The Korea Times
BUDAPEST—For 16 years, Viktor Orbán’s Hungary embodied a troubling idea: that “illiberal democracy” could be made stable and entrench itself in power. Combining electoral dominance with the systematic weakening of institutional checks and balances, Orbán appeared to solve a central dilemma of modern authoritarianism: how to win repeatedly at the ballot box while hollowing out liberal democracy. And because his model inspired admirers throughout the West (and beyond), helping to sustain a broader narrative of democratic decline, his humiliating election defeat carries implications far beyond Hungary. The victory of Péter Magyar’s Tisza party, like the triumph of Poland’s Civic Coalition over the illiberal Law and Justice (PiS) party in 2023, represents not only a reversal of a seemingly consolidated system, but also signals that such regimes may be more fragile than they appear. The lesson is not simply that illiberal regimes can lose. It is that the very logic that sustains them can lead to their undoing. Illiberal leaders have long justified their concentration of power
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