For years, Hungary stood as the defining case of democratic backsliding within the European Union. Yet the 2026 election has transformed it into an equally important case of democratic recovery. In this timely interview, Dr. Hanna Folsz discusses why Hungary’s political transformation challenges prevailing assumptions about the durability of competitive authoritarianism. Drawing on her recent Journal of Democracy article, she argues that authoritarian institutional engineering ultimately remains vulnerable when broad civic mobilization, credible political leadership, and innovative opposition strategies converge. The conversation explores the underestimated role of civil society, the limits of media capture and economic coercion, the challenges of rebuilding democratic institutions, and the broader lessons Hungary offers for scholars and practitioners seeking to understand democratic resilience and authoritarian reversal in the twenty-first century.
Interview by Selcuk Gultasli
For more than a decade, Hungary occupied a unique place in the comparative study of democratic backsliding. Under Viktor Orbán and Fidesz, it became widely regarded as the paradigmatic example of competitive authoritarianism within the European Union—a political system in which elections continued to exist but were increasingly distorted by constitutional engineering, media capture, economic coercion, and the systematic weakening of institutional checks and balances. Consequently, Hungary became not merely a national case but an international reference point for understanding how democracies erode from within.
Yet Hungary’s 2026 election has fundamentally altered that conversation. The defeat of Fidesz after sixteen years in power has transformed the country into one of the most consequential contemporary cases of democratic recovery. In her recent Journal of Democracy article, How Civil Society Defeated Orbán, Dr. Hanna Folsz —an Academy Scholar at Harvard University’s Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, where she will begin her appointment in August 2026 before joining IE University in Madrid as Assistant Professor of Political Science in 2027— argues that this democratic breakthrough cannot be explained solely by leadership change or electoral dynamics. Instead, she offers a broader theoretical argument about the hidden vulnerabilities of competitive authoritarian regimes and the underestimated capacity of civil society to reverse authoritarian consolidation.
As Dr. Folsz observes, "Even deeply entrenched competitive authoritarian regimes have vulnerabilities." While Hungary experienced what she describes as "one of the most extensive and severe episodes of de-democratization or authoritarian consolidation in recent decades," the very institutions and strategies that sustained Fidesz ultimately proved insufficient to guarantee permanent rule. Institutional engineering, media dominance, financial asymmetries, and intimidation undoubtedly raised the costs of political competition, yet they could not indefinitely substitute for declining public legitimacy. As she argues, "these authoritarian strategies do not guarantee lasting—everlasting—popularity or staying in office."
A central contribution of Dr. Folsz’s research is her reassessment of the role of civil society. Rather than attributing the opposition’s victory primarily to the emergence of the Tisza Party or the leadership of Péter Magyar, she demonstrates how more than 2,500 decentralized "Tisza Islands" transformed latent civic capacity into effective political organization. In her words, "The role of civil society… is absolutely underestimated," while "broad civic mobilization, new and fresh opposition challengers… and a credible alternative to voters are definitely a path to democratic reversal."
In this interview, Dr. Folsz examines the mechanisms that enabled Hungary’s democratic breakthrough and explores their broader implications for comparative politics. She discusses the hidden effects of economic coercion, the limits of media capture, the importance of credible political leadership, and the challenges of democratic restoration after authoritarian rule. She also reflects on the responsibilities facing Hungary’s new government, emphasizing that electoral victory is only the beginning: "Changing governments is definitely only a precondition for democratic recovery." Together, these insights offer an important contribution to ongoing debates on populism, democratic resilience, competitive authoritarianism, and the conditions under which entrenched illiberal regimes can ultimately be defeated.
