Hungary’s political situation has long been misunderstood abroad. Much of the international debate focused narrowly on the person of Viktor Orbán and, more recently, on the rise of Péter Magyar, as if Hungary’s trajectory were primarily the result of changing leaders. Yet the deeper continuity lies not in personalities, but in institutions. Since 1990, Hungary has operated within a constitutional framework whose core logic, the exceptional concentration of power in a parliamentary majority and its leader, has remained remarkably intact. Orbán mastered this system for sixteen years; Magyar has now inherited it. To understand Hungary’s past, and the choices now facing its new government, one must therefore examine the political order that made both men possible.
The republic nobody intended to keep
When the opposition, consisting of the conservative MDF and the liberal SZDSZ, gathered at the Round Table from 1988 onwards and later negotiated with the outgoing state-socialist party MSZMP, the new order did not emerge as the result of a coherent constitutional founding project. Rather, it was a transitional construction in which the partisan interests of opposition actors, the necessity of a rapid transition from communist dictatorship, and compromises with the MSZMP were fused together. Institutional templates were quickly drawn both from Hungarian constitutional history and from abroad, especially Germany.
The new order was explicitly not conceived as a final constitution, but rather as a comprehensive revision of the communist constitution of 1949. It was meant to serve as a provisional arrangement until a future democratic majority could adopt an entirely new constitution. Indeed, MDF, SZDSZ, and the MSZMP all expected to compete for precisely that opportunity: to win the first free elections and then replace the interim framework with a constitution of their own design. Thus, the new Hungarian constitutional order rested on elite consensus rather than broad public support or established historical practice. Particularly notable is the general popularity of a directly elected presidency, an institution that was only abandoned out of fear that a former communist might win the office.
As a result, even in its original 1990 form, the system already contained a ticking time bomb: what would happen if a sudden political shift were to produce a two-thirds parliamentary majority? The newly introduced mixed-member electoral system, allocating roughly half the seats in single-member constituencies and the other half through proportional representation, was highly sensitive to swings in voter sentiment. In a country the size of Hungary, such a shift could be determined by only a few hundred thousand voters.
Historical experience from pre-communist Hungarian democracy pointed in the same direction. Hungary had often been characterized by the predominance of a single governing party over several electoral cycles, only to see it eventually replaced by another dominant force. Together, these structural features placed a latent explosive charge at the center of the constitutional order: a party capable of winning a supermajority in Hungary could acquire a concentration of power scarcely paralleled even among other majoritarian democracies.
A hyper-majoritarian state
Majoritarian democracy is not inherently anti-democratic. For a long time, it was regarded in democratic theory as one of the most effective forms of democratic government, notably by Maurice Duverger. The intrinsic strength of majoritarian systems lies in their tendency to produce single-party governments, thereby ensuring clear political accountability and allowing voters, when necessary, to replace the governing majority in its entirety. Only later did consensus-oriented models gain comparable prestige through scholars such as Arend Lijphart. Hungary’s version, however, represented an especially far-reaching and concentrated form of majoritarianism.
Compared with classic majoritarian democracies such as the UK, France, or the United States, the Hungarian model was exceptionally centerd on majority rule. What emerged was a system sui generis with a clear center of power: a unicameral parliament, and its majority led by a strong prime minister removable only by constructive vote of no confidence, elected to power by an electoral system with pronounced majoritarian features favoring larger parties. The electoral system is even more powerful in its effects as the Hungarian party system is much less entrenched than its Western counterparts, making sudden shifts in voter preference more likely. Constitutional amendments and appointments to key institutions, such as the Constitutional Court, judicial bodies, prosecutors, and the central bank leadership, required two-thirds majorities.
Serious counterweights to the parliamentary majority were limited largely to a weak president not directly elected by the people, the parliamentary opposition, the unusually strong Constitutional Court reflecting the German model, and the local governments.
