The Impact of Covid-19 on the Move towards Authoritarianism: The Case of Hungary

Abstract

As the Freedom House Report 2023 shows, there has been a global trend from democracy to
 authoritarianism over the past 17 years. This gained further momentum in late 2019 with the outbreak
 of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic in Wuhan, China. In the fight against this virus, which has
 resulted in the deaths of millions of people, governments implemented several significant measures,
 including closures, curfews, and mandatory vaccinations. Under the pretense of combatting the virus,
 populist politicians, who already had authoritarian inclinations before the pandemic, disregarded
 important democratic principles, such as free and fair elections, separation of powers, political liberties,
 and civil rights. The violations of these principles by populist leaders accelerated global democratic
 backsliding. In this context, in March 2020, in response to the coronavirus pandemic, Hungary’s Prime
 Minister Viktor Orban, who has used every political crisis to find excuses to pursue undemocratic
 policies and strengthen his hold on power, pushed the Hungarian parliament to grant him extraordinary
 emergency powers. He used coronavirus precautions to establish one-man rule in Hungary by
 bypassing parliament. His government devised a legislative framework to suppress critics of its policies
 in the media, civil society, and the opposition. Orban also implemented restrictions violating judicial
 independence, minority rights, freedom of expression, and freedom of assembly through constitutional
 amendments. In other words, Orban utilized the coronavirus outbreak to further weaken Hungary’s
 democratic structures and principles. Human rights organizations and the European Union have
 criticized Hungary’s slow erosion of democracy under Orban’s administration. This article analyzes
 the impact of COVID-19 on the acceleration of democratic backsliding in Hungary, under the rule of
 Prime Minister Viktor Orban, in terms of Wolfgang Merkel’s (2004) four conditions for democratic
 consolidation: electoral regimes, civil rights, political freedoms, and separation of powers.