The Concentration of Emergency Competencies During the COVID-19 Pandemic in Hungary: A Lack of Effective Control

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has posed a major challenge not only to the effectiveness of health crisis management by national governments but also to the democratic functioning of states. This article describes how the institutional guarantees of the democratic exercise of power in Hungary malfunctioned. The operation of Parliament and local self-governments as representative bodies, the Constitutional Court, the Ombudsperson, and the courts as control- and judicial-type institutions will be analysed vis-à-vis the Hungarian Government's action. The study thus aims to reveal how the systematic challenges and diminishing role of local self-governments in collaborative crisis management are not an outstanding and isolated problem, but part of the systematic autocratic regime change in Hungary accelerated by the COVID-19-related special legal order.