The constitutional time bomb detonates: 2010
Initially, the electoral system achieved its immediate purpose: it generated workable governing majorities after 1990. At the same time, it encouraged the formation of two large opposing blocs on the left and right, which remained relatively balanced until the 2006 elections. Yet long-term stability did not emerge. Instead, governments alternated regularly every four years. Because strong institutional counterweights were absent, voters often had only one practical way to express dissatisfaction: replace one camp entirely with the other. The temporary constitutional settlement thus became permanent.
That the latent possibility of a radical systemic transformation still existed became clear after the 2006 elections. The Social Democrats under Ferenc Gyurcsány won a surprising victory and, for the first time, managed to remain in office after an election. Yet the internal logic of the system now became destabilizing. Since power and responsibility were heavily concentrated in the prime minister, Gyurcsány’s rapid political discrediting triggered a crisis of the entire governing center. The majority collapsed, a technocratic interim government followed, and both MSZP and SZDSZ deteriorated. Hungary entered the global financial crisis politically leaderless.
Viktor Orbán and Fidesz recognized the opportunity: only a few hundred thousand votes could make all the difference after the collapse of the Social Democrats. In the 2010 electoral campaign, they openly targeted a two-thirds majority, promising to complete the unfinished transition. The result was dramatic: according to the rules of electoral law of 1990, with roughly 52% of the vote, Fidesz secured about 68% of parliamentary seats and thus constitutional power.
Orbán’s victory was itself a product of the very order later criticized as the source of his dominance. Why dismantle a structure that had just delivered such power?
Accordingly, the reforms after 2010 did not aim at limiting concentrated authority but at consolidating it. The new Fundamental Law of 2012, the electoral reform of 2012, the reduction of Constitutional Court powers, the weakening of local self-government, and the partisan occupation of key offices further strengthened the majoritarian element instead.
No directly elected presidency was introduced, unlike in many Central and Eastern European states after 1990, nor was a second parliamentary chamber established, despite Hungary’s historical experience with bicameralism.
How the EU strengthened Orbán
Orbán’s conflicts with international organizations were made possible by this concentration of power, yet they also reinforced it. After the financial crisis, the immediate priority was freeing Hungary from the conditions imposed by the International Monetary Fund. Later, confrontation with the European Union increasingly took center stage.
Whether on migration, economic policy, social policy, or foreign affairs, Orbán portrayed the strong governing majority as the guarantor of Hungarian sovereignty. At the same time, Fidesz benefited from economically strong years between 2012 and 2020 and from a fragmented opposition. While Fidesz occupied the center, Jobbik stood to its right, while a divided left competed for the legacy of the MSZP.
When the ice cream licks back
There is a Hungarian saying roughly translated as: ‘When your ice cream licks back.’ It refers to the moment when something pleasant turns against its owner. That is precisely what happened to Viktor Orbán after 2022.
Fidesz achieved its greatest-ever electoral victory that year, yet its domestic political momentum was exhausted. Orbán increasingly shifted his focus to the world stage because he faced no serious domestic challenger. Meanwhile, mismanagement, corruption scandals, and strategic stagnation became more visible.
Yet, the institutions played the key role in his actual downfall. The immediate trigger of the crisis became the pardon affair involving Katalin Novák in February 2024. Novák, herself elected by the Fidesz two-thirds majority, had developed an unusual degree of independence for the office. When controversy erupted, she was forced out within days. It revealed how deeply loyalty politics and siege mentality had come to shape Fidesz after 14 years of supermajority.
The rest is history: Péter Magyar used the affair for his meteoric rise. His Tisza Party won a two-thirds parliamentary majority in April 2026 with 53% of the vote, using the same electoral law that ensured Orbán’s supermajority three times. Remarkably, the logic of pre-World War II Hungarian party competition resurfaced between 2002 and 2026. Not only did dominant parties once again emerge and govern across multiple electoral cycles, but they could be displaced only by an even more dominant challenger. If this pattern endures, Péter Magyar’s Tisza Party may be poised to remain in power for a considerable time.
