Emergency Power in Hungary and the COVID-19

Abstract

We live in an era of overlapping states of exceptions: the climate and ecological emergency, the permanent crisis of global capitalism, the migration crisis, the COVID-19 pandemic. Relying on the Hungarian political regime, this paper investigates how and why exceptional measures restructure our life. It can be argued that the main outcome of the exceptional measures is the rise of a new executive power, and it is demonstrated how heavily authoritarian regimes rely on the state of exception. It has been argued here that behind the strengthening of the emergency power there is the new rise of unlimited executive power, which is nothing more than the legal and political fulfilment of two-thirds majority power. Upon the case of the permanent state of exception of the Orbán regime, it can be said that the COVID-19 as an epidemiological crisis cannot be traced back to the Orbán administration, but the executive power has found a way to create a new political crisis based on the epidemic. The paper briefly discusses the impact of the 2022 Hungarian national election campaign period and the Russian aggression against Ukraine in February 2022 on the Hungarian emergency powers.