Can Péter Magyar Restore Hungary’s Democracy?
Can Péter Magyar Restore Hungary’s Democracy?
Journal: The Journal of Democracy. The Journal of Democracy is the world’s leading publication on the theory and practice of democracy. Since its first appearance in 1990, it has engaged both activists and intellectuals in critical discussions of the problems of and prospects for democracy around the world. Today, the Journal is at the center of debate on the major social, political, and cultural challenges that confront emerging and established democracies alike. More on the Journal can be found here.
Date of Publication: July 2026
Author: Kim Lane Scheppele. Scheppele is the Laurance S. Rockefeller Professor of Sociology and International Affairs in the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs and the University Center for Human Values at Princeton University. More on Scheppele can be found here and here.
The article can be downloaded from here, and a PDF of the article can be found here.
Photo by Tobias Reich on Unsplash.
Abstract: This essay asks whether Viktor Orbán’s electoral defeat can actually restore Hungarian democracy. Péter Magyar—a politician almost unknown three years earlier—won 71 percent of parliamentary seats, a supermajority that on paper lets his Tisza government do whatever it wants. The reality, the author cautions, will be more difficult to confront. After four election cycles of autocratic capture, institutions have been compromised, courts and media reshaped, and democratic habits abandoned; entrenched veto players remain, and the new government inherits a hollowed-out state with empty coffers. Hungary thus joins the ranks of countries attempting a “democratic U-turn,” a path that research shows is steep, and Magyar confronts deeper damage than counterparts in Brazil, Poland, or the United States faced. Yet it is never a winning strategy to count Hungarians out.
Why ISSE Is Including This Article
The article examines a central but often neglected question in the study of exceptional governance: what happens after an entrenched system of executive domination is defeated at the ballot box. Hungary demonstrates that ending an emergency regime or removing an autocratic leader does not by itself restore constitutional democracy when courts, media, oversight bodies, and administrative institutions remain shaped by years of political capture. The article highlights the difficult process of de-exceptionalization, including the legal, institutional, and political challenges involved in returning extraordinary powers to ordinary democratic control. It also offers an important comparative lesson: democratic recovery requires not only electoral victory, but sustained institutional reconstruction capable of preventing exceptional governance from reemerging in a new form.