Magyar inherits Orbán’s machine
Magyar now confronts the same structural choices Orbán faced in 2010. Will he inherit the instruments of concentrated power or deliberately limit them? Magyar faces three broad options: the introduction of a Western-style consensus democracy; a moderate constitutional reform that preserves the majoritarian core while strengthening its checks and limitations; or an “Orbán-on-steroids’ approach, reshaping the constitutional order to suit his party’s interests while retaining its extreme concentration of majoritarian power.
The first option appears highly unlikely, even if a substantial share of Tisza voters, many of whom previously supported left-wing parties, would favor it. Tisza’s manifesto, notably, called only in vague terms for a ‘more proportional’ electoral system and not for the introduction of full proportional representation. Magyar has little actual incentive to pursue such a path, and it would also risk abandoning one of the principal strengths of the Hungarian model: the clear democratic accountability that comes with a readily identifiable governing majority. Moreover, Hungary has neither a historical precedent for nor an established political culture of consensus democracy.
Second, the path of moderate constitutional reform would be to retain the 2012 Fundamental Law while subjecting it to comprehensive revision. That would preserve institutional continuity while allowing genuine modernization. There could be a directly elected president with limited but real powers, modeled on many Central European systems like Poland, Czechia, or Austria. Such an office could serve as a democratically legitimate corrective to government and prime ministerial dominance. Another would be the restoration of bicameralism, rooted in Hungarian constitutional history. A template could be Czechia, yet with a specifically Hungarian twist. The current mixed electoral system could be divided across two chambers: a lower house elected by majoritarian rules to ensure clear government formation and democratic accountability, keeping the benefits of a majoritarian democracy, and an upper house elected proportionally to improve pluralistic representation. Both chambers would decide on constitutional amendments and the appointment of constitutional judges and other independent officeholders. Additional reforms might include stronger local self-government, directly elected regional executives at the county level, and instruments of direct democracy.
The third option (an “Orbán-on-steroids” scenario) would mean that, much as Orbán did in 2010, Péter Magyar replaces the old elite with a new cadre of his own choosing while leaving the fundamental architecture of the constitutional order intact or even more pronounced. Magyar’s first statements after the election point in that direction: he called for several state officials appointed by the outgoing Fidesz supermajority to resign or be removed by the new supermajority, while notably saying nothing about changing the electoral law created under Orbán—the very system that helped bring him to power.
Reconciliation or revenge?
Yet, Péter Magyar and the Tisza Party promised in their election platform to draft a constitution that reunites the nation on the basis of broad social dialogue.
They have every democratic right, under the still-valid constitutional order and in light of their sweeping victory, to revise the institutions inherited from the Orbán era. But they will be judged on whether they merely pursue a political reckoning with officeholders viewed as loyalists of the Fidesz camp, or whether they genuinely seek national reconciliation. For the Hungarian nation consists not only of the roughly 3.2 million Tisza voters but also of the approximately 2.3 million citizens who still supported Fidesz. Any new constitutional order will only enjoy lasting legitimacy if it is not seen as the victor’s project of a new majority but as a new common framework for a still deeply divided country.
The first major test for Magyar will be how he handles the President of the Republic Tamás Sulyok, who was elected in 2024 by the Fidesz parliamentary majority and whose term is scheduled to last until 2029. Magyar has already called for Sulyok’s resignation by May 31 and simultaneously advocated the introduction of a directly elected presidency in the future. The course he appears to be pursuing is to alter the method of presidential election itself, thereby paving the way for a new presidential contest. That could remove Sulyok while generating fresh political momentum for Tisza should the party prevail in the subsequent vote.
Changing governments or changing the state
Hungary thus faces, perhaps for the first time since 1990, the opportunity to overcome its transitional constitutional logic. The real question is not who governs, but under which rules future government is exercised.
Orbán once used his majority to entrench the system. Magyar now has the chance to use his majority to restrain it. If he succeeds, it could mark the first genuine completion of Hungary’s democratic transition. Ironically, in doing so, he would fulfill the promise Orbán made in 2010.
The Constitution of Victory
Hungary’s Prime Minister Peter Magyar fixes his tie ahead the swearing-in ceremony for the cabinet at the Hungarian parliament in Budapest on May 12, 2026.
