The rise and fall of constitutionalism in Hungary (original) (raw)

In this chapter, I describe the elements and possible reasons for Hungary’s recent transition from a liberal to an illiberal democratic system, and will attempt to explain both the unique and the more typical features of this change. I use the term ‘constitutional counter-revolution’ to describe the Hungarian constitutional restoration.1 At the same time, my view is that the illiberal turn, which significantly weakened the rule of law safeguards instituted by the 1989–1990 constitutional process, has not resulted in the restoration of either the singleparty state or police state structures. I think that the Hungarian constitutional system after 2010 is better characterized as a kind of ‘democradura’, rather than as a dictatorship.2 Let us first discuss the characteristics of the constitution-making process both in 1989 and in 2010.