russia and China suggests that their policies toward the conflict are likely to be shaped by broader geopolitical calculations, which may not fully align with Iranian expectations (Rasanah, 2024: 4).
Despite the scale and intensity of military operations, several structural constraints limit the likelihood of a decisive outcome. Iran’s territorial size, population base, and institutional resilience render the prospect of externally imposed regime change highly uncertain without large-scale ground operations. Historical precedents, including the interventions in Iraq and Libya, have demonstrated the risks associated with state collapse and regional fragmentation. In the Iranian context, such a scenario could invite intervention by neighboring powers—including Turkey, Pakistan, and Gulf states—while also potentially intensifying subnational movements, such as Kurdish aspirations for autonomy or independence. These risks significantly raise the potential costs of escalation for external actors.
At the same time, the United States faces considerable constraints related to resource allocation, domestic political considerations, and strategic prioritization, all of which reduce its willingness to engage in a prolonged and large-scale military campaign. Israel, despite its advanced military capabilities, remains constrained by its limited strategic depth and exposure to missile and drone attacks. These factors collectively suggest that the conflict is unlikely to culminate in a decisive military victory and is instead evolving toward a phase characterized by coercive diplomacy and strategic bargaining.
Recent developments in the diplomatic arena reinforce this interpretation. Indirect negotiations, temporary ceasefire arrangements, and discussions concerning limitations on Iran’s nuclear program indicate a gradual shift toward a mixed strategy that combines military pressure with diplomatic engagement (International Crisis Group, 2026). From a theoretical perspective, this transition is consistent with game-theoretic models in which rational actors seek to optimize outcomes under conditions of uncertainty while avoiding mutually destructive escalation.
A scenario-based assessment of the conflict suggests that the most probable outcome, with an estimated likelihood of approximately 45–55 percent, is a negotiated settlement involving partial de-escalation, limited restrictions on Iran’s nuclear activities, and some degree of sanctions relief. A second scenario, with a probability of approximately 25–30 percent, envisions the continuation of a low-intensity conflict characterized by intermittent military engagements and persistent proxy activity. Less probable scenarios include broader regional escalation (10–15 percent) and internal regime collapse in Iran (5–10 percent), the latter being constrained by the resilience of existing political and security structures.
Overall, the available evidence indicates that the conflict is unlikely to produce a decisive military resolution. Instead, it is more likely to evolve into a managed confrontation or a negotiated equilibrium shaped by structural constraints, strategic interdependence, and the limits of military power. Within this context, some analysts argue that the survival of a contained but adversarial Iranian posture may serve the strategic interests of the United States and its regional allies by reinforcing security dependencies among Persian Gulf states and facilitating incremental normalization between Israel and certain Arab countries. While this interpretation remains subject to debate, it highlights the broader geopolitical implications of the conflict and its potential to reshape regional alignments over the long term.
(*) Majid Bozorgmehri is a Professor at Imam Khomeini International University, Iran, and a Visiting Scholar at York University, Toronto, Canada.
References
Akhigbodemhe, E.J. & Azubuike, G.I. (2025). “A 12-day war with long-term collateral consequences: A multi-dimensional analysis of the Israel-Iran war.” IJPSG 2025; 7(9): 300-309, E-ISSN: 2664-603X DOI: https://www.doi.org/10.33545/26646021.2025.v7.i9d.694
Barkin, J. S. (2003, Sep.) “Realist Constructivism.” International Studies Review, Vol. 5, No. 3, Wiley on behalf of The International Studies Association: 325-342. https://www.jstor.org/stable/3186573
Bazoobandi, S. & Talebian, H. (2023). “The Evolvement of Iran–Israel’s Rivalry in the Red Sea and Eastern Africa,” Asian Journal of Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies, 17:4, 341-355. DOI: 10.1080/25765949.2023.2299076, https://doi.org/10.1080/25765949.2023.2299076
Campa, K.; Rezaei, B.; Moorman ,C.; Wells, K.; Morrison N.; Grace M. & Annika G. (2026). “Iran Update Special Report, March 27, 2026. “ Analyst Notes: Data Cutoff: 2:00 PM ET, The Institute for the Study of War (ISW) and The Critical Threats Project (CTP),
Cordesman, A. H. & Kleiber, M. (2007, January). “Iran’s Military Forces and Warfighting Capabilities: The Threat in the Northern Gulf.” DOI: 10.5040/9798400672521 ISBN: 9780313346125 https://www.researchgate.net/publication/381088434_Iran’s_Military_Forces_and_Warfighting_Capabilities_The_Threat_in_the_Northern_Gulf
DryDen, J. (2023, Spring). “IRAN, ISRAEL, AND THE STRUGGLE FOR THE SKIES OVER THE MIDDLE EAST” ÆTHER: A JOURNAL OF STRATEGIC AIRPOWER & SPACEPOWER, VOL. 2, NO. 1, :84-95
Furlan, M. (2022). “Israeli Iranian relations: past friendship, current hostility.” Israel Affairs, 28:2, 170-183, DOI: 10.1080/13537121.2022.2041304 https://doi.org/10.1080/13537121.2022.2041304
Jervis, R. (1978) “Cooperation Under the Security Dilemma.” World Politics, Vol. 30, No. 2 (Jan., 1978), pp. 167-214, The Johns Hopkins University. https://www.jstor.org/stable/2009958
Tanios, S. (2020, January). “Iran, Israel, the Persian Gulf, and the United States: A Conflict Resolution Perspective.” https://www.researchgate.net/publication/352546074_Iran_Israel_the_Persian_Gulf_and_the_United_States_A_Conflict_Resolution_Perspective