Attila KISBENEDEK / AFP
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Hungary’s political situation has long been misunderstood abroad. Much of the international debate focused narrowly on the person of Viktor Orbán and, more recently, on the rise of Péter Magyar, as if Hungary’s trajectory were primarily the result of changing leaders. Yet the deeper continuity lies not in personalities, but in institutions. Since 1990, Hungary has operated within a constitutional framework whose core logic, the exceptional concentration of power in a parliamentary majority and its leader, has remained remarkably intact. Orbán mastered this system for sixteen years; Magyar has now inherited it. To understand Hungary’s past, and the choices now facing its new government, one must therefore examine the political order that made both men possible.
The republic nobody intended to keep
When the opposition, consisting of the conservative MDF and the liberal SZDSZ, gathered at the Round Table from 1988 onwards and later negotiated with the outgoing state-socialist party MSZMP, the new order did not emerge as the result of a coherent constitutional founding project. Rather, it was a transitional construction in which the partisan interests of opposition actors, the necessity of a rapid transition from communist dictatorship, and compromises with the MSZMP were fused together. Institutional templates were quickly drawn both from Hungarian constitutional history and from abroad, especially Germany.
The new order was explicitly not conceived as a final constitution, but rather as a comprehensive revision of the communist constitution of 1949. It was meant to serve as a provisional arrangement until a future democratic majority could adopt an entirely new constitution. Indeed, MDF, SZDSZ, and the MSZMP all expected to compete for precisely that opportunity: to win the first free elections and then replace the interim framework with a constitution of their own design. Thus, the new Hungarian constitutional order rested on elite consensus rather than broad public support or established historical practice. Particularly notable is the general popularity of a directly elected presidency, an institution that was only abandoned out of fear that a former communist might win the office.
As a result, even in its original 1990 form, the system already contained a ticking time bomb: what would happen if a sudden political shift were to produce a two-thirds parliamentary majority? The newly introduced mixed-member electoral system, allocating roughly half the seats in single-member constituencies and the other half through proportional representation, was highly sensitive to swings in voter sentiment. In a country the size of Hungary, such a shift could be determined by only a few hundred thousand voters.
Historical experience from pre-communist Hungarian democracy pointed in the same direction. Hungary had often been characterized by the predominance of a single governing party over several electoral cycles, only to see it eventually replaced by another dominant force. Together, these structural features placed a latent explosive charge at the center of the constitutional order: a party capable of winning a supermajority in Hungary could acquire a concentration of power scarcely paralleled even among other majoritarian democracies.
A hyper-majoritarian state
Majoritarian democracy is not inherently anti-democratic. For a long time, it was regarded in democratic theory as one of the most effective forms of democratic government, notably by Maurice Duverger. The intrinsic strength of majoritarian systems lies in their tendency to produce single-party governments, thereby ensuring clear political accountability and allowing voters, when necessary, to replace the governing majority in its entirety. Only later did consensus-oriented models gain comparable prestige through scholars such as Arend Lijphart. Hungary’s version, however, represented an especially far-reaching and concentrated form of majoritarianism.
Compared with classic majoritarian democracies such as the UK, France, or the United States, the Hungarian model was exceptionally centerd on majority rule. What emerged was a system sui generis with a clear center of power: a unicameral parliament, and its majority led by a strong prime minister removable only by constructive vote of no confidence, elected to power by an electoral system with pronounced majoritarian features favoring larger parties. The electoral system is even more powerful in its effects as the Hungarian party system is much less entrenched than its Western counterparts, making sudden shifts in voter preference more likely. Constitutional amendments and appointments to key institutions, such as the Constitutional Court, judicial bodies, prosecutors, and the central bank leadership, required two-thirds majorities.
Serious counterweights to the parliamentary majority were limited largely to a weak president not directly elected by the people, the parliamentary opposition, the unusually strong Constitutional Court reflecting the German model, and the local governments.
