The Decline of Democracy in East-Central Europe

All of the East-Central European countries have been diverging from the European Union (EU) mainstream in recent years, but Hungary most of all. This paper offers a country study of Hungary, focusing on both internal and external political transformations and on the “de-democratization” and “de-Europeanization” process as a serious divergence from mainstream EU developments due to the socio-economic and political crises of the past quarter-century. Hungary has become a “defective” or “Potemkin” democracy: since the 2010 elections the formal institutions of democracy have been nothing more than a façade for nondemocratic, authoritarian rule.