Is illiberal democracy, newly triumphant in Viktor Orbán’s Hungary, a contradiction in terms or the far end of a spectrum? I see it as the end of the democratic spectrum, and the correct liberal response is to leverage the democracy while seeking to reform the illiberalism. This should be the project of the European Union vis-à-vis its more rogue members, using its increasingly important financial clout to this end. Threats of outright expulsion, by contrast, only work if the departure from democratic norms is so serious in a particular country that virtually all other members of the EU regard it as unconscionable.
It is plain stupid to regard Orbán and his fellow east European bête noire, Mateusz Morawiecki of Poland, as if they were mini Putins. For all the Hungarian leader’s autocratic tendencies and deplorable declarations of esteem for the Russian dictator, Orbán is no Putin. His gerrymandered electoral systems, pliant media and judiciary, and conservative cultural poses are a world apart from the Russian president’s trade in murdering and jailing his opponents, banning the opposition, and invading neighbouring European states in Hitlerian wars of aggression and inhumanity.
There is a chasm between the illiberal democracy of parts of central and eastern Europe and the expansionist dictatorships of Russia and China. And there is a whole category of difference too between illiberal democracies and autocracies like Turkey and Iran, close to Europe’s borders, whose supreme rulers largely suppress their opposition and comprehensively restrict free speech and human rights.
A key test is that the rulers of illiberal democracies can—and do—lose elections and be ejected from power. Last year’s Czech election saw the Orbánite populist Andrej Babiš lose to the Civic Democratic opposition. Donald Tusk’s Civic Coalition opposition could possibly do the same in Poland next year.
It is vital to recognise the importance in elections of strong and charismatic leaders, even illiberal ones. Orbán won on Sunday in large measure because of his formidable personal force and extraordinary agility in playing both sides in the west’s struggle with Putin. His election crusade as the candidate of “war not peace,”attacking Zelensky and praising Putin while enjoying all the benefits of EU membership and the United States’ Nato defence guarantee, was a strategy of masterly somersaults. It was a political feat exceeded only by his personal transition, over what is now four electoral terms, from liberal Young Turk to reactionary populist conservative. “This result shows that after 12 years of brainwashing, Orbán can win any election in this country,” claimed opposition leader Péter Márki-Zay. But Orbán’s margin of victory—54 to 35 per cent—was so great that it is implausible to put this down to illiberalism alone, without genuine popularity and electorally smart positioning.
I therefore quibble—but it is a quibble of some note—with my friend Timothy Garton Ash, who writes of the illiberal aspects of the Hungarian election, concluding: “Europe should now get tough on both the Russian enemy without and the Hungarian enemy within.” To put Putin’s Russia and Orbán’s Hungary on the same political level, let alone give them the same label as “enemies” of “Europe,” is to drain these words of their essential meaning.
On the chart of national political systems above, only a handful of countries are classed as “full democracies,” and it doesn’t include France, Spain, Italy or Portugal. Britain is given the label, yet I come fresh from debates in the House of Lords—an unelected parliamentary chamber—on legislation to introduce voter photo ID and other controversial limitations on the popular franchise, with an estimated seven million adults not even properly recorded on the electoral roll.
As for the US, the foremost democracy of them all, its flaws are so controversial that words like “insurrection” and “fascism” are bandied about in daily debate. In Donald Trump it recently had an elected president who admired both Orbán and Putin, and may have owed his razor-thin victory of 2016 to the latter.
Above all it is critical that liberal democracies lead by example. A fundamental strength of the European Union is that its leading and largest member, the Federal Republic of Germany, has done precisely that since its inception in 1949 after the horrors of Nazism. In its respect for human rights, the rule of law, fair elections, devolution and civic engagement, Germany is a model modern democracy, as well as Europe’s richest state. Ultimately, that’s the best defence of liberal democracy against both its illiberal neighbours and dictatorial enemies.