The constitutional time bomb detonates: 2010
Initially, the electoral system achieved its immediate purpose: it generated workable governing majorities after 1990. At the same time, it encouraged the formation of two large opposing blocs on the left and right, which remained relatively balanced until the 2006 elections. Yet long-term stability did not emerge. Instead, governments alternated regularly every four years. Because strong institutional counterweights were absent, voters often had only one practical way to express dissatisfaction: replace one camp entirely with the other. The temporary constitutional settlement thus became permanent.
That the latent possibility of a radical systemic transformation still existed became clear after the 2006 elections. The Social Democrats under Ferenc Gyurcsány won a surprising victory and, for the first time, managed to remain in office after an election. Yet the internal logic of the system now became destabilizing. Since power and responsibility were heavily concentrated in the prime minister, Gyurcsány’s rapid political discrediting triggered a crisis of the entire governing center. The majority collapsed, a technocratic interim government followed, and both MSZP and SZDSZ deteriorated. Hungary entered the global financial crisis politically leaderless.
Viktor Orbán and Fidesz recognized the opportunity: only a few hundred thousand votes could make all the difference after the collapse of the Social Democrats. In the 2010 electoral campaign, they openly targeted a two-thirds majority, promising to complete the unfinished transition. The result was dramatic: according to the rules of electoral law of 1990, with roughly 52% of the vote, Fidesz secured about 68% of parliamentary seats and thus constitutional power.
Orbán’s victory was itself a product of the very order later criticized as the source of his dominance. Why dismantle a structure that had just delivered such power?
Accordingly, the reforms after 2010 did not aim at limiting concentrated authority but at consolidating it. The new Fundamental Law of 2012, the electoral reform of 2012, the reduction of Constitutional Court powers, the weakening of local self-government, and the partisan occupation of key offices further strengthened the majoritarian element instead.
No directly elected presidency was introduced, unlike in many Central and Eastern European states after 1990, nor was a second parliamentary chamber established, despite Hungary’s historical experience with bicameralism.
How the EU strengthened Orbán
Orbán’s conflicts with international organizations were made possible by this concentration of power, yet they also reinforced it. After the financial crisis, the immediate priority was freeing Hungary from the conditions imposed by the International Monetary Fund. Later, confrontation with the European Union increasingly took center stage.
Whether on migration, economic policy, social policy, or foreign affairs, Orbán portrayed the strong governing majority as the guarantor of Hungarian sovereignty. At the same time, Fidesz benefited from economically strong years between 2012 and 2020 and from a fragmented opposition. While Fidesz occupied the center, Jobbik stood to its right, while a divided left competed for the legacy of the MSZP.
When the ice cream licks back
There is a Hungarian saying roughly translated as: ‘When your ice cream licks back.’ It refers to the moment when something pleasant turns against its owner. That is precisely what happened to Viktor Orbán after 2022.
Fidesz achieved its greatest-ever electoral victory that year, yet its domestic political momentum was exhausted. Orbán increasingly shifted his focus to the world stage because he faced no serious domestic challenger. Meanwhile, mismanagement, corruption scandals, and strategic stagnation became more visible.
Yet, the institutions played the key role in his actual downfall. The immediate trigger of the crisis became the pardon affair involving Katalin Novák in February 2024. Novák, herself elected by the Fidesz two-thirds majority, had developed an unusual degree of independence for the office. When controversy erupted, she was forced out within days. It revealed how deeply loyalty politics and siege mentality had come to shape Fidesz after 14 years of supermajority.
The rest is history: Péter Magyar used the affair for his meteoric rise. His Tisza Party won a two-thirds parliamentary majority in April 2026 with 53% of the vote, using the same electoral law that ensured Orbán’s supermajority three times. Remarkably, the logic of pre-World War II Hungarian party competition resurfaced between 2002 and 2026. Not only did dominant parties once again emerge and govern across multiple electoral cycles, but they could be displaced only by an even more dominant challenger. If this pattern endures, Péter Magyar’s Tisza Party may be poised to remain in power for a considerable time.
