What is the nature of Hungary's authoritarian turn? Bálint Magyar argues that it is a post-communist mafia state, and details how Viktor Orbán and the ruling Fidesz party have transformed Hungarian society, economy, and polity since their return to power in 2010.
The state is post-communist for obvious reasons of chronology and history: it is post-communist because it is built on the institutional site of the communist regime. The elites are also recruited from the communist party and its broader networks. It is also built on the monopoly of state ownership, as opposed to building such a monopoly.
It is a mafia state by the nature of the its organization, built on the network of contacts grounded in family, or sealed by businesses in common (70). Specific aspects make the mafia state a subtype of the autocratic regime; its concentration of power, where decisions affect both power and wealth accumulation at once; the key players, which consist of a poligarch who gains illegitimate wealth through legitimate political power, and a coterie of stooges, brokers, coopted bureaucrats, and above all oligarchs whose economic performance is dependent on political loyalty (74). Contrary to earlier accounts of postcommunist state capture, Magyar argues that the state itself creates the oligarchs—and they are utterly dependent on the leader (81).
Magyar systematically and rigorously analyzes the diverse aspects of the mafia state, offering a detailed critique both of the theory of the democratic implosion in Hungary—and its praxis. He details how the MSzP opposition was impotent to stop Fidesz, both by dint of its discourse, which focused on rational and institutional aspects of governance against Fidesz's emotive appeals, and its own discredited recent history in government. He then moves through institutional realms: the hostile takeover of public administration, the centralization of civil society funding and its subsequent quiescence, the elimination of local government autonomy, and above all, the cynical takeover of both the judiciary and the economy.
In the legal realm, the Supreme Court became a target of a politicized takeover designed to ensure the Court's loyalty to the government (and thus the elimination of a critical check and constraint on Fidesz designs.) The Constitution was rewritten to ensure that Fidesz would, even if it could lose the elections (the new electoral law made this far more unlikely), stay a critical player. Further, Fidesz rules by law, introducing laws that target specific high-profile individuals to both reward and punish. Here, Magyar gives us a catalog of laws designed to impoverish and make miserable the lives of those who would not fall in line. Equality before law is replaced by inequality after the law (117) with retroactive laws, legal targeting, and the liquidation of monitoring and oversight.
In the economic domain, Magyar shows how no party could rely on its membership alone, and instead funding was to be found in the porous state (7). Chapter 5 offers a detailed account of how the private and autonomous entrepreneurship of the 1990s and 2000s was systematically replaced through economic laws, procurement decisions, retroactive policies (including a retroactive 98% on severance packages for public servants), nationalization, and the monopolization of specific types of economic activity. Finally, and critically, Magyar shows the symbolic and discursive aspects of Fidesz's quest for legitimation. Here, the unholy trinity of God, homeland, and family function as critical concepts around which power is legitimated, partly through a new National Communication Office that serves both to centralize propaganda and eliminate potential side deals among elites.
The book is an excellent analysis of how Fidesz under Orbán transformed Hungary from a poster child of post-communist democratic consolidation to a regional template for increasingly authoritarian rule. It does leave some questions unanswered: for example, were the 2011 changes to the Constitution a symptom or a cause of the subsequent autocratic consolidation? More importantly, in the meticulous and brilliant analysis of how the transformation occurred, we learn less about why it unfolded as it did. That is, why, for example, did Fidesz behave so differently from the MSzP-SzDSz government of 1994–98, when it also had the two-thirds supermajority that allowed it to radically transform the legal, economic, and constitutional framework? Cartels and oligopolies tend to have difficulty sustaining themselves: why has this one been so successful (so far), and what are the conditions under which it might fail? Where does the vaunted party discipline of Fidesz come from? Is it from the ruling coterie's legal training?
This is an important book, a rigorous and compelling analysis of how the young democrats of 1989 became the middle-aged populist rulers of 2016. As countries from Poland to the Philippines to Great Britain to the United States fall under the sway of populists and demagogues, this analysis is more timely and urgent than ever. It shows the frailty of democratic institutions, and the power of demagogues seeking, and increasingly backed by, wealth. We would do well to learn its lessons.
