Construction of authoritarian regime in Hungary

After 1989, with the collapse of the communist regimes, authoritarian regime studies have regained popularity. In this period of the third wave of democratization, the belief that countries would abandon their authoritarian past and adopt liberal democracy influenced the transition literature. In a sense, the end of history has come for authoritarian regimes, but how the transition process will take place and approaches to define the transition regime have occupied a large place in political regime studies. The expectation of democratization has been realized in many countries and these countries displayed an image of embracing free elections, human rights and a capitalist economy. However, this change remained only on paper, and structural, cultural and actorial factors of the transition countries prevented political regime change evolved towards the consolidation of democracy. Instead, hybrid regimes between authoritarian features and democratic procedures have emerged. Thus, the thesis that transitional regimes would necessarily evolve towards democracy collapsed and the transitional paradigm came to an end. The concept of the hybrid regime type as a sub-category of the democracy came to an end and the emergence of new types of authoritarian regimes was recognized. In this context, since the early 2000s, hybrid regimes have started to be discussed with concepts such as competitive authoritarianism and electoral authoritarianism. In particular, the crisis of Western Capitalism in the aftermath of the 2008 Crisis has created an order in which authoritarian leaders feed off each other, resulting in a global counter wave. Countries such as Hungary, Turkey, Poland, Slovakia, India and Malaysia have emerged as representatives of this global counter wave. This study focuses on Hungary's recent transformation. While analyzing the economic crises, political crises and informal practices affecting the political structure of the society that led to the authoritarian transformation in Hungary, it is discussed that which concept set and which regime type of the hybrid regime literature is appropriate for Hungary. In this way, the main argument of the study is put forward; existing authoritarian regime types are not suitable to explain the Hungarian regime in all its aspects. The Hungarian experience has characteristics that exceed existing definitions. While presenting its main argument, the study also argues that Hungary's experience of the last decade can no longer be characterized as democracy. In this framework, the study shows that even the minimum requirements of liberal democracy have not been met in Hungary.