Magyar inherits Orbán’s machine
Magyar now confronts the same structural choices Orbán faced in 2010. Will he inherit the instruments of concentrated power or deliberately limit them? Magyar faces three broad options: the introduction of a Western-style consensus democracy; a moderate constitutional reform that preserves the majoritarian core while strengthening its checks and limitations; or an “Orbán-on-steroids’ approach, reshaping the constitutional order to suit his party’s interests while retaining its extreme concentration of majoritarian power.
The first option appears highly unlikely, even if a substantial share of Tisza voters, many of whom previously supported left-wing parties, would favor it. Tisza’s manifesto, notably, called only in vague terms for a ‘more proportional’ electoral system and not for the introduction of full proportional representation. Magyar has little actual incentive to pursue such a path, and it would also risk abandoning one of the principal strengths of the Hungarian model: the clear democratic accountability that comes with a readily identifiable governing majority. Moreover, Hungary has neither a historical precedent for nor an established political culture of consensus democracy.
Second, the path of moderate constitutional reform would be to retain the 2012 Fundamental Law while subjecting it to comprehensive revision. That would preserve institutional continuity while allowing genuine modernization. There could be a directly elected president with limited but real powers, modeled on many Central European systems like Poland, Czechia, or Austria. Such an office could serve as a democratically legitimate corrective to government and prime ministerial dominance. Another would be the restoration of bicameralism, rooted in Hungarian constitutional history. A template could be Czechia, yet with a specifically Hungarian twist. The current mixed electoral system could be divided across two chambers: a lower house elected by majoritarian rules to ensure clear government formation and democratic accountability, keeping the benefits of a majoritarian democracy, and an upper house elected proportionally to improve pluralistic representation. Both chambers would decide on constitutional amendments and the appointment of constitutional judges and other independent officeholders. Additional reforms might include stronger local self-government, directly elected regional executives at the county level, and instruments of direct democracy.
The third option (an “Orbán-on-steroids” scenario) would mean that, much as Orbán did in 2010, Péter Magyar replaces the old elite with a new cadre of his own choosing while leaving the fundamental architecture of the constitutional order intact or even more pronounced. Magyar’s first statements after the election point in that direction: he called for several state officials appointed by the outgoing Fidesz supermajority to resign or be removed by the new supermajority, while notably saying nothing about changing the electoral law created under Orbán—the very system that helped bring him to power.
Reconciliation or revenge?
Yet, Péter Magyar and the Tisza Party promised in their election platform to draft a constitution that reunites the nation on the basis of broad social dialogue.
They have every democratic right, under the still-valid constitutional order and in light of their sweeping victory, to revise the institutions inherited from the Orbán era. But they will be judged on whether they merely pursue a political reckoning with officeholders viewed as loyalists of the Fidesz camp, or whether they genuinely seek national reconciliation. For the Hungarian nation consists not only of the roughly 3.2 million Tisza voters but also of the approximately 2.3 million citizens who still supported Fidesz. Any new constitutional order will only enjoy lasting legitimacy if it is not seen as the victor’s project of a new majority but as a new common framework for a still deeply divided country.
The first major test for Magyar will be how he handles the President of the Republic Tamás Sulyok, who was elected in 2024 by the Fidesz parliamentary majority and whose term is scheduled to last until 2029. Magyar has already called for Sulyok’s resignation by May 31 and simultaneously advocated the introduction of a directly elected presidency in the future. The course he appears to be pursuing is to alter the method of presidential election itself, thereby paving the way for a new presidential contest. That could remove Sulyok while generating fresh political momentum for Tisza should the party prevail in the subsequent vote.
Changing governments or changing the state
Hungary thus faces, perhaps for the first time since 1990, the opportunity to overcome its transitional constitutional logic. The real question is not who governs, but under which rules future government is exercised.
Orbán once used his majority to entrench the system. Magyar now has the chance to use his majority to restrain it. If he succeeds, it could mark the first genuine completion of Hungary’s democratic transition. Ironically, in doing so, he would fulfill the promise Orbán made in 2010.
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